NVM Review

By Warren Rojas

They’ve been in business for going on 23 years. Have opened nearly 400 locations. And give away somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 pounds of free peanuts each and every day.

It’s all a numbers game to the folks at Five Guys, arguably the most successful burger franchise to ever spring from within the Beltway.

Company president Jerry Murrell makes no bones about giving all the credit for the booming burger dynasty to his five sons—Jim, Matt, Chad, Ben and Tyler (the flesh-and-blood founders behind the quirky title).

“I gave them the money … but they opened the [first] store and ran it,” Murrell said of his visionary spawn.

And not much has changed since.

“We’re really fanatical about the few things we do,” he stated, pointing to the seemingly intractable menu of four core burgers (hamburger, cheeseburger, bacon burger, bacon cheeseburger; all available as single or double stacks) as proof of their conservative credentials.

Although they’ve branched out significantly since their early days as a carryout-only operation in Arlington, every Five Guys store currently operates under the same marching orders as the original.

Customers order at the register, at which point the cashier calls back the number of handmade patties the cooks should toss on the always-crowded grill. “There’s no secret to it. It’s just Grade A, 80[muscle]/20[fat] hamburger,” Murrell said of their beef, which is sourced from a select few grinding facilities scattered nationwide.

As the patties progress across the sizzling griddle, crackling and hissing their way from raw to well-done (Five Guys’ default cooking temperature), patrons can customize their burger with over a dozen gratis toppings, including: ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, relish, grilled mushrooms, diced jalapenos and A1 steak sauce.

Staff then stacks each laundry list of toppings atop a proprietary roll (produced by a half-dozen bakeries nationwide) and waits for the grill cooks to slide the finished burger directly from spatula to waiting bun.

A fully loaded cheeseburger is choreographed chaos, summoning a 3-inch monument to dripping American cheese, glistening mushrooms (so very tasty), juice-laden meat (soaked through in honest-to-god beef flavor), hefty, crinkle-cut pickle chips and whatever else your imagination can muster.

Truth be told, adding anything more than a handful of toppings makes these stuffed-to-the-gills monsters pretty much unmanageable. But I have yet to hear anyone complain that they got too much burger or excess free toppings for their money.

Back when they first started, Five Guys famously offered $10 to anyone who could find a better burger at the same price ($1.79, back then). “We had those signs in our stores for probably eight years. Nobody ever called,” Murrell said of their no-questions-asked reward policy.

According to Murrell, the bacon cheeseburger has been the hands-down favorite from day one.

That, and of course their peanut-oil fries (typically served thick, crisp and well salted).

“Our fries are big sellers,” he said, estimating that each store cooks up around 300 pounds of No. 2 Russet Burbank baking potatoes per day. “We do something like 10 percent of Idaho’s potato business,” Murrell said of their dedicated potato pipeline.

Meanwhile, Murrell said he welcomes the influx of high-end burger operations that have flooded the area, opining, “It’s good to get people used to paying more for a good burger.”

That’s not to say he’s thrilled about EVERY new competitor that blows into town.

“I don’t like it when people sell bad burgers,” he said. “That doesn’t help anybody.”