CORRECTION: I really should have gone to McDonalds on the way home to get the prices because I consistently under-price McDonalds stuff that I didn't have good data for. Honestly, the result shows that Five Guys is pretty much roughly on par with McDonald's if you price by amount of meat or by calorie, which is wild because Five Guys is much better! Here's the spreadsheet: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-7XgcMraRbGLzS8b_YvsTTdhIL3AAkzvCa3_4KGOV5U/edit#gid=0
ya, but idk if five guy's has an app or deals... but mcdonald's via app will almost always have a bogo, or like a 1 dollar big mac offer with no strings. so it kind of makes the stats harder, but anecdotally - five guys is very expensive.
As someone who works in a restaurant your confusion just confirms my own research that people don't understand that DoorDash changes a (in my restaurant) 10% upcharge PER item, and then sticks on all the other fees. The sneaky 10% won't show up anywhere on the bill or receipt since they consider it the base price
You aren't accounting for the second tax, the American tax, the Tip. Hopefully you guys get rid of that culture soon, and actually just make your businesses price stuff the way they need to so they can pay their employees and not just to show a lower (false) price on everything. Such a dishonest way of doing things.
Doordash upcharges the crap out of items. If you want an accurate account, you need to do pick up at both fast food place. Minor thing I'd argue that the quarter pounder is a better comparison than a Big Mac which has an extra bun inbetween. No argument that five guys is better
I worked at 5 Guys for a month. Someone came in and asked, "how much for a bag full of fries?" I charged him for 3, filled the bag to the brim (probably closer to 5 orders worth in there), and watched him eat the entire thing in the store.
To be fair to Hank, he has done more science communication overall. It seems like every year he has a new niche science channel like Journey to the Microcosmos or Bizzare Beasts.
Info dump is my love language. Hank feels like family to me. It’s a parasocial relationship that has outlasted ~87% longer than every relationship in my life so far
As a former Five Guys employee, Little Cheeseburger and Little Fry are very purposefully called Little instead of Small. Both Littles are a perfect amount for one person, but you'll never see a manly man order a "little". Weird ego thing they had going on to make people buy more
Perfect amount? Idk why someone couldnt do a regular size tbh… why would a manly man want something indicated to be smaller? Do manly men get small burger and small fries all the time?
Oh that's awesome! Very smart marketing haha. I feel like in general dudes gotta get the "loaded double triple patty burgers with extra cheese and grease". My best guy friend and I both got the "littles" last time we went to five guys but he's also very confident in his masculinity 😄.
The McDonalds small fry isn't 99 cents anymore. It's over 3 dollars in some locations, but closer to 2 dollars at most locations. That totally changes the results!
@@standard-anime-girljpeg6479 This is the hot tip. Always use the app. And if getting Wendy's, always do the biggie bags. Everything else is wild pricey now.
@@standard-anime-girljpeg6479 That all depends on what deals are currently being offered to you, the one-dollar offer disappeared for me about a year ago to be replaced with a $1.19 version of the deal a few months ago. The small fry is $3.29, they're terribly priced here for buying individually, but if you get them in a combo or deal it's not that bad.
The big thing with fast food chains right now, is they're massively gaming subjective pricing. Two McDonalds within 2 miles of one another may have a 15-20% difference in menu prices without using the app and taking advantage of its deals. So your experience will vary a LOT depending on where you live and how much hidden costs would factor into driving to the cheapest fast food location in the area.
In EU prices vary by country but not within the same country. I wonder if that's by EU law or there's something else going on. (at least AFAIK, but I'm pretty sure that's the case)
This economy is so messed up right now. It seems at every step of the supply chain there is the most awful tactics being used. People aren't asking "what is this worth to me?" instead they are asking "what am I going to put up with?" And all too often it is answered with "I have no choice but to put up with this." Everyone is redlining their tolerance for unsavoury BS. People are filled with this empty feeling that they try to fill with stuff they don't really need and doesn't really help. Day by day no one can muster up the will to do what they really want to do and it gets perpetually postponed to "tomorrow". People aren't treated like people but are mere vessels of "productivity" or replenishing sacks of money to be looted on the regular.
Gosh I hate because I live in a college town and the fast food places all have upcharged prices because of it. Tacobell has 2-3 dollar gap on all of it combo meal items. A simple taco is 1 dollar more than my hometown 2 hours south.
Love this. Your chaos spreadsheet is perfection. Please do this again but weigh the food. Five Guys always over serves the fries and I think that means the calorie counts have to be wildly inaccurate!
at the end of the day, it's just potato fried in peanut oil. with the price the charge, they make more money on it than they do with any other thing they sell there
youtube probably had to check with their advertisers if they were ok with this. comments that mention any similar subject matter but are otherwise benign also get censored
Hank. I’m gonna throw a fit. A small McDonald’s fry in Missoula is actually like $2.40 and a McDouble is $4.20!! It’s insane. And different locations around Montana all hover right around those numbers. You can do the buy one get one for $1 but it’s still ridiculously expensive for what it is.
Fries definitely have a large margin, but I think the main reason is to drive people to use their app where you can get them much cheaper. It seems a lot of places are doing this these days, significantly raising prices on in-store purchases to push people into the custom app where they can then collect and sell your data
I always order the little fries at Five Guys because they don’t just fill the cup. They throw so many extra fries into the bag that it’s almost the same as two large McD’s fries.
this also works with coffee if you bring your own reusable cup,, like I always bring my big reusable cup, which can hold almost twice as much as a "small" take away paper cup and the. take a small Cappuccino, Latte, Flat White and I always get handed a cup full with coffee 😅
As a former five guys manager, it’s expensive because five guys is known for paying quite well, raising labor costs, and they also use very labor intensive practices for prepping and most operations in general, which also raises the hours of labor needed. These reasons also contribute to the fact that dude was willing to pay 24 dollars for the burger- they’re extremely consistent, safe, and high quality burgers.
Hank my guy, my parasocial best dude. I just want to thank you for this format where you take us on this journey of figuring things out with you in the way that someone with excel and logic just figures something out. It's SO good. So often it seems like magic to people, me included, these kinds of things that are really so simple! And I feel like so many people don't want to share how solvable life can actually be because they realize how magical it makes them seem to others if they keep it to themselves. Even something as simple, on the surface, as this. So thank you.
It's also worth noting that you don't pay for any add-ons at Five Guys. Not even extra cheese and bacon!! You can walk in and order a bacon cheeseburger with everything on it, extra bacon, extra cheese, and it will still cost the exact same amount of money as it does with nothing added to it, the same price listed on the board. And that's WILD! Every other fast food place charges for EVERY item! Tomato? .30 cents. Extra Cheese? $1.40. Extra Bacon?? $2.00. Mayo? .20 cents. Every single addition. If you ordered a Big Mac and got everything added on it, plus bacon and extra cheese, you'd likely pay significantly more than doing the same with a Five Guys Burger. Plus. They just dump a metric shit-ton of fries into the bag, their "little" is more than a McD's large.
I would argue that this is part of the growing resentment around fast food restaurants. Why would you be expected to pay for each topping? It's like how all the extra fees bother people at airports. I think it's easier to accept the price of a restaurant burger that comes with fries than it is to get charged for everything separately, even if the costs work out to be similar. If you're going to pay like $20 for a meal anyway, you might as well go to a real restaurant where you don't have the feeling of being nickel and dimed and the ambiance is probably better.
