Five Guys Burgers and Fries
Improved Customer Service
About Five Guys Burgers
and Fries
Founded in 1986, Five Guys
Burgers and Fries restaurants
have become a favorite among
Washington D.C. Area
residents. Now, over 20 years
after Five Guys first opened,
there are over 1,000 locations
nationwide and over 1500 units
in development. Five Guys
continues to receive media
attention and has grown a cultlike following around the world.
Website
www.fiveguys.com
Founded in 1986, Five Guys Burgers and Fries restaurants have become a favorite
among Washington D.C. Area residents. Since it was established, Five Guys has been
recognized with numerous awards for the “Best Burger,” and become so popular the
President and Mrs. Obama have patronized its stores. With a menu that is centered on
the best tasting hamburger with fresh and simple ingredients, the restaurant has
grown to more than 500 stores nation-wide. As a result of the dramatic expansion,
Five Guys’ determined that it needed a comprehensive solution that offered the
flexibility of integrating with the existing infrastructure of Five Guys’ Corporate
Systems. A solution that was easy to use, offered flexible controls and integration
capabilities was a fundamental requirement of the solution they were searching for.
The Challenge:
Five Guys was looking to replace their entry-level accounting software package with a more
robust financial management system. This next generation system would provide standard
system functions such as General Ledger, Payables Management, Receivables Management,
Purchase Order Management and Sales Order Processing as basic components. In addition, this
next generation system will also provide integration capability with Five Guys existing Radiant
Systems (or Micros) POS terminals. Thus, by implementing a system that encompasses both
functional accounting requirements with data from the POS terminals, Five Guys will enable a
corporate wide solution that provides meaningful data analysis to all levels of the organization.
Providing “accounting” information, however, was only a small part of the overall objectives of
Five Guys.
Five Guys Burgers and Fries management has always required that ingredients for the food it
serves are ordered fresh and are not at any point frozen. With over 500 stores, generating
purchase orders for these ingredients is a massive undertaking. In the past, in order to
determine which sales orders were sent to which facilities, operators tracked data using a
complex process that relied on Excel spreadsheets. Once orders had been placed, operators
would manually aggregate final reports by vendor and by specific routes assigned to each store.
The process was difficult and subject to errors, often causing restaurants the aggravation of late
deliveries or a shortage of supplies.
Several years ago, Five Guys Burgers and Fries launched a program for monitoring quality in
which management regularly dispatched “secret shoppers.” Teams of secret shoppers would
evaluate each facility anonymously. Once a review was completed, each shopper generated a
survey report. These reports would take anywhere from one to two-weeks to reach executive
management. This lack of fresh data left restaurant management unable to resolve pressing
issues that dealt with customer concerns.
The Solution:
It became clear to Sam Chamberlain, Chief Operating Officer of Five Guys Burgers and Fries, that
while the focus was on quality and customer satisfaction, the restaurant operation had become
so large and inefficient that it lacked the critical information needed to make vital business
decisions.
With such a large operation, consolidated reports would require several weeks and many man
Halt, Buzas and Powell, Ltd. | Page 1
About Halt, Buzas and
Powell, Ltd.
Halt, Buzas & Powell (HB&P) is a
leading Washington D.C. area
CPA firm providing auditing,
taxation, business management
systems and outsourced
accounting services to many
businesses throughout the
region.
The Management Systems
Division of HB&P provides
businesses with the opportunity
to evaluate their technology
investments to ensure they align
with the organizations corporate
strategy. HB&P works with
corner office executives to
achieve effective teamwork and
collaboration between
departments and people.
HB&P’s team of dedicated
hospitality consultants has
helped restaurant companies
become best-in-class
organizations, saving them
thousands of dollars in
unproductive labor costs.
Website
www.cpas4you.com
hours to compile data from independent, unconnected systems. The challenge was to find the
right solution that would:




Eliminate manual data entry of ongoing customer surveys to enable real-time identification
of a system-wide or single store problem.
Completely automate the purchase order process and yield a significant cost savings,
increase employee efficiency and boost employee morale.
Have the ability to integrate with the locally installed POS terminal in order to extract sales
data on an on-demand basis to streamline the reporting process.
Provide an effective set of tools and trend analysis for effective decision support.
After evaluating several systems and technology providers, Five Guys looked to Halt, Buzas &
Powell (HB&P), because of their successful track record in helping multi-unit restaurant
operators evaluate their business management technology. To be prepared for continued
expansion, HB&P helped Five Guys corporate office executives identify other “operational”
software elements to work together with the next generation financial management system.
After careful evaluation of Five Guys’ challenges, HB&P recommended an integrated financial
management system, specifically Microsoft Dynamics® GP (formerly Great Plains). Through the
use of an integrated financial management system, Five Guys Burgers and Fries are able to link
results of the ongoing customer surveys directly into their integrated reporting system.
Company management now has the ability to determine in real-time whether there is a problem
with the operation of a store, and whether that problem is company-wide.
The Result:
Instead of a complex manual process for placing purchase orders, Microsoft Dynamics GP
enables Five Guys Burgers and Fries to auto-generate purchase orders. Sales data is linked to
the system, so orders are automatically placed as needed, with only one purchase order per
vendor. Five Guys Burgers and Fries is also able to automatically e-mail purchase orders through
a mass e-mail process. Chamberlain looks forward to having information from each of Five Guys
Burgers and Fries’ stores available and easily accessible on a dashboard.
The dashboard allows him to view sales information in chart form and pinpoint in depth
information about a specific store. Instead of having information that is “old by the time you
collect it,” information is available in real time, according to Chamberlain. “Microsoft Dynamics
GP provides us the information faster and in a way that’s easier to dissect,” said Chamberlain.
“We are more nimble.” Five Guys Burgers and Fries continues to expand, with plans to add 200
additional stores. “With Microsoft Dynamics GP, I no longer have to worry about how to
connect each location,” said Chamberlain. “It grows as we grow and we can deploy the new
system rapidly at a new site without disruption to our business activities.”
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