- Prime, YouTubers KSI and Logan Paul's electrolyte drink, has become a status symbol for young people.
- To celebrate the sale of its billionth bottle, Prime opened two limited stores in London and NYC.
- The stores was gold themed, and included the chance to win a $500,000 gold Prime bottle.
It's a Prime world, and we're just living in it.
The Prime beverage, which comes in a "hydration" version and an "energy" version, has become a cult drink among young fans of YouTube megastars Logan Paul and KSI since its launch in early 2022.
The company announced last week it expects to reach $1.2 billion in sales by the end of 2023. It's also sold its billionth bottle, and to celebrate the milestone, Prime went brick-and-mortar, opening two "gold" stores in London and New York City.
The stores were open for just 48 hours between November 10 and 12, and featured the opportunity for visitors to win a gold Prime bottle worth $500,000 if they guessed a six-digit code. The bottles would be melted if nobody guessed.
Luckily, on Sunday night, as the 48 hours were drawing to a close, a young boy in London got the code right and secured the gold bottle.
In New York, where Logan Paul was running operations at the local Prime store, the matching gold bottle was recorded melting, as there could only be one winner.
Earlier this year, an advertising blitz, paired with supply problems that caused shortages of the drink, sparked hysteria in the UK. Parents and kids were seen lining up for hours outside of grocery stores, and an aggressive black market emerged, with bottles being sold for up to £25 (about $30).
While the supply issue has now been curbed, with the drink being sold across major grocery chains in the UK, the hype around it has seemingly not died down — likely because of the regular limited-edition drops of new and rare flavors. For example, visitors of the Prime London store received a gold bottle with a custom flavor and the words "London 1,000,000,000" printed on it.
On Friday, November 10, about an hour ahead of the London Prime store opening, the line of young people waiting to try their luck stretched to the end of the block.
Ellie Whitby and her friend Emanuele Maccotta, who were first in line to enter the store, had been waiting in front of it for about 15 hours, braving the rain and the 50-degree London weather.
The two said they hadn't originally planned to line up for that long, but when they walked past the store location the night before its opening, they spontaneously decided to pull an all-nighter.
Whitby, who runs a YouTube channel with 290,000 subscribers, said she'd come primarily to shoot content for her social-media profiles.
Next in line was Steve Cooper, who runs the online candy store Central Sweet Supply. He told Insider that for him, business around Prime has never been as good as in recent months.
After visiting the store, Cooper stood outside waiting for visitors to come out and offered to buy the coveted gold bottles off of them.
Now, the gold Prime bottle can be found for sale on the Central Sweet Supply website for £139.99 (about $171).
Here's more of what the scene was like: