12 Secrets Of Five Guys You'll Wish You Knew Sooner

The picnic-style tables, overhead fluorescent lighting, aggressive red and white check-marked decor, and wafting smell of peanuts and fries set the scene. Paper bags nearly see-through with grease provide a near window to the delight within — one of the arguably best fast food burgers around, à la Five Guys. It could be plain, adorned with bacon and jalapeños, or sandwiched with a hot dog between a grilled cheese sandwich. Five Guys consistently creates a delicious product and has armies of fans and diehards across the country, but even this fast food joint has its secrets.

Created in 1986, Five Guys has quickly expanded out of its humble Washington D.C. area beginnings as a burger pick-up spot, now operating more than 1,800 restaurants worldwide. The franchises, though, are strictly operated, from how many times fries are shaken to why they give you those peanuts to begin with. If you, too, are a diehard burger fan and perhaps haven't fully dived into the world of this all-American greasy, decadent, and delicious eatery, maybe now is the right time. Here are 12 secrets of Five Guys you'll wish you knew sooner.

As anyone who has ever visited a Five Guys knows, orders are presented in paper bags, period. There are no trays, there are no "For here or to go?" questions, and for a long time, there was certainly no delivery. In a world where all fast food joints seem to cater to our eating habits by way of drive-thrus and delivery services like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and GrubHub, it does feel sort of odd that Five Guys was a hold out for so long. It even refused to deliver to the Pentagon back in 1986 from its first location in Arlington. The general trying to place the order for 15 hamburgers was pretty peeved, but owner Jerry Murrell stood firm, and even doubled down, hanging a giant "Absolutely No Delivery" banner on the front of the store.

With the paper bag approach, the longtime refusal to deliver may feel a little counterintuitive. However, Murrell told an interviewer with QSR, "We've never had a delivery service. We don't believe in it. We think it cheapens the product." The paper bags allow each restaurant to purposefully overfill the fries, spilling them into the bag and giving customers the sense they got a deal as people walk out the door with their food or plop down at a table. As far as delivery, Five Guys has bent a bit. It's now available via delivery services, so you can get your fix anytime.

At a restaurant named "Five Guys," you'd expect it was started and run by (checks notes) five guys, right? Back in the 1980s, Jerry Murrell and his wife Janie gave three of their sons a choice to either head to college or use the family's funds to start a business. The boys chose to go the business route and opened the first brick-and-mortar Five Guys outside Washington D.C. in 1986. Two more brothers joined the concept in the 1990s, so the Five Guys were born. However, Jerry left himself and his wife, Janie, out of the namesake, despite being an integral part of the concept. He's still an integral part of the business today, and family meetings are legendary for producing laughing, yelling, and general chaos. 

The five guys included Jerry's three sons with his first wife: Matt, Jim, and Chad; and then son Ben from his second marriage to Janie. However, once a second son was born to Janie and Jerry, he decided to remove himself from the five guys club and have the name refer to his five sons instead. 

One of the most endearing and iconic things about Five Guys is the peanuts. Upon your arrival and after placing your order at any Five Guys location, you'll be immediately provided with salted, roasted peanuts in the shell. Officially, Five Guys FAQ page says that the reason it offers peanuts is to provide a complimentary snack while your burger is being freshly grilled and prepared. Since everything is made to order, your sandwich takes a bit longer than a standard fast food joint. In fact, the chain serves 260,000 peanuts each week.

Still, other theories about the peanuts prevail. Several sources claim that since Five Guys is not an allergy-friendly restaurant, the peanuts serve as a sort of warning and deterrent. All of the fries at Five Guys are fried in peanut oil, boxes of which are sometimes stacked in or near the dining areas as a sort of warning. Another theory says that the peanuts are actually there to distract you and keep you busy. Since the restaurant doesn't time its cooks, your order can take longer than folks may expect, and dealing with shells on peanuts is likely to keep you distracted. It'll also keep you from looking into the kitchen area, where Five Guys takes its recipes seriously.

