Behind Five Guys’ Beloved Burgers
Carnivores keep coming back for the authentic vibe as much as the beef, but maintaining it throughout the franchise is no simple task
Five Guys says last year it used enough peanut oil to fill the stream of the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland Brian Finke for Bloomberg Businessweek 
Sales growth Brian Finke for Bloomberg Businessweek; ; Nation's Restaurant News Top 100; U.S. data, may reflect actual results, estimates or projections. Story Tools
Murrell passes up Five Guys’ regular cheeseburger, which comes with two patties and 840 gluttonous calories, and orders the “Little Burger”—a single patty with lettuce and tomatoes. No cheese or jalapeños, no mushrooms or any of the other 11 free toppings. Not even ketchup. Though he’s proud of the offerings, chosen by his sons who help run the business—“Every little one was a decision,” Murrell says. Today he keeps it simple.
What started as a modest burger shack in a Virginia strip mall has exploded into America’s fastest-growing restaurant chain, with five stores opening each week. Five Guys serves up made-to-order burgers with beef that’s never frozen and absurdly large servings of hand-cut fries. The fresh, generous meals allow them to charge more than fast food chains such as McDonald’s and Burger King.
Murrell founded the company with his wife and sons in 1986. For 16 years they ran a handful of local stores in the Washington (D.C.) area, perfecting their limited menu and building a devout local following. Then in 2002, after much nudging, the boys convinced Murrell to open the floodgates to franchising. By the end of this year, Five Guys expects to have almost 1,000 stores open around the country and over $1 billion in sales. They’re growing so fast that the Murrells are racing to hold on to the simple, authentic vibe that made the place so beloved.
Five Guys stores don’t have drive-throughs or molded plastic seats bolted to the floor. The walls are covered in crisp white and red tiles, the kitchen is open for everyone to see, and the menu doesn’t change. As Jim Gilmore, the co-author of Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, explains, Five Guys stores seem to say, in the most loving way possible, “Shut up, sit down, and eat.”
Gilmore says that in an age when everything seems to be mediated and staged, the tough love from Five Guys feels refreshingly real. The restaurants cultivate that through what Gilmore calls the “texture” of their operations. The stores typically have bags of potatoes stacked up to be cut into French fries—a holdover from early locations that didn’t have storage space in the kitchen. A chalkboard on the wall lists the specific farm that grew the spuds. Self-serve buckets of peanuts let customers munch as they wait for their orders, while employees are encouraged to be personable and avoid scripted greetings.
The Murrells also shun national advertising campaigns, which they find fake, and instead rely on word of mouth. When President Obama moved to the White House, a Five Guys staffer suggested sending him a T-shirt. “That’s cheap!” Murrell shot back. Playing coy worked, and soon Obama, trailed by TV cameras, stopped by a store. He ordered a cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, fresh jalapeños, and mustard—a classic example of Five Guys’ formula that sells 2 million burgers a week and was named Zagat’s “best fast food burger” for 2010.
For this reporter, evaluating the burger first-hand was problematic: I’ve been a vegetarian for more than a dozen years. So I tried calling some expert tasters. Pulitzer Prize winning food critic Jonathan Gold says he doesn’t much care for Five Guys—he finds the burger “boring”—but understands why people like them. “There’s that goopeyness, and it does fit that kind of American profile.” Gilmore, the marketing consultant, calls the burgers “a couple pounds of carnivorous pleasure.” Then he adds, “It’s almost enough to make me feel sad for you.”
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