Evidence to date shows that MrBeast Burger has not become more successful than McDonald’s by any standard business metric, and the venture is now being wound down rather than positioned to overtake it.

• Scale: McDonald’s operates over 41,000–43,000 restaurants worldwide and remains one of the largest fast‑food chains, with global Systemwide sales over $130 billion in 2024. (en.wikipedia.org)
• MrBeast Burger size: MrBeast Burger is a virtual/ghost‑kitchen brand with roughly 1,700–2,000 virtual locations at peak and around a few hundred U.S. locations tracked in late 2025—orders of magnitude smaller than McDonald’s and without comparable systemwide sales or brand dominance. (forbes.com)
• Strategic direction: In 2023, Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) sued his partner Virtual Dining Concepts seeking to shut down MrBeast Burger over quality concerns, and by 2024 he publicly said he was “moving on” from the venture and wanted to close it because it was hurting his brand. (washingtonpost.com)

Even though the chain did reach roughly “thousands” of virtual locations, it has neither surpassed McDonald’s in the burger/fast‑food category nor is it realistically on a trajectory to do so. Under ordinary predictive interpretation, this makes Friedberg’s claim effectively wrong.