Milkshakes are pretty standard at fast food joints. Whether it's a McDonald's vanilla shake with your Happy Meal, a Frosty at Wendy's, or a frozen lemonade at Chick-fil-A, the milkshake is as much a mainstay on the menu as fries. For some of us, it's a condiment for said fries, but that seems to be a controversial topic in and of itself. It's pretty surprising, then, when you learn just how long Jerry Murrell — the patriarch of Five Guys — held out before adding any sort of milkshake items to the menu.

According to Forbes, a Five Guys franchise owner by the name of Tom Horton continually asked the Murrell family to add milkshakes to the menu. Murrell held out, since he'd seen firsthand disasters in adding items other than fries and burgers to the menu (Apparently, coffee and a chicken sandwich were both disasters). Finally, in 2014, the chain debuted milkshakes — a vanilla base, customizable with several flavors — from bananas to salted caramel to, yes, bacon. Diners can stick with one variety or mix several together, so you can pay homage to Elvis with a banana, bacon, and peanut butter combo, if you so wish. Alternatively, you can go the simple route with an Oreo (or Oreo cream) milkshake sure to put the McFlurry to shame.

My husband is a Five Guys diehard fan — it's his go-to when I give the all-clear for a fast food evening. However, even he occasionally laments the ultra-squishy buns sandwiching each burger, grilled cheese, and hot dog. The buns, on their own, are sweet and almost brioche-like — they're pillowy and delicate. This isn't a typical hamburger bun that can hold a hot, greasy burger without falling apart. In fact, the buns at Five Guys become structurally insecure within minutes of holding those hot burgers, leading to a leaky albeit juicy mess down your arms, on the table, and all over your hands. 

The reason for the squishy buns, is apparently a little on the sentimental side. At the original Five Guys location in Arlington, Virginia, the buns were made by a local Alexandria bakery called Brenner's. When it went out of business, Five Guys hired two of the bakers to make the eggier, sweeter rolls in-house. As the business grew, the bun demand became slightly out of control, and after incidents involving Fedex-ing buns, emergency trips, and missed deliveries, the business finally contracted bakers to fulfill the need.

Five Guys doesn't quite have a secret menu, but the franchise does have a way to combine items to create your perfect meal. It's sort of a tongue-in-cheek secret, the way In-And-Out has its not-so-secret animal-style offerings, Taco Bell has a way to Hulk-ify a burrito (swap cheese sauce for guacamole), and Chipotle has nachos; you just have to know what to ask for.

According to CozyMeal, there are tons of ways to create an off-menu masterpiece of a meal at your local Five Guys joint. The most popular across Reddit and other sites seems to be the Patty Melt, though. You simply need to order a grilled cheese, which, at Five Guys, is just burger buns turned upside down with American cheese squashed in the middle; and then add grilled onions and a burger patty. Another fav? The Five Guys Mega Shake; just ask the friendly Five Guys associate for a milkshake with all of the flavors mixed together. Apparently, it's delicious. You can even forego choosing meat, and opt for a Bacon Cheese Dog (really, a hot dog with bacon and American cheese) and add a patty. Our American forefathers would be proud. 

It's not a secret that French fries served up at fast food joints across the country aren't exactly good for you. Potatoes have a handful of health benefits like helping to control blood sugar, supplying necessary vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and improving digestive health. Once they're julienned and dunked into bubbling hot oil, a lot of their good-for-you points tend to disappear.

The Five Guys fries, though delicious, are no exception. The twice-fried tubers are possibly the unhealthiest fries in America, according to Taste of Home. If you were to order a small serving of Five Guys Style or Cajun Style fries, you'd be looking at about 528 calories. A large order of McDonald's fries is only 430 calories, for comparison. If you were feeling a little hungrier, a large order of Five Guys fries would put you at about 1315 calories, plus 57 grams of fat and 1,327 milligrams of sodium. No one's going to a fast food joint to watch their waistline, but to have the fries be so incredibly unhealthy might give you pause.

