How Five Guys is Manipulating You

Hank talking about getting little burgers, little fries, and getting in his little car and making his little car noises warmed my heart

I'm gonna open a fast food place and call the small size "Wittle Beby" size and the regular "Big Hulkin' Smash" size and see if this works

The five guys double burger trick reminded me of a story about Dave Thomas. He thought a double was the ideal burger size, but noticed (at the time) customers were uncomfortable ordering something that large. So he put a triple burger on the menu too - not for people to buy, but specifically so that the double looked like the medium choice. What a freakin wild thing to do, putting a red herring on your menu

The first time I went to Five Guys, I went with my sister, so I went up and ordered two burgers and two large fries. The cashier looked at me and said "You want TWO large fries?!?" and I was confused, there was two of us, and both of us are big eaters, why wouldn't we want two large fries? I watched them put two cups into a bag and just proceed to pour scoop after scoop of fries into the bag. I swear there was 3 pounds of potatoes in that bag. Guess we learned the hard way...

five guys cannot manipulate me because I am allergic to peanuts so I win

Lol I gotta remember to call myself a "price sensitive person" next time I'm trying to tell someone I'm poor 😭

I can second this, worked at a local ice cream place for a while that called the smallest size “kiddie”. Almost never saw the “manly-man” type but a kiddie even though it was PLENTY of ice cream for one person.

I wouldn’t really mind ordering a Little Burger or whatever, but IHOP has the “Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity” and there is no universe in which I will ever physically say those words in that order to another human being 🤣

The discussion about "little" burgers and fries at Five Guys reminded me of the reason places like Starbucks don't use "small", "medium" and "large". By using custom named sizes, they make it more difficult for you to mentally compare their prices to the prices from somewhere else. The difference in name is enough to disrupt your thinking so that you don't consider how much a "tall" coffee at Starbucks is compared to a "small" at Dunkin or something like that. Restaurant chains spend a lot of time and effort coming up with ways to fool you into spending more like that.

"I'm just a little guy" Hank, you're 6'1"!

I’ve been unemployed for the last year and have free time. I discovered that you can’t “use more that one coupon per order” but if you order, sit down, eat your meal for ten minutes(maybe 15?) and order with an new coupon, you can just keep doing that. I don’t do that often but I once did it three times. Took the last order home. 😂

7:01 Hank those are NOT the reasons why McDonald's wants you to use the app. The real reasons they want you to use the app are 1. It allows them to collect and sell your personal data 2. It allows them to collect and sell your personal data 3. It allows them to collect and sell your personal data Seriously, you cannot overstate how much these big companies are going all-in on collecting people's data. I'm sure the reasons you listed also contribute, but they're maybe like 2% of the reason and collecting data is the other 98%

Price discrimination is wild. My parents (80 years old) have flip phones and hate how every place wants you to download and app, or sign up for loyalty programs and clip coupons online. They feel like they are being ripped off because they can't access digital programs, and I sympathize with them. In their case they can afford it, but many elders can't.

Another reason McDonald's wants you to use the app is because they get to sell advertising profiles and user data to third parties

Some great things about the app: improved order accuracy (no risk of miscommunication over a crappy comm system), time-shift the time spent ordering so you spend less time in the drive-thru lane. One big downside is the data collection. The amount of data collected through that app about food preferences, food habits, food dislikes, food values, etc is astonishing.

AMA I work at both Five Guys and McDonald’s in Canada and have been doing so for more than a year. I am also a supervisor at both. So shoot your queries if you want to🙃

Having worked at a McDonald's i think its important to note the way that these deals also lure you in to buy more. I have seen many people use those deals as intended, they come in they grab the food listed in the deal and they move on with their day, But i have seen significantly more people come in get their discounted food item AND something else to fill out their meal. So fries function as a loss leader for them, lure people to use their service with cheap easy to make fries then make up that lost money with people who buy the comparatively overpriced burger with it.

As someone with Celiac, Five guys was the only place I could safely get fries at for years since they’re straight potatoes and one of the rare places that don’t do anything else fried in their fry oil. Also one of the few places that early on offered burgers wrapped in lettuce

One point of disagreement - not everyone has access to apps. Not everyone has/wants/can afford the devices that can download apps, so things only available through apps DO end up excluding those people.

Smart vid!! Two little comments: 1) Price Discrimination - It's important to understand that the savings that people get in money are extracted from their other kinds of capital, specifically temporal and psychological. I'm all for people having access to affordable food, but if we only focus on the price, we are missing the behavioral forest for one very green tree. 2) Five Guys and MANLY MANS - Five Guys is one of the smartest brands in the country from a consumer psychology standpoint. Almost everything that they do is intelligently calibrated towards a very particular set of people, behaviors, and value propositions. It's so solid that it can get guys like Hank in the door, but also know that a lot of their customers are not going to buy anything little.