That's a bit misleading, since you do pay quite a bit extra for cheese and for bacon vs. a plain hamburger. But that's interesting that it's free for extra, I've never heard of that
they definitely do charge for cheese and bacon, hence why on the menu they have Hamburger, Bacon Hamburger, Cheeseburger, and Bacon Cheeseburger. however the toppings are indeed all free! and so are the mountains of peanuts lol
i've just paused halfway through the video and stared into the middle distance like, why am i watching this video and getting so invested in this topic... we don't even have five guys in my country hank is just so good at getting me hooked hahah
I've just watched a 17 minute video pricing a fast food place that I've never been to, so the fact that the ideal price-to-customer proportion may actually indicate that it's best to go to 5 guys with... 5 guys, makes complete sense considering the name.
Being from Hawaii, it’s always interesting to see the prices so wildly different from here, due to being on an island in the middle of an ocean where everything is imported
Totally agree with these findings. One important note. Every time I get Five Guys, there is a large fry worth of fries that has spilled out into the bag in addition to the fries actually in the fry container. It is so reliable that this will be the case that I have always planned for it and order 1 fry for the table that we all share.
It's not even spilled. If you watch them put the fries in the bag, they put the cup of fries in the bag, then dump a whole additional scoop of fries in on top. All those bottom of the bag fries are very intentional. 😂
@@LintheKumofanI always order my fries with no drinks poured onto them but they still come out soggy for some reason, thanks for telling me why. I wish I could get fries at five guys without the drink poured onto them but it is what it is I guess
Eating McD’s feels like a dreary afternoon at a dead-end job after a sleepless night. Eating at Five Guys feels like hanging out with the bois on a sunny 4th of July afternoon with a whole long weekend ahead of you.
as someone who worked at fiveguys i was always told that a little would feel 1-2 people, a medium 2-3, and a large 3-4. we literally dump fries in the bag with the cup we put them in. it's actually insane how much fiveguys gives you in fries. also had to explain a lot that the little was a single and the normal was a double lmao i feel like part of the reason stuff is expensive too is that there are literally NO freezers in the entire store. at all. plus, fries are cooked in peanut oil. you also get the free peanuts in the store. all the ingredients are all prepared the morning of. you're also making 13-16$ an hour as a worker depending on where you are i do also remember any time our gm talked about the prices of stuff going up is the ONLY time we ever raised our prices
The quality is why we will always pay and go to Five Guys over anywhere else for a hamburger. A person shouldnt be eating very many for health and environment anyway so when youre going to do it get the best is what i say :)
The thing is, last time I looked at Five Guys prices, I compared it not to other fast food (because honestly a fast food meal in this area is much cheaper) but to a sit down pub burger. Five guys cheeseburger + fry + drink in my city was $22 dollars. A sit down pub INCLUDING a 20% tip still came in at around $18, and was comparable in size of the meal and it tastes better.
Yeah, true for steakhouse burgers, at least around here, especially if you find one with a lunch special. One here that is just across the parking lot from a new Five Guys has a lunch burger and a side for $10 before tip, drinks are about the same price as FG *and* bottomless.
In other words a pub burger is almost certainly cheaper by weight than any fast food burger, since Five Guys is about the same price per weight and calorie as McDonald's which is still probably the cheapest fast food
It's ~$26 after tax in Ottawa for a bacon (double) cheeseburger small fry and a drink, but converting to USD that is cheaper. However a double big mac meal with bacon is around ~$19
Food used to be cheap in the US (compared to Canada), but that is _absolutely not_ the case any more. Every time I go down there I'm shocked to find that most fast food places will sell the same food for about the same dollar amount in USD as we pay in Canada, so it ends up being about 30% more expensive. After the food got expensive, at least the alcohol was still cheap but in the last couple years even that's not really true any more.
@@siberx4that's why if I'm going somewhere to eat I go to pubs, the foods affordable the booze insanely expensive. Like I really do not go to chain restaurants to eat anymore
Ever since the pandemic the food industry, in particular, have been using “supply chain problems”as an excuse to raise prices across the board. To be clear, the supply is as robust or better in some areas than it was in 2019. So essentially the food suppliers are increasing prices simply because they can get away with it. Record breaking windfall profits every year since the start of the pandemic, by the way, but these unprecedented price increases have been a leading cause in inflation. Economists have been calling it greedflation, and for good reason.
I have never even eaten at 5 Guys, and yet I'm watching this incredibly in-depth analysis. I will say, my Dad grew up on a ranch in Arizona. Every rancher friend of his who supplied to McDonald's talked about how McDonald's reps only wanted the sickest, weakest cattle because those cattle were significantly cheaper. Needless to say, we were never allowed to eat at McDonald's growing up. Every time one of us kids would ask because McDonald's had some cool happy meal toy, we'd have to listen to Dad ranting about the buyers. When I left for college, and had McDonald's for the first time, I was not impressed.
This fake news told to you by ranchers homie. Lol. You do know mcdonalds doesn't buy sick cattle right? Sure maybe cheap cattle but sick seems like a risk a company doesn't wanna take.
@@Pr0toPoTaT0 it was back in the 80's/90's. Just what my Dad always said. Hopefully mad cow disease stopped that practice if it was in happening... I mean, the ranchers would have nothing to gain from telling my Dad that.
BILLINGS MONTANA!! I live here hank! I believe a large mcdonalds fry is 3.99 and a small is 2.49. Along with this a little fry at 5 guys is literally a drink cup of fries. So a large is A BAG IF FRIES. A large fry at McDonald's is like ¾ths of a 5 guys little fry. Just thought I'd let ya know sir. Love your channel.
Hi! i also have crohns. i had a surgery back in october which really sent my diet for a loop- what do you eat day to day? having some difficulty adjusting, even these many months later
What do you have to avoid for your Crohns Disease? For me raw fruits and vegetables have been big no's for like 21 years. But fats have almost always been safe. Course a lot changed recently when I had to have a colostomy.
I have to avoid chocolate, caffeine, raw fruits and vegetables, raw nuts and seeds, hard liquor, and beans. Also, apparently the hot dog buns at five guys don't have sesame seeds.
At the anarchist bar I volunteer we're thinking about what to do with our drink costs when we've paid off the mortgage (in like 10 years lmao). And the most popular idea is to actually charge an amount of money+costs instead of costs+percentage. Right now we are making more money on liquer than on beer, and more on beer than on coffee. Purely bc drinks higher in alcohol (generally) are higher in price, so the same percentage will bring in more money. It also de facto creates incentive to sell more alcohol, which isn't always what we want. Like i think it would be really cool as an economic statement to switch to cost price plus fifty cents or smth. It's something I was thinking about watching the cost analysis and how different companies incentivize different spending (=consuming) habits.
I put this on in the background for a fun silly listen. I look over at my cat, and she is watching very attentively. Such an amazing feeling to know my cat enjoys watching you just as much as I do 😊
I think a simpler explanation of why so many say Five Guys is expensive is just that places like McDonald's have "cheap" meat options like the McDouble while Five Guys doesn't. So if you care about getting cheap meat, you can get that at McDonald's and many other fast food places with value menus, but not at Five Guys.
@nattyfatty6.0 It is objectively higher quality than shit like McDonald's. As a former employee of McD's I literally can't eat their burgers anymore because I know how cheap the meat is, how poorly stored it is, and how generally terribly it's expected to be prepared, this isn't even considering how common it is for managers to just go in and start preparing their own meals straight from the prep area without gloves nor washing their hands and making a massive mess of the kitchen.
You could've gotten the McDonald's prices and calories through their app Also, i doubt a McDonald's small fry costs $0.99 where you live, it costs $2.79 where I live whereas the large fry costs $4.39
Love you showing people how to think, I think we dont crtically think as well as we should, and this video shows us how to investigate and get info. Something I just dont see enough of!!!
I also can't eat sesame seeds! For different reasons (allergies) but it makes me strangely happy to know that Hank understands the small struggle of making sure you get your burger with the one non sesame bread option which is often non optimal.