What kind of mayonnaise you use is a deeply personal opinion. I know in my own home, the drag-out fights over Hellman's versus Duke's are enough to ruin the holidays more than any political or religious conversation at the table. It's Duke's, and I won't be taking questions at this time. It turns out that Five Guys, too, takes their mayonnaise pretty darn seriously, so much so that it was rigorously tested before being approved as the burger joint's go-to.

According to Taste of Home, the head honchos at Five Guys taste-tested sixteen varieties of mayonnaise before landing on the Heinz blend that it uses today. The Heinz specialty is exactly the same at every Five Guys location and has a unique taste: a little rich, a little tangy, but mellow enough to let the burgers and its toppings really shine. The saddest part of all this though is that you won't be able to buy the mayonnaise, ever. It's exclusively made and sold to Five Guys restaurants.We're not saying to take a Tupperware container in to your local Five Guys and load up, but we are saying that that's the only way you'd be able to enjoy the concoction at home, too. 

It's weird that, in this day and age, anything would be considered free, right? Most other fast food and fast casual concepts make doubly sure that each customer is aware that bacon adds a charge, swapping cheeses will cost you, and, yes, guac is extra. Isn't it grand, then, that Five Guys already has the cost of extra toppings baked in so you at least feel like your extra cheese (and other toppings) are free?

If you've checked out the Five Guys menu, you know that burgers and sandwiches are split out based on what they have; so, there's a hamburger, a cheeseburger, and a bacon cheeseburger. The trick to getting extra cheese is simply to ask for it on your cheeseburger or bacon cheeseburger, according to The Daily Meal. There's no added cost, and you'll have double the melty goodness. On top of that, all of the toppings at Five Guys are free. That's not groundbreaking when you're talking about mustard or pickles, but it is kind of a big deal when you can add toppings like sautéed mushrooms, grilled peppers, and grilled onions without tacking on a few cents here and there.

If you've ever worked in fast food, you know that the way an item is cooked is of paramount importance. It has to be done the same way day in and day out so that anyone can come in and immediately know the standard operating procedure — whether it's a burger, a taco, fries, or a shake. At Five Guys, employees are given a little more responsibility in terms of their cooking prowess and, as a result, there are no timers in the kitchen for getting the right temperature on those delicious burgers.

According to NBC News, owner Jerry Murrell refused the timer route because a good cook knows when food is done, he says. In addition to the lack of timers, Five Guys cooks are taught not to press down on the thinner burger patties — this is so they'll still manage to retain those delicious juices.

Whether they're Cajun or regular, no one can argue that the Five Guys fries aren't great. They're described as crispy on the outside and mashed potato on the inside; the perfect combination when it comes to the most important of fast-food sides — but reaching that level of perfection doesn't come easily.

First, there are pretty hard and fast rules about where the potatoes are sourced. According to Food Republic, Five Guys sources the majority of its spuds — about 140 million pounds — from Idaho, which ends up being more than 5% of the state's entire potato output. Second, there's the matter of how the fries are prepped. The boardwalk style side is first hand cut, then power washed to help remove starch, before finally being dunked in a bath of frying peanut oil until golden brown. After cooling for a bit, they're dropped a second time right before they're served to the customer.

You may have noticed that Five Guys, in comparison to other fast food joints like Burger King, Wendy's, and McDonald's, doesn't have a whole lot of commercials on television. There are occasionally print and online ads, but overall, the burger joint keeps its advertising seemingly to a minimum. Instead, they spend some big bucks on secret shoppers.

Secret shoppers are guests placed by the corporation itself — or an agency acting on its behalf — to check in and ensure everything is operating as it should. From taste-testing burgers to assessing employee uniforms and politeness to checking in on customer satisfaction, Five Guys spends a lot of what other companies would on an advertising budget instead on third parties to peruse franchises in different areas and relate what they see on the ground. Those visits tend to keep each store vigilant in keeping standards top-notch and visitors happy.