FIVE GUYS BURGES AND FRIES
Hours: Monday-Sunday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.Address: 401 Broad St., 2020 Gunbarrel Road, 5110 Hixson Pike, 124 Stuart Road NE in Cleveland, 1303 W. Walnut Ave. in Dalton, Ga.Phone: Downtown at 531-8267, Hamilton Place at 664-3500, Hixson at 870-7772, Cleveland at 423-476-4878 and Dalton at 706-229-9147
Alfonso Tomas Perez, Garry Mitchell, Brody Laws and Linda Garcia (Photo by Mark Gilliland)“Ninety-nine percent of people know about our food,” said local Five Guys co-owner Jim Richards. “Today, I want to focus on our people.”
Jim nodded toward the two men who sat across the table: Bruce Bowman, who was Jim’s first hire 10 years ago, and Rodney Hutson, who has been with Five Guys for three years.
Bruce is director of operations in the Southeast region; Rodney is district manager of the Nashville area. But the crux of their responsibilities is ensuring customer satisfaction.
“They’re more than just customers,” Bruce said.
“We learn their names,” Jim added. “Some people, we can ring up their orders as soon as they walk in the front door.”
All three agreed that the food is the easy part. The menu, after all, is simple, featuring burgers, dogs, fries and, now, milkshakes.
Like all its recipes, the milkshakes are made using 100 percent real ingredients. Flavors include bacon, banana, cherry, chocolate, coffee, malted milk, Oreo cookies, peanut butter, salted caramel and strawberry.
The strawberries, bananas and cherries are chopped fresh in-store. The coffee is 100 percent Colombian and cold-brewed in-house.
Likewise, the salted caramel is salted in-house. The Oreo milkshake is made with the real cookies.
Flavors may also be mixed and matched. For example, Jim said his favorite is chocolate-cherry-bacon. His wife’s, he added, is coffee and salted caramel.
“There are 140,000 different combos,” Bruce added – making that menu suddenly seem less simple.
But after years of experience, the Five Guys crew knows its menu through and through – so well that it may place its everyday focus on “making sure the customer has the best experience possible,” Jim said.