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Factor: Entrepreneurship
Looking back on the podcast that I listened to I go the chance to listen to the incredible story of Five Guys. Jerry Murrell is the owner and founder. He never really thought that he would be running a business and selling burgers for a living. He started out in the firm business, he wasn't doing what he truly loved and he needed a change. After his divorce, he got a job offer out in the DC area and saw a small frie shop that inspired him to start.

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Factor: Entrepreneurship
In 1986 the restaurant Five Guys was opened in a little hole-in-the-wall store located in Arlington County, VA. Jerry started out without much advancement in the hopes that if people want to come they will. Which actually ended up working well for him. Word of mouth traveled fast throughout Arlington and after their first week, they had people lining up out the doors for their burgers and fries.

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Five Guys has been a Washington, DC area favorite since 1986 when Jerry and Janie Murrell offered sage advice to the four young Murrell brothers:"Start a business or go to college." The business route won and the Murrell family opened a carry-out burger joint in Arlington Virginia.

Under the guidance of Jerry and Janie the Murrell family served only hand-formed burgers cooked to perfection on a grill along with fresh-cut fries cooked in pure peanut oil.

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Five Guys has been a Washington, DC area favorite since 1986 when Jerry and Janie Murrell offered sage advice to the four young Murrell brothers:"Start a business or go to college." The business route won and the Murrell family opened a carry-out burger joint in Arlington Virginia.

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 Starting off with the Right Employee's 

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 Starting off with the Right Employee's 

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Factor: Labor
Jerry's family was supporting him throughout the whole process, His wife and their two boys all worked full time at the first restaurant. For the time he was actually paying his boys pretty well. $7.50 per/hr. Having good judgment with there employee's was important and Jerry wanted to make sure they had exactly what the customer wanted. Jerry allowed his boys to pick out the additional ingredients like the mayo and pickles. He put his trust in them to find what the customers would want because they were most of the target market they were selling too.

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Jerry Murrell says it's time for lunch, and he knows exactly the place to go. The 68-year-old founder and chief executive of the brightest star in the restaurant industry jumps into his blue Ford pickup parked at the company's headquarters, a redbrick building in an unremarkable office park hard by Interstate 95 in Lorton, Va. He negotiates the back roads of the town--once home to a 10,000-inmate correctional facility--to a strip mall, which, of course, has one of his restaurants, Five Guys Burgers and Fries. He ambles in and, without glancing at the sparse menu he personally designed, orders a burger and some fries.

The staff--a gaggle of twentysomethings--is jumpy, deferentially calling him "Mr. Murrell." They have reason to be nervous. For the past two days this store, along with a dozen others, has been involved in an intense "fry calibration" class led by Murrell's third-eldest son, Chad, who has drilled them on the proper mix of starch, water and temperature needed to create the perfect french fry (Murrell believes cooking is about feel; there are no timers in his restaurants). "Fries are much harder than burgers," says Murrell. "We work day and night on them, all the damn time."

Such are the problems of being the fastest-growing restaurant chain in the U.S., which has doubled its number of stores since 2009. Murrell initially had the idea for a higher-quality burger restaurant back in 1986, as a way to keep his family nearby and, perhaps, make a little money on the side. He has succeeded grandly on both counts. He, his wife and all five of his sons (the "five guys") work for the company, live within 20 minutes of one another and vacation together every summer. And the money? The private burger chain has 1,039 stores open in the U.S. and Canada, and another 1,500 committed to build. Since 2006 the company has grown 792%, according to Technomic, a Chicago-based food industry research group. (Its nearest competitor is Jimmy John's, which grew 241% over the same period and has 1,329 stores.) Five Guys, with a mix of company-owned (200) and franchised (839) stores, has sold out all of its franchise rights in North America. The entire chain, including sales at the franchises, will surpass $1 billion in revenues this year, up from $950 million in 2011. Corporate revenues, from company-owned stores and franchise fees, will be roughly $275 million, with a cash flow of $50 million.

The seven Murrells each own equal shares of the company, which add up to 75%. Miller Investments, a boutique Philadelphia firm, owns 20% of the company, and a few of Murrell's school buddies own the remaining 5%. The company is worth an estimated $500 million, which puts the Murrells' stake somewhere around $375 million. Not a bad return on an initial investment of less than $70,000.

Five Guys rules what's known as the "better burger" category (hamburgers in the $8 range) of fast-casual restaurants, a $2.2 billion segment that grew 16% last year. (Five Guys represents nearly half of the segment.) The entire burger category is a $40 billion industry in the U.S., dominated by McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's. Growth there has been slower, at 3.2% last year. Should McDonald's and the others be worried about Five Guys? "We could never compete with them on price," says Murrell. Still, the big boys have taken notice. Both McDonald's and Burger King have introduced burgers made with higher-quality Angus beef, moves Darren Tristano, an analyst at Technomic, views as a direct response to the "better burger" chains. "Five Guys' burger is better than McDonald's," says Tristano. "Americans have always fallen in love with a better product."

