That's probably why. The profit margins must be huge. It's why McDonald's introduced the Signature range to bump up prices considerably.
Five Guys must do a lot of research into locations, as they are popular in trendy districts where people aren't going to be seen dead in a McDonald's. McDonald's is the Android or Windows of the food world, while Five Guys is Apple or Tesla.
Get it wrong and open up somewhere like Stevenage town centre and you're going to probably struggle.
It’s perhaps worth noting that, in the UK, Five Guys is 50% ‘owned’ by Charles Dunstone, the founder of Carphone Warehouse and Talk Talk.
Owned can be used by the media to mean several things, however, and in many cases really means that the person or entity referred-to is a backer or an investor. If the person or entity has a level of credibility themselves, then they can be used as a magnet to attract other investors.
Basically, then, you can find that the real money is from venture capitalists and fund managers. It’s very common in food & beverage, most notably when the ‘magnet’ has their name above the door too - witness Jamie Oliver, Marco Pierre White etc. In other sectors, this is exactly what Richard Branson does - aggregates investments and puts his face in for the odd photo shoot, but has nothing operationally to do with the business, other than charging a branding fee.
The key thing is that, regularly, it’s a low-risk strategy for the folks at the top of the pyramid. Everyone might make a packet, but if the business fails, they have exceptionally limited liability - they don’t have large numbers of well-paid, contracted employees; they’ll use mechanisms such as CVAs to walk away from leases and fixtures and fittings will be fully-written down.
On the subject of leases, they’ll almost certainly be granted initial rent-free periods, as the landlords or property managers are often keen to see the space let and a fashionable brand above the door.
That makes expansion even cheaper, so you can see massive short term growth with this model, and then potentially just-as-swift contraction.
The losers are the customers, the staff and the lower-down investors, of course.
The landlords just re-let to the next investment-backed name of the month; wash, rinse, repeat.
The burgers are completely incidental.