Once I hit 32 years old and had to get on a diet to avoid pills I stopped eating fries and drinking soda (among other things), proud to say I'm 44 and still not on any medication.
They also source the potatoes from the USA as far as I can tell. They use peanut oil. They have fewer locations than mcdonalds. I never eat these portions by myself. My husband, 2 year old, and I can have lunch on two burgers and one large fry. Wildly, it was also the only thing I could keep down while pregnant and dealing with hyperemisis gravidarum. So I'm biased. I've pavloved myself into loving a specific cheeseburger.
Here's in Des Moines IA, YES! I can get roughly the same amount of food at BBops for half the price. $7-10 @ BBops, $13-18 @ Five Guys. If I tipped, Five Guys would = low tier restaurant pricing. They make great burgers though!
The most compelling argument Hank has ever made for moving to Montana was saying that the five guys order in the beginning of the video would've been $10.50 where he lives
It appears to be incorrect. It seemed so far off base from my experience that I wanted to check, and fortunately, five guys let's you choose your location to order pick-up orders from. The full order in Missoula is actually $17.23 pre-tax, compared to $20.57 in the video, so still a little bit cheaper, but not as cheap as it seemed. I'm pretty sure it was just a verbal misstep, because the bacon cheeseburger is $10.49 in Missoula. He stumbles over it a little bit and I think he's starting to say "the bacon cheeseburger is $10.50", but he erroneously corrects himself after saying "the" and changes "bacon cheeseburger" to "my order." Still a better 5 Guys deal, but not quite as cheap as he accidentally said it was.
Personally, I was always keenly aware that I'm getting more food when I eat at Five Guys. It's hard to miss just how much more full you feel after that meal.
No the thing that tricks you is the idea of eating an "full meal". Like you consider a burger and fries a full meal so you order that at five guys you will feel more full than doing so at McDonald's. But if instead you thought in terms of how much you are spending and said I want to be full with say $15 budget McDonald's mcdoubles are the way to go
Another important factor that i dont think people go into is that Five Guy's doesn't have freezers for their meat. None of their meat is frozen, only refrigerated. So they have to get that meat delivered consistently and you're paying for fresher beef. In cities, that's going to be a bigger hell to do. So you end up seeing most of the complaints in places like LA where there ain't no damn farms for beef out there. But if you're somewhere like here in Texas, it's going to be cheaper cuz all the beef is right there with roadways better for delivery. A Five Guys cheeseburger here where i'm at in Texas is $8.69. And a Little Cheeseburger is $6.69. So largely, if you're not in densely populated cities Five Guys is going to have a better price because its all about shipping the ingredients to the location. Lookin at photos of a location in the middle of LA, that same Cheeseburger is $12.89 as of a month ago.
California is one one the biggest states in terms of agriculture, so I’m skeptical that “there ain’t no damn farms for beef out there” 🤔 maybe we just have more strawberries and vineyards
@@memahselfniIn-N-Out patties have been getting smaller and smaller to keep the price low. Even though Five Guys is too expensive to eat there often anymore, the burgers are the same as they were 15 years ago when I first had one.
I never watched your videos before, but thank you for doing this video because I felt like I was going crazy when people kept saying Five Guys is super expensive. Beef is just more expensive in general and people will always tout how amazing McDonalds when its quality is poor. Now I can point to this spreadsheet and lose friends in the process, total win.
The large five guys fry calorie count is almost certainly an underestimate too. When you order the large fries they bring out a shovel and absolutely fill a giant bag with them
I assume that's taken into account since the cup size is the same regardless of the size of fries you buy and you just get more bag fries with larger orders.
9:16 - The thing about FG fries, is you never get the same amount twice: they over flow the cup (and into the bag) with fries so much, that I only ever order one large fries when ordering for 3 people. And even then, there's usually too many fries for us to finish.
Yeah, it's not actually too surprising that they came out close on the per unit cost because of this. Unless McDonald's has a big beef deal, which it totally does I'm sure, cost should even out for most businesses that run a similar level operation. Still fun to watch Hank hang out on Sheets for some reason, though 😂
Every bit of the first 30 seconds made me so happy. I didn't click on the first day you posted it cuz all i could think about was meat consumption being insanity.
My biggest takeaway from this was seeing Google info in the background, going on a Google journey, and finding out people in NYC and Long Island hate mustard on burgers and most McDonald's there don't even carry it
That’s a marketing trick they do. At least where I live, they have little containers for the “extra fries at the bottom of the bag”. If you paid 5$ for that little cup and only got enough fries to fill it, you’d never buy it again. This way you’re thinking “they gave me so much extra fries” instead of focusing on the total volume. It’s still a decent amount of fries though, but for the price?
When I let you know that McDonald’s prices also fluctuate wildly within a city as well making all this even more confusing to calculate. Two McDonald’s near me, almost equal distance. One costs almost 25% less than the other. Same franchise owner.
I thought this was a Brazil thing, but apparently not. The one at the mall not only is more expensive, but doesn't even accept the same coupons as the other location.
By the way, Hank, this video could’ve been (should’ve been) a sponsorship. Over the last 7 months since this video was posted, I have started eating five guys regularly after having never even had it based on the information you shared here.
I don't know how anyone can so conclusively recognise that the economics of everyday purchases and small luxuries have shifted from "what's a fair, sustainable mark-up reflecting the cost and labour of delivering this to you as a customer?" to "what is the mathematically maximum amount we can squeeze out of you to optimise profits whilst still getting you to buy this?" and just say "yep that's how businesses work" rather than wanting to burn the whole system to the ground. It's the economics of plunder.
This is a shift to the current Neo-Capitalism we currently we live in. It was a slow deliberate shift over the last 40 years. A lot of younger adults don’t even recognize it as a shift because they’ve lived 100% of their life when they paid attention to such things in this period. Anyone who claims “it’s always been like this” is speaking from their personal experience, ignoring everything before.
There’s an argument to be made the second version is more durable to labor and materials price changes, in that if wages increase there’s no sense in raising prices as we’ve already figured out the current price provides maximum intake, just need to figure out how to make ends meet with that changed operating budget.
@@Zelgius9 except if labor prices change then that means consumers have more money and they will increase prices to extract more, also if materials get more expensive there is a decent chance they raise prices over the previous optimal amount and just advertise that there costs went up when people complain and most of them will just accept it and buy it anyway with their anger either diverted to the supplier or more likely the president (in the us) for some reason
I hate to nay-say but my family has always known this. You don't go to Five Guys alone, you go with a whole group and order a single fry. The product is tastier, the selection of toppings is better, and the portions are large. Of course it'll cost more.
Five Guys also tries to source as much of the potatoes and beef from the local or regional area as possible (or so they say) and some people like this despite the higher cost. McDonalds patties and fries come frozen and shipped in from a processing center. Also if you eat them there, you seem to get a lot more fries than you got. Like split them with another person (the last time I ate there).
Back when I was a younger lad, I managed a fast food restaurant or two and our profits came from fries and soft drinks. The burger or sandwich was a break even product. What we really wanted to sell you was the fries and drinks.
Makes sense, the wholesale price of fries and drinks is very low. A regular portion of five guys fries probably costs less than a dollar in ingredients, fountain drinks only 50 cents or so.
I have to say, as a poor person, *if* I'm going for fast-food, Five Guys is a regular go-to for me exactly because of what you described. I am the only one eating, not with a group. If i get a cheeseburger and fries, that's lasting me 2-3 meals (depending on my hunger level) in contrast to the 1 that McDonald's lasts (both because of the reduced size and because McD's tastes so much worse as leftovers lol).
Leftover 5 guys fries chopped up and combined with some onion, bit of flour, and some whisked egg. Form patties and fry. Makes "leftovers latkes" that are very good.
