crew member

shift leader

shift manager

general manager

team member

Five Guys

All depends if you're working in a corporate store or franchise. Usually corporate pays better, everything is 'by the book', and usually busier stores. Franchises on the other hand... boy... 
I worked in franchise store for few years. Started as crew member, things were mostly easy as long you did as you're told and moved efficiently you'll be fine. It gets hard during rushes, when people call out/no show, and working with poor management. This job requires you to be communicative, work as a team to win secret shops every week, and learn about the company/practices for steritect audit (3rd party health/brand inspection). You'll get more hours the more you improve and stay consistent and reliable. If you wanna be a lazy roach this isn't the job for you. 
For shift leaders and AGMs, this job is helaaa stressful. May be rewarding depending if your district is making money, and consistently winning shops, quarterly bonuses, and quarterly audits. Its hela money if you're working with a great GM that knows what they're doing. I had the ~pleasure~ to go through 4 GMs in one store with in a 3 year period. You can have a dookie franchise owner that is stingy and lies about bonuses and raises but a great GM that will fight for you and give you hours and work with your availability. But, if your GM is dookie, they will ride you like there is no tomorrow and blame you for everything that goes wrong in the store. You can do everything they ask for within the time period they want it done and still will not be satisfied because of another irrelevant thing that happened with either a customer, a shop, or audit and THEY WILL BLAME YOU, AND THEY WILL MAKE YOUR LIFE MISERABLE.
There was a time (about 3-4 months)I was hitting OT, wining shops, winning bonuses, and the check was a stupid fat boi, but there are times things slow down considerably to the point people are fighting for hours. 
In my time there I met some cool people, worked in all the stores in my district, had some good times and bad, mostly bad.
The biggest thing is customer service, you always have to have that happy vibrant energy or you'll lose hours and fail shops, no energy=high ticket times=no extra money=no hours. Also, anything with customers they are always right, they can treat you like caca but you still have to wipe their bum bum because they might be a shopper or god forbid they leave a negative review about you on google...
Working here is good if you don't let store drama come between you and your check, benefits were good (discounts for EVERYTHING and free memberships for gyms, stores, etc) and insurance for at least 30 hrs per week. Free meal per shift, double shifts means 2 meals. Ummmm....I think that's all, when I was working here I bled, sweat, and shed tears for this dumptruck of a store for so long, I was also in college and practically had no life for the longest time but it gave me a lot of life experience with people, and understanding how working works, and how to achieve goals. The one thing that made me leave was when they started expanding in the district, they started pinching money from everyone. I had a raise long overdue, and a quarterly bonus and audit bonus I had won those last 2 quarters I was there and the owner decided to not give them out to save money for the new stores opening. That move had everyone mad and bitter, bunch of people eventually left after not raising people up and most of them lost motivation and stores began slipping in quality and consistency. 

Each location is different meaning that whoever is the manager of that store may make your job easier or a lot more stressful than it should be.I worked at two different five guys location.I stay in Georgia. I worked at the camp creek location and that location was fairly fun and no drama at all.The staff was really cool and my days went by very quick.Five Guys does require a lot of prep but that is only because they’re food is fresh.My only problem with that job was they offered to pay me $9 an hour and that was too little for me so I decided to relocate and work in Atlanta hartfield Jackson airport on Concourse D.However that experience was the most horrible job I ever worked at.Ive got so many bruises and scars working at that specific job than any other job I had.The staff over there is really unprofessional.Its too much drama.Its too many micro management that goes on.Meaning too many people telling you what to do even if they’re not mangers and too much confusion.The director of operations does have her favorite crew members aka Shamanda so if your not her favorite you’ll never get your requested time off and the general manager which is Marvin Barber will always pick on the weakest link.Theres never enough employees to work in closing shift because everyone ends up quitting because the people that’s in charge never know how to treat their employee and that is why they never have enough staff.And than let’s talk about the constant yelling because they have this rule called Five foot ten foot where you have say hello hello to draw your customers in which i think is quite annoying and it will cause you to lose your voice because your constantly yelling so get ready to receive a dry throat and than they’re always playing rock and roll music because that’s five guys music theme I believe so imagine taking a customer order but you can’t hear with all the loud music playing in the background and your co workers yelling in the back.By the time you end your day you’ll live out of there with a headache and thinking about quitting your job.They swear they pay good enough compared to the outside store which I think it’s a lie because they only paid me $10 an hour but pay their favorite crew members more money.Also having to constantly call out the number of patties the customer orders and fries could be really annoying.Also they’re constantly telling you to go talk to the guests for instance ask them where they’re flying to or try to make conversation but what they have to realize is that not everyone is a social butterfly and sometimes that’s weird for an introvert like me.Lastly the store is only clean when they have sterile tech examination.Lets talk about breaks.Its a law that every employee must take a 30 minute break however they’ll never give you a break unless your about to die or if you start an argument.God forbid if you ever busy they’ll still starve you because like they love to say customers come first which I think is not fair.I will never ever recommend anyone to work at that specific location not even my worst enemy.They need to hire a whole new management team and staff because it’s bad.But good luck 