But still, there are those damned fries. Murrell sits at the table in the Lorton Five Guys and cracks open a few peanuts as he awaits his meal. When it arrives he digs into the brown paper bag for a fry. He scrutinizes it, holding it between forefinger and thumb. Then he takes a bite. After a few slow chews he nods his head. "Not bad."

MURRELL WAS BORN AND RAISED in a middle-class family in Alpena, Mich. His father "wasn't around much," says Murrell, and had an aimless professional career, doing stints in a car factory and as a stunt pilot. His mother was the opposite, a diligent saleswoman for Stanley Home Products, a sort of Amway for brushes, mops and household cleaners. Murrell took to food early in life. "When I was a kid I'd wake up early on summer mornings, ride my bike to the brook and catch a bunch of trout and cook them up for breakfast," he says.

But any ambition he had in the food world was put on the back burner. "My mother always told me that if I didn't study, I'd be flipping burgers somewhere," says Murrell. "Little did she know." He went to Alpena Community College for two years, then to the University of Michigan, where he took a job running a fraternity house kitchen to help pay tuition. (His father died while he was in college.) He graduated in 1967 and, though he says his "heart wasn't into it," took a job with AXA Equitable.

Murrell then went through some calamitous years. He got married and had three sons (Jim, Matt and Chad). His mother died. He got divorced and shared custody of the boys. In 1974 he and his sons moved to northern Virginia. There he met a woman named Janie Androsik. They married in 1981. Two years later they had their first son, Ben.

Photograph by MANDEL NGAN / AFP / Getty Images

In 1986, as his older boys neared the end of high school, Murrell came up with a proposition: The boys could go to college if they desired, or he could use their education money to start a restaurant. The idea was that the entire family would pitch in. Matt says his father's initial ambition was just to keep the family together. "His own family wasn't as close as he would have liked," he says. The decision to forgo college was a no-brainer for the kids. "I was pretty excited when the old man said he was starting a business," says Matt, who is now 43. "The idea of going to college terrified me."

For a little less than $70,000 Murrell opened the first Five Guys in Arlington, Va. "It was in the middle of nowhere, there was no parking and no place for customers to sit and eat," he says. The "five guys," originally, were Murrell and his four boys. Jim, Matt and Chad all worked in the restaurant, doing everything from cooking to cleaning the bathrooms. (Ben was too young to work.) Janie kept the books. Another son, Tyler, was born in 1987. From that point on the "five guys" referred to his sons, says Murrell.

There were tough times early on. Employees stole money from the register. There were intrafamily squabbles. "We'd have arguments, and one brother would walk out of the restaurant in a huff," says Matt. "Then you'd realize, 'Damn, I have to finish his shift.'" One fight escalated to the point where Matt tried to hit Jim with a mop but ended up popping himself instead.

But the store thrived, thanks to word of mouth and some positive reviews in the local press. Murrell quit his job at AXA. "We all started dreaming then," he says. "Not of being huge but of duplicating what we'd done in that one store. It seemed simple enough." The difficulty came with raising money. "The banks just laughed at us," says Murrell. So he turned to 100 friends and acquaintances and asked for loans of $10,000 to $30,000. "We gave them high interest, and we always paid them exactly on time each month," he says. (Murrell is a fanatic about being on time; he used to fine his kids for being late to their shifts.) A second restaurant opened in 1989. A handful more opened in subsequent years. The new places had a positive effect on family harmony. "We needed to spread everybody out a bit," says Janie, now 62. "We were all working together while living under the same roof."

As they expanded Murrell was adamant about one thing: The menu had to stay the same. Just burgers and fries, and good ones. The burgers were handmade and never frozen. The hand-cut fries, also never frozen, were sourced from northern climes ("Denser texture," says Murrell). "We kept trying to refine what we already did," he says. He set his house on fire while trying to figure out how to cook better fries. There were some brief pokes at adding new items to the menu. Coffee was a disaster. "Kids just don't know how to do coffee right," Murrell says of his employees. They tried a chicken sandwich for a week, then pulled it. "My fear was that we'd add something new and not be good at it, then some reviewer would write about how bad our coffee was and not how good our burgers and fries are," says Murrell. A hot dog, a veggie sandwich and a grilled cheese sandwich eventually did make it onto the menu.

From the beginning the seven Murrells have made business decisions by a unanimous vote. To this day the entire family meets every Tuesday at 1 p.m. at the Lorton headquarters to talk business. The meetings can get boisterous. "We have soundproofed walls in the meeting room, and my office is on one side and Janie's is on the other," says Chad. "We don't want the rest of the office hearing us go at it."