Hank you’ve fallen into the Door Dash trap. The prices for items are more expensive on Door Dash, even before any of the delivery fees! It’s not an accurate read of the price of your go to the store!
While this is true, it only made the comparison off (since he used DD numbers for McD and in-store numbers for FG). Most people talking about the high prices are ordering on DD.
re: the food cost going up but you get more-- I am a smaller person and often get at least 2 meals (or more) out of restaurant burgers/burritos/takeout/etc, especially if there's sides ex. recently I got a burrito bowl (with the max # of toppings for ~$11 and got 4 meals off of it & probably could've stretched it if I added my own beans and rice (yes it's cheaper to make that whole thing at home but when I'm busy it sure is a good deal)
This all makes sense to me. When my boyfriend and I got to Panda Express or Subway we always get the biggest option and split as it’s WAY cheaper than getting two smaller portions separately
i will say the large fries at five guys are definitely designed to be shared. the first time i saw one, i was on a road trip with my mom and we got a large fry after the cashier kindly suggested we not get two large fries (this was before calorie counts were listed on the menu, if we'd seen 1310 calories in one order it would've clued us into how huge the order is). i can honestly say anyone i've ever split a large fry there with, whether it's a guy or girl, whether we're just hungry or famished, we've never been able to finish a large fry at five guys.
Hank, I could go to a "gourmet" burger restaurant and get two meals for that price, minus drinks - but fries and side salad is included - nearly 9" across the burger patties piled high. Unfortunately that burger restaurant got killed by COVID last year...but for AUD$25 I can also order a regular pizza which is NY Quality Pizza, 600ml soda, ice cream dessert and delivered within 20 minutes. Today. AUD$25 is about USD$17.50
i was really bored out the gate with this video, but i am SUPER nerd for data and spreadsheets. I have a compression project for old data ive been working on. Its only 50TB, and i have a goal of 8-10% compression. the process is slow and the spreadsheets i have created to watch follow and track the data as it moves has brought me more joy than it probably should. As watching you poke through a spreadsheet as well has brought similar joy!
I always order a BLT Grilled Cheese. It's not on the menu, and they have to figure out how to melt the cheese without wilting the lettuce, but it's SO GOOD.
CORRECTION: I really should have gone to McDonalds on the way home to get the prices because I consistently under-price McDonalds stuff that I didn't have good data for.
Honestly, the result shows that Five Guys is pretty much roughly on par with McDonald's if you price by amount of meat or by calorie, which is wild because Five Guys is much better!
Here's the spreadsheet:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-7XgcMraRbGLzS8b_YvsTTdhIL3AAkzvCa3_4KGOV5U/edit#gid=0
ya, but idk if five guy's has an app or deals... but mcdonald's via app will almost always have a bogo, or like a 1 dollar big mac offer with no strings. so it kind of makes the stats harder, but anecdotally - five guys is very expensive.
As someone who works in a restaurant your confusion just confirms my own research that people don't understand that DoorDash changes a (in my restaurant) 10% upcharge PER item, and then sticks on all the other fees.
The sneaky 10% won't show up anywhere on the bill or receipt since they consider it the base price
Who do you think you are? Seth?
You aren't accounting for the second tax, the American tax, the Tip.
Hopefully you guys get rid of that culture soon, and actually just make your businesses price stuff the way they need to so they can pay their employees and not just to show a lower (false) price on everything. Such a dishonest way of doing things.
Doordash upcharges the crap out of items. If you want an accurate account, you need to do pick up at both fast food place. Minor thing I'd argue that the quarter pounder is a better comparison than a Big Mac which has an extra bun inbetween. No argument that five guys is better
I worked at 5 Guys for a month. Someone came in and asked, "how much for a bag full of fries?" I charged him for 3, filled the bag to the brim (probably closer to 5 orders worth in there), and watched him eat the entire thing in the store.
That's a story of two dudes absolutely rocking
this is some shaggy shit
legend
best part about 5 guy fries is that they're cholesterol free
gigachad
15:32 "You have to have four friends to enjoy Five Guys well!"
I mean, it's kinda in the name…
Came here just for this… ! Like Hank! Listen to the words coming out your mouth!!! Haha. You need 4 friends.. to go to FIVE GUYS
OK now do Arby's
WE NEED FIVE GUYS TO ENJOY GOING TO FIVE GUYS
I was so upset when he skipped right past this.
So, I gotta be “that guy”, lol… Five Guys was named after the founder and his four sons.
John: 50 minute lecture on tuberculosis
Hank: mukbang
Big things from the Green brothers
little brother energy
All is in balance as planned.
To be fair to Hank, he has done more science communication overall. It seems like every year he has a new niche science channel like Journey to the Microcosmos or Bizzare Beasts.
The human condition.
It's so expensive that Hank made this video just to write it off as a business expense
This video feels like I walked into Hank's office, asked him what's up and he yelled at me for 10 minutes about McDonalds and Five Guys
"Hey Hank whatcha got there for lunch? Smells good."
"Five Guys, there is so much Five Guys discourse all the time-"
And I love it
@@Felisquoredaagreed
Info dump is my love language. Hank feels like family to me. It’s a parasocial relationship that has outlasted ~87% longer than every relationship in my life so far
As a former Five Guys employee, Little Cheeseburger and Little Fry are very purposefully called Little instead of Small. Both Littles are a perfect amount for one person, but you'll never see a manly man order a "little". Weird ego thing they had going on to make people buy more
Such smart marketing.
Perfect amount? Idk why someone couldnt do a regular size tbh… why would a manly man want something indicated to be smaller? Do manly men get small burger and small fries all the time?
Oh that's awesome! Very smart marketing haha. I feel like in general dudes gotta get the "loaded double triple patty burgers with extra cheese and grease". My best guy friend and I both got the "littles" last time we went to five guys but he's also very confident in his masculinity 😄.
@@sfowler1017 Like saying someone is good at manipulation.
@@Gotlyfe Pretty much all marketing is manipulation, so yeah.
The McDonalds small fry isn't 99 cents anymore. It's over 3 dollars in some locations, but closer to 2 dollars at most locations. That totally changes the results!
Im not sure about where you are, but a large and medium cost the same in western Canada, which is WILD
@@StonedSpagooterI wonder if it's a trick to get more people to buy fries that wouldn't have normally
When you order from the app you can get a large fry for a dollar
@@standard-anime-girljpeg6479 This is the hot tip. Always use the app. And if getting Wendy's, always do the biggie bags. Everything else is wild pricey now.
@@standard-anime-girljpeg6479 That all depends on what deals are currently being offered to you, the one-dollar offer disappeared for me about a year ago to be replaced with a $1.19 version of the deal a few months ago. The small fry is $3.29, they're terribly priced here for buying individually, but if you get them in a combo or deal it's not that bad.
I told my wife that I wanted Five Guys after watching this video.
She told me that I should start with two guys and see how I feel after that.
at least she's open to you experimenting...?
Keeper.
She was speaking from experience.
My wife overheard me watching this video and went out and got some for us 😂❤
😂
The big thing with fast food chains right now, is they're massively gaming subjective pricing. Two McDonalds within 2 miles of one another may have a 15-20% difference in menu prices without using the app and taking advantage of its deals.
So your experience will vary a LOT depending on where you live and how much hidden costs would factor into driving to the cheapest fast food location in the area.
I know where my cheapest McDonalds are and will only go there.
There are two stores, two miles apart, & my order differs by $5.
In EU prices vary by country but not within the same country. I wonder if that's by EU law or there's something else going on. (at least AFAIK, but I'm pretty sure that's the case)
This economy is so messed up right now. It seems at every step of the supply chain there is the most awful tactics being used. People aren't asking "what is this worth to me?" instead they are asking "what am I going to put up with?" And all too often it is answered with "I have no choice but to put up with this." Everyone is redlining their tolerance for unsavoury BS. People are filled with this empty feeling that they try to fill with stuff they don't really need and doesn't really help. Day by day no one can muster up the will to do what they really want to do and it gets perpetually postponed to "tomorrow". People aren't treated like people but are mere vessels of "productivity" or replenishing sacks of money to be looted on the regular.
