Five Guys’ chief executive officer, Jerry Murrell, said he gave a $1.5m bonus to employees of his US-based burger restaurant chain because “I didn’t want anybody shooting me” after the company recently “screwed … up” a buy-one-get-one-free promotion.
Murrell did not elaborate on the comment, which he gave to Fortune in an interview published on Wednesday – but it came a little more than a year after the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead on a midtown Manhattan street in what was widely considered a murderous rebuke of the US health insurance industry’s profit-driven practices.
Fortune’s conversation with Murrell revisited a two-for-one promotion that Five Guys organized in February to celebrate its 40th anniversary that proved to be much more popular than the chain expected. Five Guys’ app crashed as customers sought to take advantage of the promotion, and many overwhelmed chain locations discontinued the offer early, inviting backlash on social media.
Thank you for your service.
5Guys is an institution and no 5Guys slander will be tolerated in our home.
This story does highlight how hard it is to scale bonuses across organizations. Even after knowing the realities of the P&L I fantasize about generating enough extra to windfall people. “If we just had a spare $2m we could…”
… then when you see the math per head, even cutting executive staff, numbers like that turn into a one time $100 distribution which, after tax is like $70.
The game be the game. Quality, Service, Price, pick two.
5Guys is a rare example of hitting all three imo.