Their biggest decision came in 2002. By then there were five restaurants, all in northern Virginia. There appeared to be an appetite for more, and franchising seemed like the way to do it. Murrell was initially against it. "I just wasn't sure I could get strangers to buy into our concept," he says. But his sons--led by Matt--pushed him. Matt bought his father a copy of Franchising for Dummies, co-written by Wendy's founder Dave Thomas. The book struck a chord. And around that time the family met Mark Moseley, the former Washington Redskin and the last "straight ahead" kicker in the NFL. Moseley had a burger joint of his own and had been interested in franchising "before my partner sold it out from under me," he says. Moseley and the Murrells met with Fransmart, a franchise-development company. The family all voted in favor of the move. Moseley was hired to head up franchising.

Within three days of the decision, Murrell says, the franchising rights to Virginia were sold out. "Word just got out," he says. And thus began one of the most remarkable franchising runs in recent restaurant history. Fransmart tapped its national database for potential franchisees. Five Guys caught fire, says Dan Rowe, the founder and chief executive of Fransmart, when existing franchisees starting adding additional stores. "The biggest problem Five Guys had was herding the new franchisees and getting them to buy into the concept," he says. "Everyone came in with their own opinions about what should be on the menu."

Other "better burger" chains existed before Five Guys. In-N-Out Burger, a western chain, was founded in the late 1940s. Fuddruckers started in 1980. But the revolution started in earnest in the mid-2000s with the rise of Five Guys. Smashburger soon followed suit and now has 162 units. Famed New York City restaurateur Danny Meyer founded Shake Shack in 2004, which has 15 restaurants. Meyer says he doesn't see Murrell as a competitor but rather as "a friendly restaurant colleague." Murrell actually asked Meyer to speak at a Five Guys franchisee convention in 2009, which Meyer says struck people as "odd." He went anyway and talked about hospitality. Says Meyer: "A rising tide lifts all burgers," perhaps the first time that phrase has ever been uttered.

Five Guys got some great press. In 2009 President Obama stopped in for a cheeseburger, with dozens of cameramen in tow. The next year golfer Phil Mickelson, unprompted, told a roomful of reporters that Five Guys served "hands down the best burger I've ever had." (It was revealed a week later that Mickelson was an investor in Five Guys franchises.)

Potential franchisees came knocking. Murrell says he looks for a franchisee to have a net worth of at least $1.5 million and liquidity of $500,000. Franchisees pay an upfront fee of $20,000, then an additional $75,000 per store. The typical franchisee has 10 to 15 restaurants, which cost $350,000 to $500,000 to open and average $1.2 million in annual revenues. Five Guys collects 6% of gross revenues, which it pockets. Another 1.5% is collected but given to the employees for what Murrell calls his "audits," in which stores are monitored by independent examiners for quality of service, safety and cleanliness. Crews that score well collect $1,000, awarded weekly.

Tom Horton, a managing partner in Richmond, Va.-based Monument Restaurants, is Five Guys' biggest franchisee, with 75 stores open across the South, Midwest and California, and the rights to develop another 275. He says he became a franchisee in 2004 "because I tried the product and I liked it." It's been a good investment: Horton says that individual restaurants break even within two and a half years and have operating margins in the midteens.

Most franchisees have worked out well, but there have been a few problems. One sought to sue Five Guys for terminating his franchise rights after he closed a store without their permission. (Five Guys eventually bought him out.) Others have been nudged to sell their stores to more aggressive franchisees. But the biggest problem Murrell faces with his franchisees is their constant attempts to get him to add items to the menu. They push for chicken sandwiches and coffee. Recently they've been asking for milk shakes. "I bet we've had the shake conversation 6,000 times," says Horton. But Murrell always sticks to his guns. When he analyzes the demise of franchises like Boston Market, he sees one constant: "They all started to offer too many items and got away from their core."

The Five Guys franchise agreement is so tight that Murrell says he isn't sure he'd sign it. Horton agrees that Five Guys holds the firm upper hand. "They maintain first right of refusal," he says. "If you make a deal to sell your operation to a guy who's wearing green shoes, the Murrells can decide they don't like green shoes and nix the deal."

Still, Horton says, the Murrells have made some concessions along the way, especially during the worst part of the recession, when they eased their demands on franchisees to open new stores. After all, Five Guys had its own troubles during that time. "We were expanding like crazy and had all these leases and contracts signed, when suddenly we couldn't get any money from lenders," says Murrell. They could have sold the business, of course. But Murrell didn't want to do that. Instead, Miller Investments doubled its equity stake.

But the recession ended up being a good thing for Five Guys. They got better real estate for their restaurants and hired better employees from competitors. A former Checkers executive is in charge of building new stores, and a former Burger King franchiser runs the Murrells' 200 company-owned stores. And the money came eventually: Five Guys now has a $100 million line of credit with GE and 6,000 corporate employees.

Murrell's sons have all settled into different roles in the company. Jim, 45, helps manage the entire operation. Matt opens new sites. Chad, 40, does the manager training. Ben, 29, is the IT guy. And 25-year-old Tyler oversees the bakeries that provide the Five Guys buns. The family still has their fair share of disagreements. Moseley remembers walking out of a meeting with a potential franchisee and seeing the boys and their father screaming at one another in the parking lot. "I thought there was going to be a knock-down, drag-out brawl," says Moseley. "Then Jerry turns to me and says, 'Can't you see we're having a friggin' family meeting here?'"