Gosh I hate because I live in a college town and the fast food places all have upcharged prices because of it. Tacobell has 2-3 dollar gap on all of it combo meal items. A simple taco is 1 dollar more than my hometown 2 hours south.
Love this. Your chaos spreadsheet is perfection. Please do this again but weigh the food. Five Guys always over serves the fries and I think that means the calorie counts have to be wildly inaccurate!
at the end of the day, it's just potato fried in peanut oil. with the price the charge, they make more money on it than they do with any other thing they sell there
WHY WAS THIS CENSORED, what truths are they hiding from us
There's a glitch in the matrix @5:44! It goes deeper!
youtube probably had to check with their advertisers if they were ok with this. comments that mention any similar subject matter but are otherwise benign also get censored
@@user-md3wm7vu1f Lmao nah.
Where's. The. Beef? (DFTBA)
@@ponyoteDa F The Beef At?
If you can find a small fry at McDonald's for 99 cents you better tell me where your time machine is
It's somewhere in the ball pit.
The app - daily $1 fry
@@zyrohnmngthat’s in an app… that’s not the real price that most consumers are paying bc not everyone is using the app.
@@zyrohnmng They no longer do this, nor do they do any free fries with any $1 purchase. It's medium fries with a $2 purchase
@@biigsmokee They do at my location. In the app, $1 any size Fries. No other purchase necessary. Does say the offer expires 04/17.
16:39 - “2006 is not supposed to be 20 years ago” 😅 my favorite part of the video, lol.
Same! My son was born in 2006... it's freaking me out.
Hank has a fun-math-friend vibe going on here, and it makes me really smile. Thanks, Hank! You're a great lunch time video pal.
Hank. I’m gonna throw a fit. A small McDonald’s fry in Missoula is actually like $2.40 and a McDouble is $4.20!! It’s insane. And different locations around Montana all hover right around those numbers. You can do the buy one get one for $1 but it’s still ridiculously expensive for what it is.
Thank you! I specifically don't get fries or beef at McDs so I my data was YEARS off.
Haha. Thanks for the update’s in the comments!
@@centradragon They might be using fry prices to subsidize the meat.
Fries definitely have a large margin, but I think the main reason is to drive people to use their app where you can get them much cheaper. It seems a lot of places are doing this these days, significantly raising prices on in-store purchases to push people into the custom app where they can then collect and sell your data
I always order the little fries at Five Guys because they don’t just fill the cup. They throw so many extra fries into the bag that it’s almost the same as two large McD’s fries.
Yeah I was going to say the same five guys fries are much larger than McDonald's.
I always assumed the fries they threw in the bag were reflected in the listed calories/prices.
this also works with coffee if you bring your own reusable cup,, like I always bring my big reusable cup, which can hold almost twice as much as a "small" take away paper cup and the. take a small Cappuccino, Latte, Flat White and I always get handed a cup full with coffee 😅
All this implies that the fries are edible. Five Guys fries are soggy garbage. They're just a waste of money.
@@RvLeshrac I actually like them. Each person has a different take on foods. We’ll just agree to disagree.
As a former five guys manager, it’s expensive because five guys is known for paying quite well, raising labor costs, and they also use very labor intensive practices for prepping and most operations in general, which also raises the hours of labor needed. These reasons also contribute to the fact that dude was willing to pay 24 dollars for the burger- they’re extremely consistent, safe, and high quality burgers.
So if someone poor like me doesn't tip, you aren't hurting the employees? (I would only get a fry)
@shakeyj4523 I've been wondering this, but since when do you tip at five guys? Cashiers aren't tipped, and there's no wait staff.
The 5 guys in my area has a tip jar. No idea how it's split though, as it's by the register. @@1ryannow476
@@1ryannow476 to be honest the whole tipping culture in America is just strange
@1ryannow476 I thought there was a tip jar last time I went to 5 guys, but I admit I haven't gone in years, and this video now makes me want to again
One thing you missed here Hank is that McDonalds and other fast food joints offer a combo discount where five guys doesn’t.
Yes. And that sucks
This is the hard-hitting journalism I need
Hank my guy, my parasocial best dude. I just want to thank you for this format where you take us on this journey of figuring things out with you in the way that someone with excel and logic just figures something out.
It's SO good. So often it seems like magic to people, me included, these kinds of things that are really so simple! And I feel like so many people don't want to share how solvable life can actually be because they realize how magical it makes them seem to others if they keep it to themselves. Even something as simple, on the surface, as this.
So thank you.
15:34 “you have to have four friends…” so…you have to have five guys? Lol
It's also worth noting that you don't pay for any add-ons at Five Guys. Not even extra cheese and bacon!! You can walk in and order a bacon cheeseburger with everything on it, extra bacon, extra cheese, and it will still cost the exact same amount of money as it does with nothing added to it, the same price listed on the board. And that's WILD! Every other fast food place charges for EVERY item! Tomato? .30 cents. Extra Cheese? $1.40. Extra Bacon?? $2.00. Mayo? .20 cents. Every single addition. If you ordered a Big Mac and got everything added on it, plus bacon and extra cheese, you'd likely pay significantly more than doing the same with a Five Guys Burger.
Plus. They just dump a metric shit-ton of fries into the bag, their "little" is more than a McD's large.
I would argue that this is part of the growing resentment around fast food restaurants. Why would you be expected to pay for each topping? It's like how all the extra fees bother people at airports. I think it's easier to accept the price of a restaurant burger that comes with fries than it is to get charged for everything separately, even if the costs work out to be similar. If you're going to pay like $20 for a meal anyway, you might as well go to a real restaurant where you don't have the feeling of being nickel and dimed and the ambiance is probably better.
Uh, bacon is extra though.
That's a bit misleading, since you do pay quite a bit extra for cheese and for bacon vs. a plain hamburger. But that's interesting that it's free for extra, I've never heard of that
It's pretty hard to add tomato onto non-chicken burgers anywhere else.
they definitely do charge for cheese and bacon, hence why on the menu they have Hamburger, Bacon Hamburger, Cheeseburger, and Bacon Cheeseburger. however the toppings are indeed all free! and so are the mountains of peanuts lol
i've just paused halfway through the video and stared into the middle distance like, why am i watching this video and getting so invested in this topic... we don't even have five guys in my country
hank is just so good at getting me hooked hahah
This is my favorite. Please keep doing these "I had a random question" videos!
I've just watched a 17 minute video pricing a fast food place that I've never been to, so the fact that the ideal price-to-customer proportion may actually indicate that it's best to go to 5 guys with... 5 guys, makes complete sense considering the name.
Being from Hawaii, it’s always interesting to see the prices so wildly different from here, due to being on an island in the middle of an ocean where everything is imported
Totally agree with these findings. One important note. Every time I get Five Guys, there is a large fry worth of fries that has spilled out into the bag in addition to the fries actually in the fry container. It is so reliable that this will be the case that I have always planned for it and order 1 fry for the table that we all share.
It's not even spilled. If you watch them put the fries in the bag, they put the cup of fries in the bag, then dump a whole additional scoop of fries in on top. All those bottom of the bag fries are very intentional. 😂
@@dreamerfreak4604 I've heard that before but didn't have any corroborating evidence! Now I know
A large is a full drink cup dumped in the bag and then the cup is refilled and place in the bag.
@@LintheKumofanI always order my fries with no drinks poured onto them but they still come out soggy for some reason, thanks for telling me why. I wish I could get fries at five guys without the drink poured onto them but it is what it is I guess
Their approach to fries is "here are your fries, you son of a bitch."
