Five Guys CEO on how chain will ‘get it right’ after BOGO offer went bad

It’s take two for Five Guys.

A buy-one, get-one free offer throughout the burger chain last month ended in chaos with some clients reporting the deal had them ready in line for almost as much as an hour.

Now, the Alexandria, Virginia-based burger chain is attempting once more, and rolling out one other buy-one burger, get-one free offer.

In an interview with WTOP, CEO Jerry Murrell acknowledged the chain failed to fulfill demand for its preliminary birthday celebration.

“We screwed the first one up so bad, we’re trying to redo it,” Murrell mentioned. “We got overwhelmed last week when we tried it. So we’re going to try to get it right this time.”

This newest BOGO deal runs from Monday to Thursday.

Five Guys additionally plans to reward its employees who had been on the entrance traces Feb. 17, the date of its preliminary BOGO offer to have a good time the chain’s fortieth anniversary. The offer sparked extra demand than anticipated, resulting in shops working out of inventory and lengthy buyer wait instances.

“Our employees took the brunt of the thing,” Murrell mentioned. “And so we’re going to give them a million and a half bucks in bonuses.”

Five Guys at the moment has 1,500 shops throughout North America; in order that works out to $1,000 in bonuses per retailer.

Overall, Murrell mentioned his workers took the BOGO bungle in stride.

“They’re pretty good about it, but we felt bad how we really overburdened them. We had no idea we were going to get that kind of response. And they came through pretty good, I think. That’s why we’re giving them that bonus money,” he mentioned.

And what message did he relay to his workers?

“Don’t shoot me in the back for screwing this up,” he mentioned.

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