Five Guys does have its share of real potential problems. "Everything has moved so fast," says franchisee Horton. With companies like Shake Shack and Smashburger on the scene, "it's become a much more competitive business." Even Five Guys' own restaurants are beginning to compete amongst themselves, a problem Starbucks ran into in the early 2000s. "Whenever we open a store within 10.5 miles from another, they eat away at each other," says Murrell. "That's a problem that I don't know how to get around." Ed Rensi, a former McDonald's CEO who has recently opened his own "better burger" concept, Tom & Eddie's, warns: "The faster you go, the harder it is to execute."

But potential investors don't seem to mind. Murrell says he meets with banks who want to take him public every three months or so. And he has met with private equity firms, including the Carlyle Group, interested in buying a majority stake. Murrell says he always politely listens but wants to stay private and in control for the time being.

And why stop now? Though the U.S. and Canada are sold out, Murrell keeps buying back franchises whenever he can so he can run them. "Those stores are more profitable, and they serve as good models for our franchisees to see that we do everything we ask them to do," he says. Murrell is even expanding overseas. He has an agreement with Freston Road Investments, a British firm run by Charles Dunstone, the founder of British mobile phone retailer the Carphone Warehouse, to open 200 to 300 stores in Great Britain starting next year. He's had offers to open stores in the Middle East but says, "We'll get our feet wet in England."

Murrell has no immediate plans to step down, but his success has given him a bit more free time these days. He says he's working on his golf game, "but those damn windmills keep getting in the way." He goes deep-sea fishing in the Bahamas and Maryland. But he generally likes to keep life simple. "I look at him like a football coach," says Moseley. "He's the leader, and he hires good people and lets them do their jobs." Murrell likes to say that he had little to do with the success of Five Guys and that it was all due to Janie and the boys. Others have a different take. "He's a self-effacing guy, kind of a good old boy," says Horton. "But he's a benevolent dictator for sure." Says Chad: "It's his genius." And what motivates him? "He likes the money."

Murrell admits he likes the money but says it's more than just about him. "I enjoy seeing the kids, the managers and the franchisees make money. I like to see everyone have fun."
The Conversation Forbes Staff Writer Monte Burke asked readers ...
What is your favorite burger joint and why?

Noah Chestnut wrote: It depends on my mood: Wendy's on a long road trip; Bob's Big Boy for nostalgia; In-N-Out for a classic stand experience; Shake Shack for classier fast food.

Weewayne wrote: In-N-Out Hamburgers. There is no other. End of story.

Courtney Slautterback harwood Wrote: The best burger is the Ambrosia Burger from Nepenthe in Big Sur. Perfect sourdough bun--the kind you can only find in California--and "Ambrosia" sauce.

Kashmir Hill wrote: I actually really like McDonald's burgers: the barely-there patty, the limp pickle, the delicious mix of mustard and ketchup, the processed bun. I think it's the taste of nostalgia.

DMAC wrote: Five Guys has the most amazing burgers ever. And the fries aren't too bad either.

Frederick Checke wrote: In-N-Out, hands down. Five Guys is overrated.

Atherton20 wrote: Friendly's. The Big Beef on toast.

FOLLOW THIS CONVERSATION ONLINE AT BLOGS.FORBES.COM/MONTEBURKE
Special Offer: Free Trial Issue of Forbes

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Five Guys Burgers: America's Fastest Growing Restaurant Chain

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Jerry Murrell says it's time for lunch, and he knows exactly the place to go. The 68-year-old founder and chief executive of the brightest star in the restaurant industry jumps into his blue Ford pickup parked at the company's headquarters, a redbrick building in an unremarkable office park hard by Interstate 95 in Lorton, Va.

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Factor: Land
When Jerry Murrell opened his first restaurant in 1986 for about $70,000, the restaurant wasn't an immediate success. The decision to begin franchising Five Guys came in 2002 when the company already had expanded to five restaurants in northern Virginia. The Five Guys family met with former Washington Redskin's kicker, Mark Mosley, who had a burger restaurant of his own and showed an interest in franchising. While they were thinking about expanding they wanted to keep it simple with small stores and less resources used. Taking up huge chunks of land was never the goal.

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Some fast-food restaurants start out small, pour gobs of money into expanding, and then fizzle out after only a few years. Does anyone remember Burger Chef, Clock Restaurant, and Chicken George? But then there are some fast food businesses that lay a solid foundation of proven success and then thoughtfully promote, invest, and expand based on a thorough market analysis, rather than purely gut feelings. Five Guys Burgers and Fries is in the later category. The company continues to impress while expanding. Named for its five founders, all members of the Murrell family, Five Guys has grown from a single location in 1986 in Alexandria, VA, to over 1,500 locations worldwide as of 2018, and an additional 1,500 locations under development. With the Wendy's, McDonalds, and Burger Kings dominating the market, how did Five Guys grow from just a handful of stores to over 1500?