Eating McD’s feels like a dreary afternoon at a dead-end job after a sleepless night.
Eating at Five Guys feels like hanging out with the bois on a sunny 4th of July afternoon with a whole long weekend ahead of you.
Strong agree. Maccas is a last resort whereas Five Guys is a treat.
Eating at 5 guys feels like a woman with uncontrollable spending who just throws items in her basket without looking at the price.
I love spreadsheets so much I really hope this putting random things into s spreadsheet continues.
as someone who worked at fiveguys i was always told that a little would feel 1-2 people, a medium 2-3, and a large 3-4. we literally dump fries in the bag with the cup we put them in. it's actually insane how much fiveguys gives you in fries.
also had to explain a lot that the little was a single and the normal was a double lmao
i feel like part of the reason stuff is expensive too is that there are literally NO freezers in the entire store. at all. plus, fries are cooked in peanut oil. you also get the free peanuts in the store. all the ingredients are all prepared the morning of. you're also making 13-16$ an hour as a worker depending on where you are
i do also remember any time our gm talked about the prices of stuff going up is the ONLY time we ever raised our prices
The quality is why we will always pay and go to Five Guys over anywhere else for a hamburger. A person shouldnt be eating very many for health and environment anyway so when youre going to do it get the best is what i say :)
That's one of the big reasons I don't go to McDonald's for a burger, even if it's cheaper. FG pays their people better and their stuff tastes better.
Potatoes are cheap as dirt so I can't imagine why anyone would be stingy with them.
Potatoes are CHEAP.
There fries they cost 19cents a pound when you buy 50# sacks.
The thing is, last time I looked at Five Guys prices, I compared it not to other fast food (because honestly a fast food meal in this area is much cheaper) but to a sit down pub burger.
Five guys cheeseburger + fry + drink in my city was $22 dollars.
A sit down pub INCLUDING a 20% tip still came in at around $18, and was comparable in size of the meal and it tastes better.
Yeah, true for steakhouse burgers, at least around here, especially if you find one with a lunch special. One here that is just across the parking lot from a new Five Guys has a lunch burger and a side for $10 before tip, drinks are about the same price as FG *and* bottomless.
Yeah, I appreciate Five Guys being clean and using good quality ingredients but the taste just isn't there for me.
In other words a pub burger is almost certainly cheaper by weight than any fast food burger, since Five Guys is about the same price per weight and calorie as McDonald's which is still probably the cheapest fast food
Fun fact, five guys is cheaper in Canada, the menu is the same. So it’s 24$ CAD. Left five guys in the states because it was so much higher
It's ~$26 after tax in Ottawa for a bacon (double) cheeseburger small fry and a drink, but converting to USD that is cheaper.
However a double big mac meal with bacon is around ~$19
Food used to be cheap in the US (compared to Canada), but that is _absolutely not_ the case any more. Every time I go down there I'm shocked to find that most fast food places will sell the same food for about the same dollar amount in USD as we pay in Canada, so it ends up being about 30% more expensive.
After the food got expensive, at least the alcohol was still cheap but in the last couple years even that's not really true any more.
@@siberx4that's why if I'm going somewhere to eat I go to pubs, the foods affordable the booze insanely expensive. Like I really do not go to chain restaurants to eat anymore
Love that Hank is just doing some real time food theory right here.
Ever since the pandemic the food industry, in particular, have been using “supply chain problems”as an excuse to raise prices across the board. To be clear, the supply is as robust or better in some areas than it was in 2019. So essentially the food suppliers are increasing prices simply because they can get away with it. Record breaking windfall profits every year since the start of the pandemic, by the way, but these unprecedented price increases have been a leading cause in inflation. Economists have been calling it greedflation, and for good reason.
I have never even eaten at 5 Guys, and yet I'm watching this incredibly in-depth analysis.
I will say, my Dad grew up on a ranch in Arizona. Every rancher friend of his who supplied to McDonald's talked about how McDonald's reps only wanted the sickest, weakest cattle because those cattle were significantly cheaper. Needless to say, we were never allowed to eat at McDonald's growing up. Every time one of us kids would ask because McDonald's had some cool happy meal toy, we'd have to listen to Dad ranting about the buyers. When I left for college, and had McDonald's for the first time, I was not impressed.
Oh my God.
This fake news told to you by ranchers homie. Lol. You do know mcdonalds doesn't buy sick cattle right? Sure maybe cheap cattle but sick seems like a risk a company doesn't wanna take.
?
@@Pr0toPoTaT0 it was back in the 80's/90's. Just what my Dad always said. Hopefully mad cow disease stopped that practice if it was in happening... I mean, the ranchers would have nothing to gain from telling my Dad that.
@@ileoric 💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯
BILLINGS MONTANA!! I live here hank! I believe a large mcdonalds fry is 3.99 and a small is 2.49. Along with this a little fry at 5 guys is literally a drink cup of fries. So a large is A BAG IF FRIES. A large fry at McDonald's is like ¾ths of a 5 guys little fry. Just thought I'd let ya know sir. Love your channel.
Thank you, Hank!!! I have Crohn's Disease, and I just avoided Five Guys because I didn't know about the hot dog bun hack. A game changer for sure.
Hi! i also have crohns. i had a surgery back in october which really sent my diet for a loop- what do you eat day to day? having some difficulty adjusting, even these many months later
How does a hot dog bun vs hamburger bun make a difference?
What do you have to avoid for your Crohns Disease? For me raw fruits and vegetables have been big no's for like 21 years. But fats have almost always been safe.
Course a lot changed recently when I had to have a colostomy.
I've got crohns and ibs I've been on stellera for a while now and it's been a game changer I love five guys
I have to avoid chocolate, caffeine, raw fruits and vegetables, raw nuts and seeds, hard liquor, and beans. Also, apparently the hot dog buns at five guys don't have sesame seeds.
I love this new segment "spreadsheets with hankl" 🥰
At the anarchist bar I volunteer we're thinking about what to do with our drink costs when we've paid off the mortgage (in like 10 years lmao). And the most popular idea is to actually charge an amount of money+costs instead of costs+percentage. Right now we are making more money on liquer than on beer, and more on beer than on coffee. Purely bc drinks higher in alcohol (generally) are higher in price, so the same percentage will bring in more money. It also de facto creates incentive to sell more alcohol, which isn't always what we want.
Like i think it would be really cool as an economic statement to switch to cost price plus fifty cents or smth.
It's something I was thinking about watching the cost analysis and how different companies incentivize different spending (=consuming) habits.
Anarchist bar? That you volunteer at? Is it to support the local anarchist chapter in your area?
I put this on in the background for a fun silly listen. I look over at my cat, and she is watching very attentively. Such an amazing feeling to know my cat enjoys watching you just as much as I do 😊
I think a simpler explanation of why so many say Five Guys is expensive is just that places like McDonald's have "cheap" meat options like the McDouble while Five Guys doesn't. So if you care about getting cheap meat, you can get that at McDonald's and many other fast food places with value menus, but not at Five Guys.
I mean pound for pound, they dump so many fries in the bag that you get about the same quantity of food as mcdonalds in fries alone
@nattyfatty6.0 It is objectively higher quality than shit like McDonald's. As a former employee of McD's I literally can't eat their burgers anymore because I know how cheap the meat is, how poorly stored it is, and how generally terribly it's expected to be prepared, this isn't even considering how common it is for managers to just go in and start preparing their own meals straight from the prep area without gloves nor washing their hands and making a massive mess of the kitchen.
