Five Guys is Bringing its Word-of-Mouth Formula into the Digital Age

Five Guys is Bringing its Word-of-Mouth Formula into the Digital Age

Ben Coley

Tue, September 8, 2026 at 10:43 PM GMT+3 5 min read

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Five Guys built a restaurant empire without many of the tools that have become standard across the industry.

The fast casual is the 10th-largest burger chain in America in terms of systemwide sales; it earned $2.3 billion in 2025. In terms of unit count, it is the seventh-largest, ending last year with 1,511 U.S. restaurants.

There is no loyalty program. The menu has stayed remarkably focused. Marketing has never relied on a constant stream of limited-time products. For decades, much of the brand's reputation traveled through customers telling other customers where to find a good burger and fries.

Forty years after Five Guys opened its first restaurant, that foundation isn't being discarded. But the way people discover restaurants, order food, and communicate with brands has changed enough for Five Guys to rethink how it tells its story.

That work is now part of the job for chief commercial officer Navin Sharma, whose responsibilities span marketing, digital, loyalty, e-commerce, analytics and consumer insights. The position gives Five Guys a dedicated commercial operation at a time when the chain continues to add restaurants and sees an opportunity to introduce more consumers to what happens behind the counter.

"One of the big drivers of success for the brand historically has changed in today's environment and that's the word of mouth aspect of it," Sharma says.

The restaurant walls offer a clue to how Five Guys originally built its reputation. Reviews from newspapers and magazines have long been part of the décor, showcasing outside validation of the food and experience. Much of that conversation now happens through social media, where Five Guys sees an opening to tell stories that consumers may have never heard.

Fresh-cut fries are one example. Five Guys makes them from fresh potatoes inside its restaurants, a process Sharma gained a new appreciation for when he trained in a store after joining the company.

"There's a lot of things like that we do that people don't know," Sharma says. "So there's a lot of stories we can share."

The challenge is building a more sophisticated commercial engine without stripping away the simplicity that helped Five Guys grow. Sharma doesn't see the assignment as a reinvention. He wants new marketing and digital capabilities to serve as an extension of what Five Guys already does.

That applies to menu innovation, too. Five Guys isn't preparing to chase every product trend or stretch into categories far removed from burgers, fries and shakes.

"You won't see us do a chicken sandwich or anything like that," Sharma says. "It's still going to be burgers and fries and shakes. We might do a slightly different version of a burger perhaps, or a different version of the shake, but it'll still be those core items that people love."

One untapped source of innovation already exists inside the menu. Customers can create a huge number of burger and shake combinations from Five Guys' existing ingredients, giving the chain material it can surface through digital channels without expanding far outside its core.

Sharma sees potential to showcase combinations created by employees and customers, introducing guests to orders they may not have considered on their own. Loyalty could eventually become another vehicle for those discoveries.

Five Guys is working on a loyalty program after hearing requests for one from customers. Sharma says frequency and customer data are useful benefits, but the initial motivation is rewarding the chain's most frequent guests.

After launch, the program could evolve into something more distinctive to Five Guys, including recognition for customers whose customized orders gain traction with other members.

"If someone's build becomes really popular, for example, maybe we reward them through points or whatever it is, and then also make that more popular with all the loyalty guests," Sharma says.

Sharma brings experience building those capabilities from Inspire Brands. He worked across Buffalo Wild Wings, Jimmy John's, and Dunkin', gaining experience with loyalty programs and digital platforms. Earlier, he was part of the Arby's marketing team behind the "We Have the Meats" campaign.

The lesson he is carrying into Five Guys isn't a specific playbook. It is experience determining what makes a restaurant brand distinct and translating those qualities into customer-facing communication.

"We're not going to lift and shift any of it though because we have a special brand there," Sharma says.

The commercial investment is also happening from a position of stability. Five Guys continues to grow its restaurant count, and Sharma points to food and operations as areas where the company is performing well.

Protecting that consistency is built into the company's operating system.

One of its longstanding tools is a secret shopper program created by founder Jerry Murrell. Restaurants are visited multiple times per week and evaluated on speed, food, experience and interactions between employees and guests. Feedback is continually sent to operators.

Five Guys also has a training staff traveling across the country to monitor brand standards. Those systems serve as safeguards against the type of gradual operational deterioration that can hit mature restaurant companies when sales are healthy and expansion continues.

"When things are going well, you might let something slip and then before you know it, quality or standards have slipped," Sharma says.

The same teams can identify opportunities to improve equipment and restaurant processes, including how beef cooks and how potatoes are prepared. That gives Five Guys a parallel track as Sharma builds its commercial capabilities. The company can modernize how customers interact with the chain without compromising what happens in the kitchen.

Two years from now, Sharma doesn't want a returning customer to encounter a fundamentally different Five Guys. He wants the burger and fries to deliver the same experience. The difference should be how much customers know behind the food and how easily they can interact with the company.

"I would want people to come into the restaurant, and then if they came in two years later, they would feel the same—it's still the best burger I've had and the best fries," Sharma says.

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