In the technology-focused retail world of today, running a restaurant is about far more than keeping up with the food orders. Five Guys decided to bring the best burgers in America across the pond, and they wanted a best-in-class business team to support their campaign.
The hospitality business moves fast. There can be just ten weeks between acquiring a new location to serving the first customers, and making sure the restaurant functions like clockwork from day one is a huge technological undertaking.
The Five Guys US and UK management teams have created a joint venture with ambitious plans to open stores across the UK over the next three years. They already have over a thousand burger bars in the US, and have opened more than 80 in the UK so far. In other words, with Five Guys, it’s fast food in every sense.
We provide onsite support engineering at the Five Guys HQ, manage all technology installation for new stores, and work alongside them to ensure it’s business as usual 364 days a year.
For each new premises, we liaise with their seven key vendors – including Coca Cola and NCR – to ensure that every engineering element of a new restaurant is perfectly configured. Working onsite for just three days, we provide the support back bone for everything from internet, telephones and infrastructure, to security and back-end testing, so that each new launch goes without a hitch.
In the retail world, every day that a store opening is pushed back is a huge hit on potential revenue. That’s why we have developed our own bespoke database to make sure everything is guaranteed to be ready for launch day. It’s a system we roll out for many of our clients, ensuring complete oversight of every inch of cable and every service provider contract so nothing is ever missed.
We also work extended support hours for Five Guys, as we realise that many of our clients are not nine-to-five operators. Five Guys open from early morning till late in the evening every day except Christmas day, so we offer the same to them. It is about integrating with our clients’ needs, and if that’s when they need us, that’s when we’ll be there for them.
Infrastructure, back-end testing, installation, BAU support, remote support, vendor support including security, internet, telephone, Firewall, POS and PDQ.
Five Guys started out in 1986 as a single family-run burger joint in Washington DC. It has become the fastest growing restaurant concept in the US with over 1200 stores across the country.
Five Guys are planning the same trajectory for the UK. By summer 2018 they will have opened more than 80 UK stores, including Covent Garden, Reading, Islington, Guilford, Kingston, Bluewater, Manchester, Westfield, Uxbridge, Birmingham and Lakeside. It perhaps goes without saying, but their burgers are excellent.