You could've gotten the McDonald's prices and calories through their app
Also, i doubt a McDonald's small fry costs $0.99 where you live, it costs $2.79 where I live whereas the large fry costs $4.39
Love you showing people how to think, I think we dont crtically think as well as we should, and this video shows us how to investigate and get info. Something I just dont see enough of!!!
I also can't eat sesame seeds! For different reasons (allergies) but it makes me strangely happy to know that Hank understands the small struggle of making sure you get your burger with the one non sesame bread option which is often non optimal.
More unhinged videos like this please
Hank went to five guys and didn't get fries? Say whatttt
he didn't even get bag fries
Fr.. bag fries are essential to the psychological draw of five guys
just as well, since he went to go they would have steamed to mush by the time he got home.
He just recovered from cancer, so he may be trying to eat a little healthier.
Once I hit 32 years old and had to get on a diet to avoid pills I stopped eating fries and drinking soda (among other things), proud to say I'm 44 and still not on any medication.
They also source the potatoes from the USA as far as I can tell. They use peanut oil. They have fewer locations than mcdonalds.
I never eat these portions by myself. My husband, 2 year old, and I can have lunch on two burgers and one large fry.
Wildly, it was also the only thing I could keep down while pregnant and dealing with hyperemisis gravidarum. So I'm biased.
I've pavloved myself into loving a specific cheeseburger.
Here's in Des Moines IA, YES! I can get roughly the same amount of food at BBops for half the price. $7-10 @ BBops, $13-18 @ Five Guys. If I tipped, Five Guys would = low tier restaurant pricing. They make great burgers though!
There's no spreadsheet big enough for the amount of fries they give you at 5 guys
The most compelling argument Hank has ever made for moving to Montana was saying that the five guys order in the beginning of the video would've been $10.50 where he lives
Well yeah, everything cheap in the sticks (especially rent). What you're paying for in the city is that you get to live in the city.
Worth the average 45 inches of snowfall annually and the average high temp in Dec and Jan is 32F??
It appears to be incorrect. It seemed so far off base from my experience that I wanted to check, and fortunately, five guys let's you choose your location to order pick-up orders from. The full order in Missoula is actually $17.23 pre-tax, compared to $20.57 in the video, so still a little bit cheaper, but not as cheap as it seemed. I'm pretty sure it was just a verbal misstep, because the bacon cheeseburger is $10.49 in Missoula. He stumbles over it a little bit and I think he's starting to say "the bacon cheeseburger is $10.50", but he erroneously corrects himself after saying "the" and changes "bacon cheeseburger" to "my order." Still a better 5 Guys deal, but not quite as cheap as he accidentally said it was.
@@petebuc9 Keep in mind, there's no sales tax in Montana. That's the final price you have right there.
@@LimeyLassen the good ole price of convenience
Personally, I was always keenly aware that I'm getting more food when I eat at Five Guys. It's hard to miss just how much more full you feel after that meal.
Yeah, I don't really understand his argument. You either feel full or you don't. The main thing that tricks you into overeating is beverages.
No the thing that tricks you is the idea of eating an "full meal". Like you consider a burger and fries a full meal so you order that at five guys you will feel more full than doing so at McDonald's. But if instead you thought in terms of how much you are spending and said I want to be full with say $15 budget McDonald's mcdoubles are the way to go
Another important factor that i dont think people go into is that Five Guy's doesn't have freezers for their meat. None of their meat is frozen, only refrigerated. So they have to get that meat delivered consistently and you're paying for fresher beef.
In cities, that's going to be a bigger hell to do. So you end up seeing most of the complaints in places like LA where there ain't no damn farms for beef out there. But if you're somewhere like here in Texas, it's going to be cheaper cuz all the beef is right there with roadways better for delivery. A Five Guys cheeseburger here where i'm at in Texas is $8.69. And a Little Cheeseburger is $6.69.
So largely, if you're not in densely populated cities Five Guys is going to have a better price because its all about shipping the ingredients to the location. Lookin at photos of a location in the middle of LA, that same Cheeseburger is $12.89 as of a month ago.
In-N-Out doesn’t have a freezer either and their beef is delivered fresh and they keep their prices as low as possible
This guy hits it 100%, keep on increasing that carbon footprint
1.39 for a small fry at McDonald's
California is one one the biggest states in terms of agriculture, so I’m skeptical that “there ain’t no damn farms for beef out there” 🤔 maybe we just have more strawberries and vineyards
@@memahselfniIn-N-Out patties have been getting smaller and smaller to keep the price low. Even though Five Guys is too expensive to eat there often anymore, the burgers are the same as they were 15 years ago when I first had one.
Growing up in a family of four, we totally did the "get 2 regular burgers, split them, and get the large fry". It always seemed like a bargain.
You have to have 4 friends to save money at five guys, because you need five guys splitting one meal.
I never watched your videos before, but thank you for doing this video because I felt like I was going crazy when people kept saying Five Guys is super expensive. Beef is just more expensive in general and people will always tout how amazing McDonalds when its quality is poor. Now I can point to this spreadsheet and lose friends in the process, total win.
Just make sure you keep at least 4 friends! 😉
The large five guys fry calorie count is almost certainly an underestimate too. When you order the large fries they bring out a shovel and absolutely fill a giant bag with them
I assume that's taken into account since the cup size is the same regardless of the size of fries you buy and you just get more bag fries with larger orders.
You can also ask for 2 bottom buns if you can't do sesame seed buns
Didn't know that. Thanks for the tip
I could never have imagined that I could ask that.
"You have to have 4 friends to go to 5 Guys!"
Maybe... that's where the name comes from.
not a spreadsheet or a mukbang person but hank making an unhinged burger spreadsheet with his mouth full the entire time was an unexpected delight
And we're back folks
Wow I love the design of your pfp! Very pretty :)
@@catmacopter8545 Thanks! I did it myself.
@@jessicadurhamso you’re gay or something?
agreed, cool pfp! nice combo of the progress(?) trans triangle and pan
Joining in with the Trans/Pan flag love - you do beautiful design! 💜
9:16 - The thing about FG fries, is you never get the same amount twice: they over flow the cup (and into the bag) with fries so much, that I only ever order one large fries when ordering for 3 people. And even then, there's usually too many fries for us to finish.
This is exactly how you cost out menu items in restaurants and determine price points. From there, you can build the entire inventory process.
Yeah, it's not actually too surprising that they came out close on the per unit cost because of this. Unless McDonald's has a big beef deal, which it totally does I'm sure, cost should even out for most businesses that run a similar level operation. Still fun to watch Hank hang out on Sheets for some reason, though 😂
@@littlestbroccoli I disagree…..most likely, McDonald’s is much cheaper
Every bit of the first 30 seconds made me so happy. I didn't click on the first day you posted it cuz all i could think about was meat consumption being insanity.
My biggest takeaway from this was seeing Google info in the background, going on a Google journey, and finding out people in NYC and Long Island hate mustard on burgers and most McDonald's there don't even carry it
I really, really like this format of video Hank
"This is an article from 2010 which I cannot read, but here's a reddit thread..." I see you are just like the rest of us
I agree wholeheartedly that 2006 is most definitely not supposed to be almost 20 years ago
Something about this video is giving me major like Brotherhood 2.0 vibes. Very classic Hank, love it.
I love that you swear in these videos, like an actual human!
Also, shout out to my cousin in Bozeman!
Ok I gotta remind Hank that you get as many fries in the bottom of the bag if not more than you do in the fry cup.
Yes! The cup size is about ½ the amount of fries you actually get 🍟
I came here to say the same thing! My husband and I get a small fry to share between us when we go, and it is PLENTY!
@@MissingRaptor I do wonder if those extra fries are counted in the calorie figure...
@@afterburn2600 I would imagine so?
