In April, California-based restaurateur Andy Nguyen opened Bored and Hungry, a smash burger concept in Long Beach, California with a Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) flair.
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I visited the one-of-a-kind concept on an early Tuesday afternoon in May.
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While Bored and Hungry’s saucy smash burger and seasoned fries were simply scrumptious, the unbridled Bored and Mutant Ape theme felt kitschy. And I’m still not convinced NFTs are the only way forward for restaurants.
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If it weren’t for the Ape branding, Bored and Hungry would’ve been your everyday smash burger stand.
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Although my takeaways are cynical, it was still cool seeing the garish but wildly popular BAYC NFTs come to life, and I look forward to seeing how other creative entrepreneurs plan on bringing digital art to life.
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The store was once a Southern fried chicken spot that was about to become a Beleaf vegan burger location before Nguyen and his team turned the space into a BAYC wonderland.
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In theory, Bored and Hungry is nothing more than a burger shop that has strong branding and accepts crypto.
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But the Ape branding alone is enough to draw in thousands of hungry NFT enthusiasts.
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If you’ve been offline, let me catch you up to speed. BAYC is a collection of 10,000 unique digital ape artworks. It’s currently one of the world’s most popular NFT collections, passing over $1 billion in total sales in January.
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Source: Morning Brew
When Bored and Hungry first opened its doors on April 9, about 1,500 customers showed up, creating a line that wrapped down the block, Nguyen told Insider.
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There were even international and out-of-state visitors, including people from Miami and Brazil.
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And more recently the pop-up saw patrons from Norway, who told Nguyen they “had to be there,” he recounted to Insider.
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“This is part of history,” the international visitors told the mastermind behind Bored and Hungry. “No one’s done this before.”
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