Check Your Oil

The story of Five Guys appears to read like a Cinderella story at first, but as one probes into the company's history, the success of the company is revealed in the founder's obsessive attention to detail. When Jerry Murrell opened his first restaurant in 1986 for about $70,000, the restaurant wasn't an immediate success. Murrell found that employees stole from the cashier register and his sons were always fighting over decision-making issues. But once each son found their niche in the company, based on their strengths, Five Guys began experiencing some success.

To reach their current level though, the company owners began to take every aspect of the quality of the food and atmosphere very seriously. According to a 2012 Forbes article, employees were trained on the proper mix of starch, water and temperature needed to create the perfect french fry, which Murrell believes should be done by "feel" more than anything else-there are no timers in the restaurants. In the piece, Murrell said, "Fries are much harder than burgers. We work day and night on them, all the damn time." That is probably why Five Guys is known for its made-to-order fresh beef burgers and its addicting hand-cut fries, which the company only uses peanut oil to prepare.

Murrell and his sons also tasted 16 different types of mayonnaise to find the right one for their burgers. And when the company's purchasing manager suggested they switch to a frozen burger product, the family conducted a blind test and found that the burger cooked from fresh meat tasted better and stuck with that one. Five Guys also still uses the same bakery to produce the fresh hamburger buns that are used, even though they are pricier, in order to create the best burger experience possible.

Expansion of Five Guys

The decision to begin franchising Five Guys came in 2002 when the company already had expanded to five restaurants in northern Virginia. Though Murrell was initially against the idea, his sons eventually persuaded him by giving him the book, "Franchising for Dummies," co-written by Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's. The Five Guys family met with former Washington Redskin's kicker, Mark Mosley, who had a burger restaurant of his own and showed an interest in franchising. Moseley and the Murrells met with Fransmart, a franchise-development company and Mosley was eventually hired to be in charge of franchising, and lining up investors for the company's expansion.

Due to the popularity of the restaurant, Five Guys had it's first franchise in 2003 and the chain expanded from there, particularly along the East Coast. The company has also franchised outside US borders opening a store in the United Kingdom in July 2013. The chain now has 27 restaurants open across the UK, with locations in the Middle East, and continues to expand in Europe. In March 2017, a location opened at Disneyland Paris' Disney Village, and in late 2017, Five Guys opened its first restaurants in Germany.

Simple is Better

Five Guys' simplistic, but delicious food items created what some refer to as a cult-like following, despite the company's adherence to minimal advertising. Consumers have flocked to the burger chain, and franchisees can't seem to get stores open fast enough. Additionally, Five Guys continues to stomp the competition. A recent Business Insider story revealed that Five Guys once again claimed the top spot in the latest annual Harris Poll EquiTrend survey's "Burger Brand of the Year" category, defending its title against 17 other famous burger chains including Carl's Jr., Burger King, Jack in the Box, DQ, McDonald's, White Castle, Sonic, Wendy's, Whataburger, Shake Shack, and In-N-Out Burger.

The interior of Five Guys restaurants are kept simple too featuring white tiling, checkered with five vertical rows of red tiles, each row representing one of the five sons of the chain's founder. The employee's uniforms are either plain red or white and red. Unlike many of the other fast food chains, there are only a few tables and chairs in Five Guys with potato sacks stacked in customer areas, giving a more wholesome, homely look to the restaurant. Five Guys restaurants also includes open kitchens enabling the customer to see their burgers being grilled to order and free, roast-shell peanuts for customers to eat while awaiting their order. Finally, rock music from the 60s and 70s are piped into the stores creating a nostalgic, but relaxing atmosphere.

Five Guys doesn't rely on flashy, national ads to get people into their stores. The company's advertising philosophy is to let the food talk for the company. In fact, Founder Jerry Murrell told Inc. Magazine, "We figure our best salesman is our customer. Treat that person right, he'll walk out the door and sell for you. From the beginning, I wanted people to know that we put all our money into the food. That's why the décor is so simple. We don't spend our money on décor. Or on guys in chicken suits. But we'll go overboard on food."

Takeaways

Lessons learned from following Five Guys' successful rise includes: giving customers what they want, (good burgers, pricey-but-worth-it buns, delicious fries), fast, friendly service, all while keeping things simple, (ordinary decor, word-of-mouth advertising, etc.). No razzle-dazzle, no giant chickens in costumes, no playing with the menu and adding a fat free caramel moco-loco latte. Just good burgers and fries. Of course, it doesn't hurt to have good investors to get the expansion and franchise operations going, but that all came after establishing a solid, simple business model as the foundation.

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How Five Guys Grew From 5 Stores to 1,500

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Some fast-food restaurants start out small, pour gobs of money into expanding, and then fizzle out after only a few years. Does anyone remember Burger Chef, Clock Restaurant, and Chicken George? But then there are some fast food businesses that lay a solid foundation of proven success and then thoughtfully promote, invest, and expand based on a thorough market analysis, rather than purely gut feelings.

