I had dinner at a Bored and Hungry NFT themed fast food restaurant

In April, California restaurateur Andy Nguyen opened Bored and Hungry, a burger smash concept in Long Beach, Calif., with a Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) twist.

I visited the one of a kind concept on a Tuesday afternoon in May.

While Bored and Hungry’s burger and seasoned fries were downright delicious, Bored and Mutant Ape’s unbridled theme was kitsch. And I’m still not convinced that NFTs are the only way forward for restaurants.

If it weren’t for the Ape brand, Bored and Hungry would have been your everyday burger stand.

While my takeaways are cynical, it was always cool to see the garish but wildly popular BAYC NFTs come to life, and I can’t wait to see how other creative entrepreneurs plan to bring digital art to life.

The store was once a Southern fried chicken spot that was poised to become a Beleaf vegan burger spot before Nguyen and his team transformed the space into a BAYC wonderland.

In theory, Bored and Hungry is nothing more than a burger shop that has strong branding and accepts crypto.

But the Ape brand alone is enough to attract thousands of hungry NFT enthusiasts.

If you’ve been offline, let me update you. BAYC is a collection of 10,000 unique digital artworks of monkeys. It is currently one of the most popular NFT collections in the world, surpassing $1 billion in total sales in January.

Source: Morning infusion

When Bored and Hungry first opened on April 9, around 1,500 customers showed up, creating a line that sealed off the block, Nguyen told Insider.

There were even international and foreign visitors, including people from Miami and Brazil.

And more recently, the pop-up saw customers from Norway, who told Nguyen they “had to be there,” he told Insider.

“It’s part of the story,” international visitors told the mastermind behind Bored and Hungry. “No one has done this before.”