Why is five guys called five guys

Five Guys opens five locations around the D. Five Guys decides D. Five Guys sells out of franchise territory within 18 months and decides to open up the rest of the country to franchising. The Five Guys Story.

Five Guys Facts: We only use fresh ground beef. Once they're ordered, they're finished off with another two or three minutes in the frier, shaken off exactly 15 times , and served up to the customers. Chad also says they use peanut oil to try to make their fries a little healthier, and it's the quantity they serve up that makes their meals' calorie counts astronomical.

If you have too many fries, Chad suggests you take them home and make hash browns with them. No one in their right mind suggests heading to Five Guys if you're looking for a healthy lunch option. According to their nutritional information , their bun alone is a whopping calories and 9 grams of fat.

There are a few healthier options, though, and The Washingtonian took a look at what your best choices are. If you're not there because you have your heart set on a hamburger, go for their Veggie Sandwich. It's not a veggie burger, but it's their vegetable toppings — like mushrooms and peppers — grilled up and served on a bun.

That'll still set you back more than calories, and the Food Network Blog recommends a burger option: order a bunless, Little Burger. Skip the mayo and bacon, but stack on some of their other toppings like tomatoes, onions, lettuce, and jalapeno peppers, and you'll only be eating about calories You probably know someone with a peanut allergy, and it can be a deadly. According to The Peanut Institute , around four percent of adults and four percent of children have severe food allergies, and tree nuts — including peanuts — account for about 90 percent of those allergies.

Cases have steadily risen since at least , making it surprising that not only does Five Guys continue to offer guests peanuts to snack on while they wait, but they exclusively use peanut oil. Allergy information is posted in their nutritional guide , and their fries are marked as including peanut and peanut oil products. Five Guys says they have no intention of changing any of their practices, as it would negatively impact the brand they've been building for several decades.

Instead, they say they make sure there are plenty of signs posted, warning people who have a problem with peanuts to stay away. They also say the potential for an allergic reaction is also why they don't allow people to take peanuts outside. Sometimes, you can look back on a single decision and know it was the right one, like Five Guys and their decision to franchise. Between and alone, they saw an unthinkable percent growth via Forbes.

That's even more impressive when you compare them to their closest rival over that same period. Jimmy John's saw a still-impressive percent growth rate, but compared to Five Guys? That's nothing. Even their first foray into franchising was a massive success. According to their own web site , they received national attention when they started offering franchise opportunities, and had sold options for more than units in just 18 months. According to Five Guys , there are more than , ways to order your burger.

That sounds like something the marketing department made up as a boast, but if you do the math, there really are more than that many different combinations for your burger With six options for burgers, including different sizes, with or without cheese, and a whole host of toppings, it's a paradise for someone who loves options, and a challenge for the completionist.

As if all the combinations for your burger weren't enough, Five Guys has a machine that does for you what you used to love doing yourself — taking a little bit of each flavor of soda at the machine, and making your own mix-n-match drink. Their upgrades started in , and they were installed in every company-owned store Five Guys had: all of them. They've only gotten more popular, and it's easy to see why.

Who wants a boring, regular Coca-Cola when you can have a Coke Zero with either lemon, lime, or raspberry, or almost any kind of Powerade you can dream up? According to Serious Eats — who tried different soda flavors — some are hits, some are misses, but you'll always have something new. If you head to, say, McDonald's, you know how much you're going to spend on your usual before you get there.

That's not the case with Five Guys, and Murrell is pretty straightforward about the fact that the prices of their burgers can — and will — change. He told Inc. He even suggested cutting back, but his sons said they'd rather raise the price than compromise on quality. Pricing according to the market is great from a business point of view, but it's not always popular with the customers.

When Belfast, Ireland, got its first Five Guys, the guest reaction was that it was a decent burger Five Guys defended the price hike , citing the price of ingredients and the fact that UK prices include 20 percent added tax. But their American customers were saying the same thing in a survey from Business Insider , with millennials in particular saying their burgers just weren't worth the price. There's a lot about the way Five Guys does things that's unconventional, and that includes their approach to getting the word out.

According to AdAge , Five Guys took their advertising budget and put it somewhere else — into mystery shoppers. You're not likely to see a Five Guys commercial or billboard, and that's because they use that cash to hire third-party companies to visit their restaurants and do a full evaluation.

It keeps employees on their toes, ensures their customers have a great experience, and those experiences turn into advertising. Anyone who's worked in retail knows just how terrifying the prospect of a mystery shopper is, but Five Guys turns it into a major rewards program.

Director of Communications and Marketing Molly Catalano told QSR Magazine they hand out a huge amount of money as bonuses for meeting mystery shopper goals. That means there's a chance they can win every week, and that's incentive! Giving away free food at a time of crisis seems like something that couldn't possibly backfire, but it absolutely did in In August, Baltimore was in a state of chaos as protesters took to the streets after the death of Freddie Gray , who died in police custody after being arrested.

Outrage over police brutality filled the streets with angry citizens, and the National Guard was called in to help the police restore order.

Once social media got wind of the act, people were quick to point out that Baltimore schools had been cancelled, and around 84 percent of those schoolchildren were enrolled in reduced price or free lunch programs. The idea of those kids going hungry while Five Guys and Whole Foods fed law enforcement wasn't well received — probably not the reaction they were expecting. According to Forbes , founding father Jerry Murrell hails from a middle-class Michigan family.

His father was a stunt pilot in between working at a car factory, and his mother sold products for Stanley. He was told he needed a college education to be successful, so he went — but didn't care for it.

When it came time to send his own sons to college, he gave them a choice. Jim helps manage the whole operation, Matt opens new locations, Chad does manager training, Ben handles IT, and Tyler looks after the bakeries pumping out dough for the buns.

When Murrell's oldest sons were about to graduate high school, Jerry accepted that Jim and Matt weren't really interested in college.

So he made them a deal: the family would use the tuition money they'd saved to invest in a hamburger shop instead. And it was basically the boys running things initially -- Murrell kept his job at AXA Equitable until the restaurant really took off.

Jerry Murrell's first professional culinary experience came from running a University of Michigan frat house kitchen in the '60s. He took the job as a student to help pay tuition.

Back in their early experimental days, the Murrells tested out Five Guys coffee. It went very, very poorly by all accounts. When they first opened, Five Guys got a call from the Pentagon with a request for 15 burgers. Jerry asked when they could pick the stuff up, since they didn't deliver. An admiral called him up personally and said, "Mr. After that, the Pentagon peeps got wise. According to the official website, there are over , possible ways to order a burger at Five Guys.

Challenge accepted.