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Factor: Capital
Five Guys have more than 1'300+ stores throughout the United States. All of those stores sell tons of burgers and fries every day. While reading an article that took us behind the scenes with one of the franchise owners Charley Beresford and District Manager Chris Cutting. While reading he mentioned that their restaurant receives around 80-90 cases of 20lbs of ground beef a week. That is upwards of 1,700lbs of beef a week. If you do the math that is 88,400lbs of meet a year per restaurant. Looking back and seeing that there are 1'300+ restaurants it's a total of over 114 million pounds of meat throughout the whole company. That is just for the meat as well there are still buns, lettuce, mayo, tomatoes, peanut oil, pickles, and much more.

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Breaking Down Five Guys Burgers And Fries By The Numbers

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[Photos: Amy McKeever/Eater.com] If you were ever curious just how much peanut oil Five Guys uses for its signature fries, we can now officially tell you—it’s a lot. Eater visited the McPherson...

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Is Five Guys treating their employees right

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Is Five Guys treating their employees right

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Factor: Labor
Having the right employees are important for running a good restaurant. Five Guys has lots of benefits for their employees which is a big perk of working there. The company has a college tuition assistance program to help Five Guys workers achieve their education goals. They put a lot of trust into the employees working with their no-timer policy. Having no timers means that the workers actually need to be able to cook. Overall the employees get treated well from the reviews that I've heard, I've also heard that it's hard work and more than just selling food. Learning how to cook and having to clean the peanut shells off the floor is another big duty of the workers.

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If you've ever been to a Five Guys, you've likely noticed that there are not, in fact, five guys working at every location. There are instead many, many employees working at the nearly 1,500 restaurant locations - and, it should go without saying, not all of them are guys.

So what's it like to actually be one of these workers? For one, each employee has to be ready to deal with the hassles of peanut shells as well as master the art of the French fry. There's also the requirement that employees learn to cook the burgers without timers, and it's everyone's job to impress secret shoppers. There are benefits, of course, like free meals and the knowledge of what makes the absolute best burger using the 15 free condiments available at every Five Guys location.

This is what it's really like to be a Five Guys worker, according to past and current employees.

It's far too easy for Five Guys workers to mess up the fries

Five Guys is famous for its fries. The sacks of potatoes are piled in the store for all to see, and the chain even specifies where most of the potatoes come from: Idaho, and more specifically, from fields in the state that are above the 42nd parallel, according to the company. One Five Guys worker described on Reddit that the ideal Five Guys fry is "supposed to be firm and taste like mashed potatoes." Yet according to a different former Five Guys employee on Reddit, all the special qualifications of the fries mean nothing if the wrong person is manning the fry station.

"If the person on the fries station doesn't know what he is doing, they will come out terrible and inconsistent," the former employee wrote, adding that "even veteran workers" over or undercook the fries sometimes. Then there's the problem of leaving the fries under the heat lamp for too long, which makes them soggy, or the issue of a worker who has a heavy hand with the salt.

It all comes down to one telling statement from that former employee: "The fries have the potential to be good if the person making them knows what he is doing (which most often isn't the case)."

Those peanut shells are a real pain for Five Guys workers to clean up

There are bars and restaurants in the world where throwing the shells of complimentary peanuts on the floor is not only accepted, but expected (looking at you, Texas Roadhouse). While Five Guys offers up big barrels of free peanuts and you might spot someone throwing a shell or two, the chain isn't supposed to have a shell-covered floor.

In a Reddit Ask Me Anything, a former Five Guys worker said that working the "House" shift means cleaning all of the customer messes on and around the tables. In their words, it's a "terrible" duty that's "not rewarding because there is always a mess (d*mn peanuts)." Another former employee posted on Quora to "please do me a favor, tell everyone you know not to throw the peanuts on the ground. Five Guys isn't Texas Roadhouse."

This wouldn't be a problem if there were no free peanuts, but the snack is part of the brand now. While Five Guys doesn't explicitly list why it offers free peanuts, a former employee named Mike Nicholas offered one potential reason on Quora. Nicholas wrote that the food at Five Guys takes a little longer to make than other fast food burgers, and the peanuts keep customers occupied with something to eat while they wait. Or, as another former employee wrote on Reddit, the peanuts "distract the customers so that they won't stare at us" while the food is being made.

When the peanuts leave the restaurant, it's a liability for Five Guys and the workers

The signs posted inside Five Guys restaurants make it clear that peanuts are meant to be eaten on location and not taken outside. According to The Daily Meal, Five Guys doesn't let people take peanuts because, despite the low probability of someone getting an allergic reaction from a casual encounter, Five Guys wants "to limit the risk of someone unknowingly coming into contact with peanuts."

However, exactly how strict the peanut policy is might depend on the location. A former Five Guys worker posted on Reddit, "I regularly scold customers that try to take peanuts outside since it says not to take them on the front door and on the box of peanuts itself."