The experience working at Five Guys is always a mixed bag. 
Depending on who was on your shift, it was either a good shift or a very long one. Closing shifts require an extreme amount of organization skills to ensure everything is as clean as possible to meet the expected clock out time (11pm), but do know you don't clock out until everything is clean, so a bad crew on a bad night may mean clocking out at midnight, and usually closers clock in as early as 2pm, meaning you may work a 10 hour shift if things don't go well, which is never in your control.
Opening shifts require time management and speed to make sure all prep is done and the store is cleaned. Your break time as an opener entirely depends on your ability to get everything done before 10:30am with opening at 11am. If prep finishes early, your break is longer. Finish late, you get either a short break or no break at all. 
Pay is very stagnant. Crew makes minimum and shift leads make an extra $1.50 per hour, but cash and card tips plus bonuses from the secret shopper program always boost your paycheck, so the pay is decent for a fast food place.
Management is hit or miss. They will get rid of you if they don't like you, or at least wait until they have a reason to. There seems to be "favorite" employees that get the majority of the hours, and they expect all shift leads to work at least 30 hours, even though they say anyone can work there part time. They either will not promote you or be very difficult to work with if you are a shift lead working less than that. Scheduling requests have to be made 2 weeks in advance, but switching shifts or adding/dropping shifts is made very difficult, as you are responsible for contacting your coworkers to cover shifts, and mostly you will get either no response or a no, meaning if you are scheduled to work a day, you have to work that day. The General Manager did not like when people switched shifts or when people took shifts from their coworkers because he had certain employees he didn't want working more hours, and he'd need to give his approval for any changing of hours, and would usually say no if he didn't like you.
You will be expected to master every station and you will be flipping around, doing a bit of everything every day especially when understaffed, which is a common occurrence.  
The work itself during the day is the easiest part of the job. At register, you take orders and call back patties and hot dogs. The grill worker puts them on, the dressers toast the bun and dress the sandwich, quality control (usually a manager, sometimes manager-in-training) will check the sandwich(es) and wrap them, then finally will pass the bagged order to the fry worker who will put the fries in the back and give the order to the customer. Only issues that come about are rude doordashers/Uber Eats drivers, rude/borderline insane customers, and orders that will backup the entire grill, for example when a customer comes in and orders 5 cheese veggies, holding up the entire bread grill, meaning less food can be made. 
If you can't handle stress, avoid this place at all costs. I liked the pay and my coworkers were nice for the most part, but it drove me mad, and they expected 120% out of every employee. Corporate also treats crew like lowly peasants. 

I've had two stints working at Five Guys- two different locations- and worked for a little over a year both times. Both locations had individual issues, but it is all rooted in the management. I'm only going to talk about general issues about Five Guys to give a general idea as best I can about working there. But I will say, I ESPECIALLY do not recommend working at the location listed.

The work culture of Five Guys is all an illusion. What they call hard work and taking responsibility for mistakes, they really mean petty bickering and blaming others. A common draw for potential new-hires is that Five Guys offers potential bonuses through their secret shopper program. What they don't tell you- however- is that due to the subjective nature of the shoppers in question, they have the authority to fail your shop for virtually anything. I once had a failed shop because their burger was "too greasy", even though Five Guys will train you to make a "well-done and juicy" burger.  There's no way to dispute a failed shop, supposedly, even if its something as ridiculous as that. And the worst part is that for every failed shop, management will hyper-fixate on whatever went wrong and make you feel bad for failing. 

