I ate at Bored and Hungry, the wildly hyped Bored Ape Yacht Club-themed fast food concept in California, and I’m not convinced NFTs are the future of restaurants

In April, California-based restaurateur Andy Nguyen yielded Bored and Hungry, a smash burger concept in Long Beach, California with a Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) stylishness.

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

While Exhausted and Hungry’s saucy smash burger and seasoned fries were simply scrumptious, the unbridled Bored and Mutant Ape core felt kitschy. And I’m still not convinced NFTs are the only way forward for restaurants.

If it weren’t for the Ape branding, Bored and Greedy would’ve been your everyday smash burger stand.

Although my takeaways are cynical, it was silent cool seeing the garish but wildly popular BAYC NFTs come to life, and I look forward to seeing how other originative entrepreneurs plan on bringing digital art to life.

The store was once a Southern fried chicken make out that was about to become a Beleaf vegan burger location before Nguyen and his team turned the space into a BAYC wonderland.

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

But the Ape labeling alone is enough to draw in thousands of hungry NFT enthusiasts.

If you’ve been offline, let me catch you up to hastiness. BAYC is a collection of 10,000 unique digital ape artworks. It’s currently one of the world’s most popular NFT collections, passing ended $1 billion in total sales in January.

Creator: Morning Brew

When Bored and Hungry first opened its doors on April 9, about 1,500 clients showed up, creating a line that wrapped down the block, Nguyen told Insider.

There were even supranational and out-of-state visitors, including people from Miami and Brazil.

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

“This is relinquish of history,” the international visitors told the mastermind behind Bored and Hungry. “No one’s done this before.”