How Mark Wahlberg is now serving burgers ‘in a big way’
Mark Wahlberg may be a household name for his Hollywood career, but he’s broadening his legacy through his entrepreneurial endeavors.
He and hip-hop mogul Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs are behind the electrolyte bottled water brand Aquahydrate, he cofounded the sports nutrition company Performance Inspired, and he’s the lead investor in Wahlburgers, a high-end burger chain that he started with his brothers Donnie and Paul, the latter of whom is the chef who developed the menu.
The franchise now has 16 locations across 8 states and Toronto, Canada. And the company has plans to open over 100 more restaurants over the next few years, including Asia and Europe. Wahlburgers operates under a franchise model, though the family still owns the original Hingham, Mass., location.
“It really comes down to having the right partners in the right locations in these different territories and we want to make sure that we’re completely prepared that every individual experience is perfect,” Wahlberg told Yahoo Finance at the grand opening of the first Manhattan location on the Upper East Side.
The “Wahlburgers” name
Originally, Wahlberg was completely against using the name “Wahlburgers.”
“I’ve worked too hard to build my brand as an actor and as a producer so I didn’t want to make it seem like it was a cash grab,” he said. “But knowing how talented my brother Paul is, how committed we are to building a business, we were going to do it and do it all the way.“
“[My businesses] are a part of who i am. I don’t get involved with things that I can’t really stand for and sell to you, to your kids and everybody else across the board. I don’t do things necessarily for money — they have to be a part of who I am and the message that i want to put out there and the products that I want to sell to people,” he said.
In the same way that he had to make a compromise on the branding, he had to convince Paul that they needed to scale the restaurant.
“He would [have been] content with one restaurant,” he added. “But if we were going to do it, we were going to build a business that we could share for generations. And we were going to do it in a big way.”
Wahlberg: the small business owner
Wahlburgers employs around 1,600 people across all their locations. Wahlberg expressed the importance and value of building the right team as he continues to scale.
He told Yahoo Finance that he has been guilty of keeping his friends close and prioritizing loyalty over efficiency, talent and capability. (Note: Wahlberg was an executive producer of the hit HBO show Entourage, which was loosely based on his life).