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| President Obama ordering lunch at Five Guys, May 2009 |
The election of Barack Obama lifted the hopes of millions of people, not least the many Americans who are passionate about food. After eight years of a teetotal president whose taste ran to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the White House would now be home to a pair of apparently enthusiastic and very knowledgeable eaters. When Michelle Obama announced that she intended to plant a vegetable garden on the grounds of the executive mansion, it was taken as a sure sign that an era of enlightened dining was at hand. But 11 months into the Obama administration, it seems the biggest winner in the culinary realm is neither arugula nor Alice Waters but, rather, a northern Virginia-based hamburger chain called Five Guys.
Barely two weeks after the inauguration, the president’s wife treated some of her staffers to lunch at a Five Guys on Dupont Circle. In May, her husband visited a Five Guys restaurant on Capitol Hill, an event that featured in an NBC prime time special about the Obama White House. With anchor Brian Williams trailing him for a day, Obama decided to spring for burgers and fries for some of his aides and went to pick up the food himself. It was transparently a PR move intended to show the president as a man of the people. There is no way of knowing if it succeeded, but it was great free publicity for a chain that does not even advertise. “I might have to start voting Democratic,” jokes Jerry Murrell, the company’s founder.
The presidential endorsement was just another laurel for his rapidly growing and remarkably successful hamburger empire. Murrell and his wife Janie opened the first Five Guys – named for their five sons, all of whom now work for the company – in Arlington, Virginia in 1986. As of 2002, they had just five locations, all in northern Virginia. That was the year they decided to franchise; seven years later, the company has over 500 restaurants in 38 states with another 1,500 on the way, it will soon open its first international location in Medicine Hat, Canada, and expects to be in Europe in the not too distant future. Five Guys may be the biggest thing to hit the world of all-beef patties and sesame seed buns since brothers Dick and Mac McDonald decided to franchise their southern California hamburger restaurant back in the early 1950s. What sets Five Guys apart is that it serves burgers and chips that even a fast-food refusenik cannot help but like.
I speak as one such refusenik. I discovered Five Guys a few years ago. At a loose end for dinner one night, my wife suggested that we try the Five Guys located down the road from our house. I prided myself on never eating fast food; it had been nearly two decades since my last McDonald’s fry. So it was with some displeasure and much scepticism that I acceded to my wife’s wishes.
The chain is not big on ambience: the spartan decors (cement floors, red-and-white tiled walls) were likened by one Washington Post writer to the bathroom at a local football stadium. But there are a few idiosyncratic touches that lend Five Guys some charm. Unopened bags of potatoes are strewn about, and there are also boxes of unshelled peanuts for guests to snack on.
These were the first indications that Five Guys was different from other fast-food restaurants. The second one was that the food was being cooked to order, and the toppings included not just the usual suspects (ketchup, mustard, lettuce, tomato) but things like fried onions and mushrooms. Confirmation that Five Guys was indeed different came with the first bite – my bacon cheeseburger was really good, a fact that I grudgingly admitted to my wife after perhaps the fourth or fifth bite. The burger was juicy and the meat tasted like real meat. The fries were also terrific – perfectly cooked and salted and, like the meat, they tasted real. I was impressed. A follow-up visit a week later proved my palate had not deceived me, and I have been hooked on Five Guys since.
What seems to set Five Guys apart is the calibre of the ingredients and fanatical quality control. They buy their meat from a few trusted purveyors. They use peanut oil for their fries because they believe it produces the best results. They taste-tested 18 different brands of mayonnaise before settling on the one they use, and are just as finicky about everything else they serve. The company also monitors the care and efficiency with which these ingredients are put to use. It retains the services of a secret shopper firm that dispatches anonymous inspectors to every Five Guys restaurant twice a week. Employees have ample incentive to perform well: the company this year will hand out over $6m in bonuses tied to these evaluations.
Although Murrell is loath to state it quite so bluntly, Five Guys has prospered on the back of America’s economic downturn. Good, inexpensive and made-to-order has proven to be a masterstroke at a time when budgets are under strain. The portions are generous (the regular burgers consist of two good-sized beef patties) and a family of four can happily gorge itself for $30.
But is Five Guys expanding too quickly? Starbucks is the obvious cautionary tale. The Seattle-based coffee chain grew rapidly during the 1990s and through the first half of this decade. But the economic downturn, coupled with a perception that quality had declined, led to a sharp drop in business, and the company has now closed hundreds of stores in the US. Murrell is confident he can avoid a similar stumble. He says that the company is very selective when it comes to franchises; it looks for proven business success and deals only with well-capitalised investors prepared to establish a minimum number of five restaurants.
Indeed, Murrell claims that he has spurned a number of offers to sell the company or take it public. He says that it is his sons who are most adamant about keeping the family at the helm; they want to carry on the work that their parents started and to continue to build the brand. “Kids usually just want to take the money and run,” he says. But he is confident that he has put his sons in a business with eternally bright prospects. “People eat hamburgers,” he says simply. “It’s like medicine – there is always going to be demand for it.”
Michael Steinberger is author of ‘Au Revoir to All That: The Rise and Fall of French Cuisine’ (Bloomsbury)
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The kitchen as assembly line
In-N-Out: The west coast chain was the first US burger business to introduce two-way speakers for “drive-thru” orders, writes Hazel Sheffield. Founded by Harry and Esther Snyder in Baldwin Park, California in 1948, it has expanded into Nevada, Arizona and Utah. It still offers the same three burgers – hamburger, cheeseburger or doublemeat – as it did when it first opened, though there is a “secret” menu online. In-N-Out is also famous for printing discreet Bible references on its utensils.
www.in-n-out.com
Culver’s: The Culver family have been “culverising” customers in the Midwestern states since 1984 with signature “butterburgers” (they butter the buns) and frozen custard milkshakes. Around 40 new stores a year are opening in Texas and beyond. Culver’s menu offers some 45 items including cooked dinners, sandwiches and soups as well as its own brand of root beer. The first restaurant was opened in Sauk City, Wisconsin, by George Culver and his family, with the first franchise sold in 1987. There are now some 400 Culver’s across the US.
www.culvers.com
White Castle: Founded in 1921 in Wichita, Kansas, by Walter A Anderson and his cooking partner Billy Ingram, White Castle was the first American fast-food burger restaurant. Anderson is credited with inventing the kitchen as an assembly line. The trademark burger is the “Slyder” (because of the way it slides out of the box), which is steam-grilled through a bed of fried onions.
www.whitecastle.com
