It’s take two for Five Guys.
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A buy-one, get-one free offer across the burger chain last month ended in chaos with some customers reporting the deal had them waiting in line for nearly up to an hour.
Now, the Alexandria, Virginia-based burger chain is trying again, and rolling out another buy-one burger, get-one free offer.
In an interview with WTOP, CEO Jerry Murrell acknowledged the chain failed to meet demand for its initial birthday celebration.
“We screwed the first one up so bad, we’re trying to redo it,” Murrell said. “We got overwhelmed last week when we tried it. So we’re going to try to get it right this time.”
This latest BOGO deal runs from Monday to Thursday.
Five Guys also plans to reward its workers who were on the front lines Feb. 17, the date of its initial BOGO offer to celebrate the chain’s 40th anniversary. The offer sparked more demand than expected, leading to stores running out of stock and long customer wait times.
“Our employees took the brunt of the thing,” Murrell said. “And so we’re going to give them a million and a half bucks in bonuses.”
Five Guys currently has 1,500 stores across North America; so that works out to $1,000 in bonuses per store.
Overall, Murrell said his employees took the BOGO bungle in stride.
“They’re pretty good about it, but we felt bad how we really overburdened them. We had no idea we were going to get that kind of response. And they came through pretty good, I think. That’s why we’re giving them that bonus money,” he said.
And what message did he relay to his employees?
“Don’t shoot me in the back for screwing this up,” he said.
