There is a whole class of premium "fast casual" places. Five Guys, Shake Shack, In-N-Out (whose prices are a bit lower), etc. As well as Panera and a whole bunch of chains in that general category.
I rather like them especially when traveling and needing a quick meal (while mostly hating most traditional fast food). But not really places where you take the family for a cheap meal. Heck, I'm in tech and I think the prices are pretty steep a lot of the time. Not that the big fast food chains are exactly dirt cheap if you don't make a lot of money yourself, but maybe doubling their prices for a better product--even if the McD fries are probably still better :-)--pretty much puts them out of reach of many.
This also starts to shade into just regular takeout once the prices get high enough. I rarely order from places like Five Guys unless I have a specific craving for a burger, because once I'm paying $10 for a cheeseburger, I have a whole range of takeout options in a similar price range. More often than not, I end up going for my favorite local Indian place that has excellent entrees priced around $11-13.
Definitely. I don't eat out much at home in part because I don't have a lot of options and I'm mostly fine with cooking myself. Five Guys-class stuff tends to be for places like airports or late night traveling when I don't have a lot of other decent alternatives. For a regular mid-price dinner in a city, some ethnic meal is probably my go-to option.
Burgers also just aren't a good actual takeout option. While takeout/delivery doesn't help any food, Indian/Chinese can usually tolerate it better than burgers. Chicken is another semi-regular go to for me; a rotisserie chicken from the supermarket is something like $5 and fried chicken works pretty well too.
I honestly don't get how Five Guys is an option at all. It's like a half sized burger that has too much on it and it's smooshed up usually and not well put together so it ends up just coming apart on me half the time.
For basically the same price I could get a pub style burger on a nice brioche bun with twice the beef.
I think the value add in Five Guys is in the fries. Apart from the obvious generosity of the amount of fries they give you which completely dwarfs any other restaurant, they go through a serious effort making them taste really good as well. They soak the cut potatoes in running water for 5 hours before frying them in peanut oil with a special double dip method to give a good consistency of fluffy on the inside and crisp on the outside.
I agree the burger itself is pretty mediocre for what you pay. The “all ingredients included” mantra also encourages people to make burgers that fall apart as you pick them up. There’s also nothing really special about it - the company even actively advertises that they use common big box grocery vendors to source their ingredients and anything you eat there is mostly available off the shelf at your local grocery. When I worked there all of our stuff came on a Kroger truck.
>They soak the cut potatoes in running water for 5 hours before frying them in peanut oil with a special double dip method to give a good consistency of fluffy on the inside and crisp on the outside.
FWIW, this is standard procedure for pretty much any place that makes their own fries on location. It might be a step up from most big chains that use frozen fries, but there's probably dozens of small eateries in any decent sized town that do the same.
I actually really don't like their fries so maybe that's part of the problem. I used to work at Chick-Fil-A and would always fry my waffle fries a second time right before my lunch break. That's pretty much the only thing I miss from that job. Being able to make the perfect fried chicken and fries meal for myself in about 5 minutes.
In my (entirely US) experience they haven’t done a good job making sure quality keeps up in restaurants far from their home site.
Their corporate HQ is in Northern Virginia, and the restaurants in that area are excellent (especially the one actually owned by corporate). The same cannot be said of the Midwest. I’m not surprised they didn’t cross the pond very well.
Yeah, I've had this experience with Five Guys here in Britain - the few times I've had one in London, it's been great. Slightly expensive, but quality 'plain, old fashioned burger'.
Visited one in Harrogate on a stay up there a couple of years back and it was ... bad. Given it was a wee treat for myself after a long day, very disappointing.
I brought up Five Guys, mostly because they're one of the bigger and more geographically distributed chains. But I generally agree there are other chains in this general category that are better, sometimes significantly--not that I eat enough at them enough to have a strongly formed comparative opinion. Five Guys is also one of the more expensive and, as someone else mentioned, all their "free" toppings encourage people to toss on a bunch of stuff that makes the bun soggy.
If forced to choose, I'd probably go with In-N-Out though they don't exist around where I live and McDs fries are still better.
5 Guys is a certain type of burger. It’s a high fat burger that is literally smashed into a griddle and usually served with a buttery bun. It’s not trying to be a gourmet burger.
It's affecting them, too. The Five Guys near me, which still advertises hours of 11am-9pm 7 days a week online, is actually only open 11am-3pm M-F, and about half the time is randomly closed for no reason. When I am able to go in, there are half a dozen or more people working.
I'm not sure if it's scheduling or wages or what but this thing seems to be happening across the board, not just places like McDonald's and BK. But those are similarly affected - BK's quality has dropped significantly just in the last 2-3 months, and McDonald's has kept the quality at the expense of closing the dining room more often than not and long drive-through lines.
I rather like them especially when traveling and needing a quick meal (while mostly hating most traditional fast food). But not really places where you take the family for a cheap meal. Heck, I'm in tech and I think the prices are pretty steep a lot of the time. Not that the big fast food chains are exactly dirt cheap if you don't make a lot of money yourself, but maybe doubling their prices for a better product--even if the McD fries are probably still better :-)--pretty much puts them out of reach of many.