Sure, you can be a great, hard working employee. That's probably gonna get you promoted right? Not necessarily. Remember that point about managers hyper-fixating on issues on the secret shops? Yeah that applies to EVERYTHING. You could have a bad day- we all have them- and snap at a coworker, you could miss a spot doing dishes, you could accidentally oversalt fries. It doesn't really matter what it is, they will lord it over you and make it THE reason they won't consider you for a promotion. And even if you are promoted, they will put it ALL on you. There is no "hey good job on this, but lets work on that." Its always "you weren't perfect, therefore it's all terrible." I'm not personally a guy who needs constant compliments to know I'm doing a good job, but the negativity in the workplace is absolutely suffocating. 

It sucks too, because I think there is a lot of potential to enjoy working there. There is good money to be made when everything is firing on all cylinders, the coworkers are right there with you so there is often a mutual respect and recognition for hard work, and when trained properly you can make some genuinely delicious food and take those skills with you into your own home. Speaking personally, I am someone who enjoys making good food for people and that is what kept me there for as long as I was. But until the work culture and attitude among managers improves- all of them, really but especially Assistant managers and up- they are going to continue to lose great workers. And for those reasons, I cannot recommend working at Five Guys.

A typical day at work was dependent of which of the two shifts you worked. I worked through the dinner rush mostly. 

The morning was easy, prep for the day. Lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, cheese, hundreds of pounds of potatoes, meat for the patties, milkshake toppings. A lot of gossip happened at the patty smashing table, which I wasn't fond of. Then the short 3 hour lunch rush, go home.

The dinner shift was not so easy. I would come in at 2 or 4 in the afternoon. There were the morning dishes, more potatoes to cut, then the longer dinner rush from 5-9pm before it slows down into the evening. Then came breaks, and eventually closing time at 10pm. Frantically, everything is cleaned, from the ceiling to scrubbing the floors, and bleaching the drain. The store was to be absolutely sanitary for the morning crew.

I had never worked in a line cook position before. I was taught to run the flat top grill first, then the potato fryers. Within a month I was given a raise and was told that I would be getting my training binder to become a manager. I never saw the binder.

The managers were fun to work with on the line, but behind the scenes, there was zero professional communication. Schedules were poorly attended to and often times were rewritten once or twice throughout the week. The franchise was also majorly understaffed through the state, and the new hire turn over rate was astonishing. Several people each month would pop in to try it out for a day or two and  then just stop showing up. There was maybe a core team of ten non-management staff that showed up everyday, and less were consistently on time. A few of the people I encountered there were ex-felons, or recovering drug addicts. To say the least, the conversations there were interesting. 

I didn't like the pace of this franchise. Much of the work was quickly swinging around hot oil, and running back and forth with as many 5 gallon buckets of water and fries as you can carry at once. I was coming home too tired to do anything else. I stopped making myself dinner each night, and started to neglect my diet, relying on the free burgers I got at break time. The food isn't as high quality as they claim either, and they use backwards prep methods so that they don't have to teach teenagers how to use knives. It's all within food standards, food in the proper sinks and everything sanitized, but using the potato cutter to cut onions was a first for me.

All in all, there is a niche here, and some of their managers have found it. It's hard work, and you work with some kinda difficult people from time to time, but there was kindness, and compassion from the people who were long term employees there.

Locations are owned by franchisees not corporate, so every location will be a little different for an employee. Atmosphere is set by the GM. When corporate comes in, they are there to essentially tell you what your doing wrong not what your doing right. Don't take their criticism personally, just make the changes they want. 
 
To succeed, work hard, work fast, try to always be cleaning or training when it's not busy. You can get the store to the point where it's always clean and then there is time to relax, but it requires a lot of good team work and communication. 

GM's: Do your do diligence when hiring. It's hard to find good talent that wants to work hard at minimum wage, but there is good talent out there that needs a job. Praise the good ones in public and give them criticism and direction in private to keep them happy. Do the same with the bad ones too. Do 3 month performance reviews. 

