Today, AdWeek Magazine’s annual Food Issue hits newsstands, and one of their features is an interview with David Chang about the power of his brand (as is AdWeek Magazine’s wont). And David Chang’s brand is worth a lot of money, indeed: according to the author, he and the nine other top celebrity chefs in the world are worth a combined $948 million dollars. (Side note: Forbes lady who made a really inaccurate celeb chef rich list? You suck, so hard.)
The riches from being a brand come with the perils of protecting the name, however, and Chang admitted that he’d been approached to do things with the Momofuku brand, like….franchising.”I’m never going to say never,” he hedged. “But it’s hard for me to grasp the notion of having a thousand outlets.”
But just because Chang hasn’t sold out yet, doesn’t mean that Momofuku has no franchises! They’re just not actual Momofuku-approved franchises. “There is a very successful fast-food company that approached us and quite frankly took our intellectual property,” he recalled. “And they are running our concept right now. They have two stores that have opened up.”
Question of the day: Who are these dicks? Where are they? We’ll burn their noodle-stealing buildings to the GROUND.
(Of course we won’t, because we have no idea who these cowards are. Hide behind your corporate masks and your likely threats to sue David Chang for libel should he divulge your identity, mysterious “successful fast-food company”. We hope your workers pee in your food.)
[AdWeek]
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