5 Guys Burger and Fries

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Five Guys Burgers and Fries: Ingredients for Success

BUS 508 – Contemporary Business

April 28, 2013

Five Guys Burgers and Fries: Ingredients for Success

The Five Guys Burgers and Fries franchise is a very successful food chain that has successfully infiltrated the burger market. They have grown to over 600 franchises all across America and Canada as well. This paper will examine the success of the Five Guys Burgers and Fries franchise by looking at how Five Guys’ philosophy sets it apart from other fast-food chains. It will analyze the original values for the start-up company and how it remains strong today. Additionally, it will enumerate three (3) factors that contributed to Five Guys’ success in such a short time and what effect, if any, external markets had on these factors. Lastly, it will assess how ethical and social practices are part of the Five Guys’ culture.

Five Guys’ philosophy

From Five Guys humble beginnings to their profitable success in a market already flooded with burger and fries places, they have stuck to what they believed in which is to provide the customer the best service possible. To make customers frequent your store instead of the local big box competitor, you need to set yourself apart from the competition by providing superior service. (Thomsen, 2012) To do this, the company wanted to do something which set it apart from other fast food chains. The company doesn’t place a lot of its money in advertising but instead it uses the money it would use for advertising to give bonuses to the employees. Given the intense competition, fast food restaurants must market aggressively not only to attract new customers but also to retain old ones. While polls suggest that consumers are not necessarily loyal to a single fast food brand, millions of dollars are spent on advertising. (Allen G & Albala K, 2007) But instead of spending millions in advertising, they have auditors who go around posing as customers and...