Five Guys UK and Europe CEO John Eckbert Talks Expansion

After three years of food price hikes, US and European consumers are voting with their wallets now. Pressure on the sector has led to supermarkets and fast food chains offering more promotions and deals, including McDonald's in the US launching a five dollars value meal now here in the UK. Five Guys, which has more than nineteen hundred locations worldwide, has continued its expansion despite uncertainty around the economy. It's discuss the outlook for the industry with John eg Bertie's

Yeah, So five Guys we have two hundred and seventy stores in Europe now one hundred and seventy in the UK. We'll be opening about fifty stores a year, so at a million to a million and a half investment per store, that's a significant vote of confidence in the future here in Europe.

So what's your biggest concern right now? What's top of mind of things you wor is planning is it staffing, is it food price inflation?

Well, of course the UK consumer and the European consumer has been under a lot of pressure of late. And how do you provide a value proposition to the cut to the consumer in this market?

And the good thing.

For five Guys is that we have the highest value for money fries for example, in the business the generosity ounce for ounce is the best in terms of quantity in terms of value for money for the fries is the competes with all the QSRs for example. So yeah, providing customers with great value for money. Five Guys has a lot of free stuff as well. We have free

Is it worrying for your margins? I mean, given you you also pride yourself of saying you provide very high quality ingredients that I imagine have gone up quite a lot in terms of expense in the last three four years, but you haven't passed on that to consumers.

Yeah, So for other brands, the playbook whenever you have an environment like this would be to shrink the product and to compromise on the quality of the ingredients, and of course five Guys would never do that, So we have to focus on providing fantastic customer service along with the great product. In five Guys is a treat. So you're not going to go to five Guys every day or you know, multiple times a week necessarily, So when you go to five Guys, you want to have the

And it's true you go around the country and actually go and like quality tests every day you're having multiple burgers or multiple bites of burgers just to make sure that they all taste the same.

So we're very operations driven and I'm fully certified to make burgers and fries. I can cook your burger next time you come in. And being able to know our standards and cook to standards. We don't have timers, we don't have any cooke to we have to actually know the standards that we're cooking to. So we're all certified in the kitchen and that's really the focus of the business is on burgers and fries and taking care of hungry customers.

Is it? You know, is staffing an issue? Are you Are you finding enough people that want to work? Yeah? Of course.

You know, having great crew is so important in the food business. It's all about passion because you want to know that people who are cooking your food actually care about the product that you're getting. So making sure that we have people who are not only certified to make the product, but actually care about the food that you're going to be eating is essential.

But competition must be high. I mean there's like a you know, talent war even for like wagers and people that are at that high standards. Do you have to pay more? How do you retain them? Yeah?

So, first of all, we pay more than the minimums, so we pay more to start with, and every time you learn something new at the business, we increase your pay as well. We also have invested millions into learning and development, so we can take you from a crew member to being a senior leader in the business with you know, hundreds of employees working for you. So that learning and development journey is something we've really take pride in.

It is a UK market different to other European markets, so do people buy and consume burgers and fries differently on the continent.

Every country is a little different. We and we're surprised by every country that we open in. We just opened up in Port of Banous in the south of Spain, did one hundred and seventy thousand pounds in the first last week in trade, which was three or four times what we thought we would. We just opened up in Wimbley, which we thought, you know, all of the kind of high volume sites in the UK would probably have been done. But when Taylor Swift played we did one hundred and

That's something to try. Are there any new countries that you want to be in Ashup?

We're going to open Portugal next year, so we're looking at Lisbon looking for a prime pitch site. We always want to open up in a kind of flagship location, so we're looking for the perfect site in Portugal.

We have a number of very talented food critics here and I remember two years ago it was all about the burgers. I mean, there were a number of burger chains that were opening in the UK because it was a hot new thing coming from the US. Is the space still very crowded or is it less crowded in Europe compared to the UK.

Well, a number of the US better burger brands have come to the UK and opened and then closed shop and gone back home. We've been very fortunate that we have been able to open up in the pretty much every pitch in the UK, and that's really given us a great defensive position. And now across Europe as well, we have thirty five plus stores in Germany, France and Spain as well, taking those prime flagship locations. For the better burger segment.

Do you use AI or tech to streamline and to get you know, better customer orders or better service?

We haven't figured that out yet. We are looking at Kiosks for the first time because we wanted to be as famous for customer service as we are for great burgers and fries, and we weren't sure to do kiosks really fit into with that strategy. But there are a lot of young customers particularly who really want a digital experience. Our best till operator is no competition for them for a great Kiosk. So we're providing that digital journey now and investing in that strategy.

But Kioso is it less It's less expensive for you, I imagine, But I feel like everyone is doing it.

You know it may be, but we're not doing it for that reason. We're doing it to delight the customer, and there are there is a customer subset that wants a digital journey.

I mean, indulge me. Who's like your perfect customer? Apart from the celebrities, I can can bring other people.

Do you eighteen to thirty five year old looking for either something fun to do in an evening out, some place to take your family when you're shopping, going to a movie?

All those are great.

Occasions to think about five guys and go for a and fry.

Do you feel like you need to have a healthier proposition because of everything that's going on in the in the I guess nutrition world, right, even the nest slaves and union leavers are trying to cut calories to give customers a healthier journey.

We're working hard to come up with some better alternatives to the burger and fries, but we want to make sure that it's the same caliber quality so that when you come in, you go that's best in class. So we're not going to offer anything until we're confident that we have that level of product. But we do and we will extend the product line in the business.

Do you have a say on the new products that go online? Well, the Morell.

Family, the Morrell family, there actually are five guys and they actually have to approve anything that we would we would serve, but we're working hard to convince them.

Any closures.

We have closed one site in Lahavre in France, which was I guess a casualty of Brexit, But other than that, we're opening stores rather than closing them.

And has it changed the way There's been a little bit of a pattern that's taken a lot of people by surprise. You know, post COVID, it's people went out a lot more. I know, people stop going out, I mean, is it going really fast? I feel like the cycle of how we entertain and go out changes rapidly.

No, it has and you know we are social creatures in the end, and people going out and being able to be together again, it has been a powerful trend and it's been great to have people back in the stores for us because seeing your food cooked in the open kitchen and being there with your friends and family makes a huge difference for JN.

Thank you so much for joining us. That was John Eckbert, the chief executive of five Guys in the UK and Europe.