In response to a question on Quora, multiple employees and former workers reported various levels of enforcement. One, named Jay Mayers, said it's up to the owner and general manager to decide and that his location sold peanuts and peanut oil to customers as well as let people take a small bag home because "pleasing customers is more important." Another, a former manager named Korin Adams, said that people aren't technically allowed to take them out of the store because of liability issues, but "depending on the manager you can usually ask for a small bag and take some home for free."

High school sports teams can be a nightmare for Five Guys workers

The perfect pit stop for a group of hungry high school athletes is a restaurant chain that's affordable, generally spacious, and able to put out lots of food fast. Five Guys checks all of those boxes, but that doesn't mean the workers are exactly happy about it.

On r/FiveGuys, someone asked what the benefits to working at the chain are. The responses quickly turned to issues that are the opposite of benefits, to put it lightly. On typically slow days (Tuesdays and Wednesdays especially), there is occasionally a rush that overloads the sparse weekday shift workers. Those rushes are made all the worse if it's a high school sports team, one person responded.

"A high school basketball team came in once, and they stay forever and move all the tables," an employee said in the Reddit thread. It's likely not the response that the person asking for Five Guys workers' benefits was looking for. "Nothing worse than when someone stays until 10:20 and you can't start closing till they leave."

Five Guys workers come up with their own special orders

At first glance, the Five Guys menu seems pretty straightforward. There's the option for a hamburger, cheeseburger, bacon burger, or bacon cheeseburger (all with two patties) or the choice for a "little" version that only has one patty. Where things get crazy are the free toppings. There are 15 free toppings listed on the Five Guys menu, ranging from basic ingredients like lettuce and mayo to the somewhat more adventurous like barbecue sauce, hot sauce, and A1 sauce.

That leaves a lot of room for customized special orders, and no one knows special orders better than the people making the food. One Five Guys worker posted on Reddit that the most delicious ("and ridiculous") burger is a Little Bacon Cheeseburger on a grilled cheese with a hotdog inside as well as the burger patty. To make it even more extra, the worker adds lettuce, pickles, jalapenos, ketchup, and mustard.

It's not always that complicated, though. Another worker posted on Reddit that their usual special order is a bacon cheeseburger with extra cheese, extra bacon, double extra lettuce, and double extra grilled onions. What really sets it apart is that everything is in a "bowl" rather than squeezed between two pieces of bread. The "bowls" at Five Guys involve no actual bowls, though. Instead, all the ingredients are wrapped in foil sans bun.

Five Guys workers say there's no recognized 'secret menu'

Pretty much everyone loves to be in on a secret, but at Five Guys, there isn't a true secret menu that's universally recognized by employees. On Reddit, a Five Guys worker confessed that, unlike that other popular burger chain In-N-Out, if you order off of a supposed secret menu at Five Guys, you'll likely be met with a blank stare.

One time, for example, that worker was asked for a "presidential burger" (made famous by President Barack Obama) from the secret menu. Not knowing what that consists of, the employee asked what was in it. Turned out, the customer wasn't all that sure either, which put the staff in a tough spot because "we can't pull out our phones on the line and look up secret menu items," the employee wrote on Reddit.

The lack of a secret menu hasn't stopped some people from trying to will one into existence, however. There's a lot of potential due to all of the free toppings, and even if some favorite orders lack a catchy, recognizable name, there are plenty of combinations that work. You just need to know how to properly order them.

For example, if you want a patty melt, order a grilled cheese, and then add a patty and any toppings you want. That presidential burger that caused some confusion is better understood when ordered as a cheeseburger with lettuce, tomatoes, jalapenos, and mustard.

Five Guys workers have faced wage discrimination, wage theft, and harassment in the past

Everyone deserves equal pay for equal work. Five Guys regrettably does not have a perfect record when it comes to making sure that's the case, though. In 2018, a case was brought against the fast food chain that stated Five Guys paid its female managers less than its male managers. The suit claimed that Five Guys violated the Equal Pay Act, and a former employee named Jody Finefrock claimed she made $5,000 less as an assistant manager than the male assistant manager she trained, according to Bloomberg Law. Additionally, she apparently made $2,000 less than the male general managers after she was promoted. The judge ruled in favor of Finefrock and Julia Francis, another woman who accused Five Guys of violating the Equal Pay Act.

Other blights on the Five Guys record include a claim in 2012 in San Diego that workers were denied breaks and overtime. In 2013 and 2014, a manager at one of the chain's locations reportedly mocked and then fired an employee with HIV in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to .

These are just a few of the scandals brought up by Five Guys workers that have plagued the company over the years.

No timers means Five Guys workers need to know how to actually cook the food

Timers make working in the kitchen easier. It's not hard to stay consistent, after all, when everything is cooked for a set amount of time on the same machine. Five Guys kitchens buck the timers, though. That means, as one former employee wrote on Reddit, workers "essentially have to learn how to cook."