Really I have no idea, but they always do it
That’s a marketing trick they do. At least where I live, they have little containers for the “extra fries at the bottom of the bag”. If you paid 5$ for that little cup and only got enough fries to fill it, you’d never buy it again. This way you’re thinking “they gave me so much extra fries” instead of focusing on the total volume. It’s still a decent amount of fries though, but for the price?
When I let you know that McDonald’s prices also fluctuate wildly within a city as well making all this even more confusing to calculate.
Two McDonald’s near me, almost equal distance. One costs almost 25% less than the other. Same franchise owner.
I thought this was a Brazil thing, but apparently not. The one at the mall not only is more expensive, but doesn't even accept the same coupons as the other location.
My 17 year old eldest child was born in 2006. Please don’t say it was 20 years ago I’ll never recover 😭😭😭
By the way, Hank, this video could’ve been (should’ve been) a sponsorship. Over the last 7 months since this video was posted, I have started eating five guys regularly after having never even had it based on the information you shared here.
You know how some people watch gulf on tv because they find it soothing? That’s what this did for me.
Nice analysis (I am an Engineer) BUT a 5 Guys Burger is SO MUCH better and I can get what I want. I think it wins hands down on cost per enjoyment.
Yeah, I don't really care about saving a buck or two. I don't care about calories either. I want good food.
I don't know how anyone can so conclusively recognise that the economics of everyday purchases and small luxuries have shifted from "what's a fair, sustainable mark-up reflecting the cost and labour of delivering this to you as a customer?" to "what is the mathematically maximum amount we can squeeze out of you to optimise profits whilst still getting you to buy this?" and just say "yep that's how businesses work" rather than wanting to burn the whole system to the ground. It's the economics of plunder.
"have shifted?" I'm pretty sure capitalistic economies have always been this way, they just got better at it
that's capitalism baby
This is a shift to the current Neo-Capitalism we currently we live in. It was a slow deliberate shift over the last 40 years. A lot of younger adults don’t even recognize it as a shift because they’ve lived 100% of their life when they paid attention to such things in this period.
Anyone who claims “it’s always been like this” is speaking from their personal experience, ignoring everything before.
There’s an argument to be made the second version is more durable to labor and materials price changes, in that if wages increase there’s no sense in raising prices as we’ve already figured out the current price provides maximum intake, just need to figure out how to make ends meet with that changed operating budget.
@@Zelgius9 except if labor prices change then that means consumers have more money and they will increase prices to extract more, also if materials get more expensive there is a decent chance they raise prices over the previous optimal amount and just advertise that there costs went up when people complain and most of them will just accept it and buy it anyway with their anger either diverted to the supplier or more likely the president (in the us) for some reason
I hate to nay-say but my family has always known this. You don't go to Five Guys alone, you go with a whole group and order a single fry. The product is tastier, the selection of toppings is better, and the portions are large. Of course it'll cost more.
I go to Five Guys alone - a place to stop after the grocery run. But I seldom order the fries, even though they are good.
@@tanikokishimoto1604 I've also done this. And when I'm on company business I'll get the fries because why not lol.
Five Guys also tries to source as much of the potatoes and beef from the local or regional area as possible (or so they say) and some people like this despite the higher cost. McDonalds patties and fries come frozen and shipped in from a processing center. Also if you eat them there, you seem to get a lot more fries than you got. Like split them with another person (the last time I ate there).
Thank you for your investigation into this conundrum.
I feel so validated that I’m not the only one who has calculated calorie per dollar (CPD) on excel. Broke college student and Hank Green everybody!
As someone from NOVA and has had Five Guys since there were only two locations, thank you for this.
Back when I was a younger lad, I managed a fast food restaurant or two and our profits came from fries and soft drinks. The burger or sandwich was a break even product. What we really wanted to sell you was the fries and drinks.
Movie theater logic as well.
Makes sense, the wholesale price of fries and drinks is very low. A regular portion of five guys fries probably costs less than a dollar in ingredients, fountain drinks only 50 cents or so.
@@Croz89fountain drinks cost less than 50¢ to make, they’re dirt cheap to make.
I lost it at “math mukbang with Hank” 😂 so unexpected, but that’s exactly what this is, and I’m here for it
This makes me so glad I have a really good local chain to go to for quality fast food.
I have to say, as a poor person, *if* I'm going for fast-food, Five Guys is a regular go-to for me exactly because of what you described. I am the only one eating, not with a group. If i get a cheeseburger and fries, that's lasting me 2-3 meals (depending on my hunger level) in contrast to the 1 that McDonald's lasts (both because of the reduced size and because McD's tastes so much worse as leftovers lol).
blaphemy. microwaved mcdouble is one of the best sandwiches of all time
In-N-Out is better
@KoreyThatcher We don't have that here sadly!
@@KoreyThatcher it’s not better but it’s a way better value. Hate their salty cheese and dry fries though
1:57 biden weed (redux)
The real shocker of this video is learning that Hank is 6’1” 😮
Agreed!
The only 6'1 guy who doesnt constantly mention it
How tall did you think he was? He holds himself like a >6 foot person in my opinion.
@@RichardBarclay idk he's always had "he's just a li'l guy" energy to me (this is a compliment)
Leftover 5 guys fries chopped up and combined with some onion, bit of flour, and some whisked egg. Form patties and fry. Makes "leftovers latkes" that are very good.
McDouble + free large fries on the app = burger and fries for under $3
Hank you’ve fallen into the Door Dash trap. The prices for items are more expensive on Door Dash, even before any of the delivery fees! It’s not an accurate read of the price of your go to the store!
While this is true, it only made the comparison off (since he used DD numbers for McD and in-store numbers for FG). Most people talking about the high prices are ordering on DD.
Yup, MCDs on apps over here add $1.50 to each individual item's in-store price before any fees from the apps themselves.
I am loving the videos recently, Hank! Keep it up, super interesting stuff.
re: the food cost going up but you get more-- I am a smaller person and often get at least 2 meals (or more) out of restaurant burgers/burritos/takeout/etc, especially if there's sides
ex. recently I got a burrito bowl (with the max # of toppings for ~$11 and got 4 meals off of it & probably could've stretched it if I added my own beans and rice (yes it's cheaper to make that whole thing at home but when I'm busy it sure is a good deal)
This all makes sense to me. When my boyfriend and I got to Panda Express or Subway we always get the biggest option and split as it’s WAY cheaper than getting two smaller portions separately
i will say the large fries at five guys are definitely designed to be shared. the first time i saw one, i was on a road trip with my mom and we got a large fry after the cashier kindly suggested we not get two large fries (this was before calorie counts were listed on the menu, if we'd seen 1310 calories in one order it would've clued us into how huge the order is). i can honestly say anyone i've ever split a large fry there with, whether it's a guy or girl, whether we're just hungry or famished, we've never been able to finish a large fry at five guys.
Hank, I could go to a "gourmet" burger restaurant and get two meals for that price, minus drinks - but fries and side salad is included - nearly 9" across the burger patties piled high.
Unfortunately that burger restaurant got killed by COVID last year...but for AUD$25 I can also order a regular pizza which is NY Quality Pizza, 600ml soda, ice cream dessert and delivered within 20 minutes. Today. AUD$25 is about USD$17.50
i was really bored out the gate with this video, but i am SUPER nerd for data and spreadsheets. I have a compression project for old data ive been working on. Its only 50TB, and i have a goal of 8-10% compression. the process is slow and the spreadsheets i have created to watch follow and track the data as it moves has brought me more joy than it probably should. As watching you poke through a spreadsheet as well has brought similar joy!
That sounds really cool
Hank was your conclusion that you need to have five guys to enjoy five guys
I always order a BLT Grilled Cheese. It's not on the menu, and they have to figure out how to melt the cheese without wilting the lettuce, but it's SO GOOD.
I'm loving Hank's independent investigative journalism era.