Jerry Murrell, the founder of Five Guys, told NBC that there's a simple reason for the lack of timers: "Good cooks know when food's done." It's just one of the ways that Five Guys trusts its workers to be able to do more than set it and forget it. Fries are shaken exactly fifteen times, for example, and the onion and bacon go below the patty while pickles and tomatoes go on top.

One of the things that makes the no-timer rule a little easier on Five Guys workers is that the patties are thin, which was a choice Five Guys made early on in the company's existence. Burgers started out thicker, but they got dry because they have to be cooked for longer. The thin burgers make it easy to achieve the right texture and doneness - plus, they're easier for workers to learn how to cook. To keep the burgers just as filling as one larger patty, two patties are put on the standard burgers (if you want a single, go for the "Little" burgers).

Secret shoppers and customer reviews matter more to Five Guys workers than you think

The one person all Five Guys workers have to keep an eye out for is someone they don't even know the appearance of. Secret shoppers are a big deal at Five Guys. One worker posted on Reddit that secret shopper feedback makes it to the store every time, and employees are listed by name in the reports. In some regions, Five Guys rewards the locations that score the highest secret shopper average per quarter with a bonus.

In the r/FiveGuys channel, a secret shopper posted that they have worked various Five Guys locations about 50 times. For that person, Five Guys is the easiest restaurant around when it comes to evaluations. But that might be because employees have learned to spot secret shopper patterns.

In replies to the secret shopper's post in r/FiveGuys, employees admitted that there are certain tics they're taught to look out for because the secret shopper scores really matter. One is ordering a shake with two to three flavors along with their burger and fries. Another is to watch for customers who are making eye contact with the employees - especially if that person came to the restaurant alone and double-checks that the condiments station is full. And though there may not be timers in the kitchens, secret shoppers often have them. It's a lot for a worker to keep track of to make sure there aren't any slip-ups.

Five Guys workers have to expect customer complaints about overfilled fries

If you've ever ordered fries at Five Guys, then there's a good chance you are familiar with a bunch of extra fries thrown in your bag of food. This isn't a case of employees hooking their favorite customers up. The extra scoop is actually standard policy to make people think they're getting a bargain, according to Taste of Home. But it can be a point of contention for some workers, and some customers complain that it's simply too many fries to actually enjoy and they'd rather just have a cheaper meal.

The amount of waste is one aspect of the fry policy that can get on an employee's nerves. One Five Guys worker posted on Reddit that the majority of people get a little or regular fry. Still, some kids come in and insist on ordering a large fry for themselves, which is "enough fries for three adults." The employee continued that it's a "waste of money, waste of product, and the kid is already starting to make unhealthy life decisions. Really gets under my skin."

Other employees have posted on Reddit that they've had customers try to fend off any issues before they get their order. Customers who aren't regulars aren't aware of how many fries come with each order, one former employee posted, and "a lot of people actually asked me not to fill the bags because they get oily and rip."

Some Five Guys workers receive college tuition assistance and free food

The company has a college tuition assistance program to help Five Guys workers achieve their education goals. The company has a limit on who can join in, though, so it's not as generous as Chipotle's well-known college reimbursement program that's available to all workers after a set employment length. On the company website, Five Guys notes that only Five Guys Enterprise and Five Guys Operations employees are eligible for college aid.

For those employees, Five Guys has partnered with Guild Education to enroll workers in high school and college degree programs. Each is designed to be easy to complete for adults who work full time, and are done at accredited, non-profit universities. For those interested in a degree in business administration, hospitality management, or finance, Five Guys offers 100 percent tuition coverage, as well as up to $5,250 per year for other select degrees.

College isn't in the books for everyone, though. There is, however, always the benefit of free and discounted food. According to reviews on Indeed and on Glassdoor, the free or discounted meals can be one of the biggest pros of working at Five Guys. One Reddit user even posted that free food is the main, and only, benefit of working at the chain.

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Workers Reveal What It's Really Like To Work At Five Guys

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If you've ever been to a Five Guys, you've likely noticed that there are not, in fact, five guys working at every location. There are instead many, many employees working at nearly 1,500 locations. This is what it's really like to be a Five Guys worker, according to past and current employees.

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Factor: Capital
Five Guys Burgers and Fries is a burger chain started by the Murrell family in 1986. The concept is simple and easy to run and specializes in serving outstanding burgers, fresh-cut fries and milkshakes. The total investment to open a Five Guys Burgers and Fries restaurant is between $152,000 and $360,000. Candidates are asked to have $150,000 liquid assets available. The royalty fee is 6-8%. Opening a Five Guys would be a lot of work and does take a hefty downpayment. The overall payment would be for just the opening of the store as well. That would not cover all the expenses of the meat and all additional toppings and produces served there. In that cost those all the grills and machines would be thought of so in that first payment to open they would be covered.

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Do you have small business franchise experience, or restaurant ownership experience? Own this simple, easy to run burger concept and open a Five Guys franchise today.