Make prep time a friendly competition with small rewards to get energy high for the morning shift. Create a cleaning checklist for everyday. Laminate it and let employees decide who does what and use it as a reward for fast prep and above and beyond work. Let them assign you cleaning tasks too. They will love being your boss for once and your not special. Lead by example.

Train all the time!!!! Put crew members on their worst station to practice. When it gets busy, rotate them out to something they're better at. Don't let one person always do one thing. Everyone needs to be great at everything! Competitions of one person cooking a whole meal alone will test employees knowledge of timing and process flow and show where they need improvement. It will get very busy and having a well trained crew will make rushes a boost in moral and have customers cheer you on. A poorly trained crew will quickly fall behind and cause a lot of stress resulting in employees quitting, not showing up, loss of bonuses, and ruin customer experience hurting sales.  

Morning crew should prep adequately with a little extra so night crew can survive the rushes without having to take someone off the line to do more prep. In return, night crew needs to do a good close with a thorough cleaning (Use another laminated checklist) and a good set up so morning crew can focus on prep and not have to finish the night crews job. Missing the mark on those two big things will cause resentment between shifts. It's a downward spiral thats hard to break.

worked there twice actually, once for two years and the second time for 2 or 3 months, first time i was scheduled almostevery day, 12 hour shifts, on holidays like new years and christmas, pay wasnt worth it, and i got passed up twice for promotion as explicitly stated by management. 
second time i came back, covid was resurgent, had a couple close calls while working there and i was called while coming into a shift one day by the general manager of the tilton store in 2022, that "you need to think about if you really want to work here" after being taken off of full time hours for having a covid scare.no information about policy for that was shared directly with the crew, nor was any of the information needed for us to function properly distributed to us until last minute, and only if it came up in conversation. second time i came back i was again, working almost every day, ten hour shifts, covering other peoples shifts on my days off, and capably running the store other then explicitly manager duties.  
corporate had promised a multitude of benefits and incentives to work there and have delivered on none of them, there was an offer for an extra dollar an hour every day you came into work 20 minutes early or so, never happened. we use to get bonuses for selling a certain number of milkshakes per day, and secret shopper bonuses happen so infrequently and rarely go well enough to award a bonus, are not consistent enough to justify them listing their pay rate as high as it is, THEY DO NOT ACTAULLY PAY THE NUMBER THE ADVERTISE, THEY PAY ABOUT 3 OR 4 DOLLARS LESS THAN ADVERTISED
some of the managers are great and are really cool and nice, others such as the general manager didnt seem to know what they were doing and constantly messed up the shifts, by that i mean they threw everything off and nothing runs smooth when they run their shifts or when they come in and decide to run a shift instead of the appointed manager, half the crew could run it better than that GENERAL MANAGER. who was to be fair running two stores simultaneously. BUT, constantly took from the tilton store : employees and supplies. there were only the same group of maybe 9 employees that ran that storefor the two shifts split up, night crew came up with the loss for that split. 

A typical day consist of many operations.  Any given day could bring 100 different scenarios.   Typically, a morning phone call to all the District Managers in the company to follow up with any issues that may have not been resolved.  Visit a store and its staff and do a general walk through of the store.  On average 50-60 phone calls a day would be answered ranging from raise requests to repair requests for a store.  Generally the day would finish with reviewing schedules, end of the day phone call with the District Managers for the company.  

I learned many things in my position.  Patience, tolerance, leadership, fairness, and organization to name a few things.  From the beginning, I learned that if my day wasn't organized then I would have a chance to get through it.  In my position I learned that I had to rely on the success of others and that the success of the company would come directly from the work I did in the stores.  Training was a constant that had to be accomplished in 22 stores simultaneously, a feat that could not be done by one person alone.  Building a team of managers that could fit the bill was one of the first goals to accomplish.  

My team can handle any situation that arises.  They are hard working , up beat, intelligent men and women.  The culture that they work in requires all of those traits, and they could motivate anyone without question.  My co workers are the type of people that you would find hanging out on the weekends together or going to a bowling alley to hang out.  They truly are the definition of a team.

The hardest part of my job would be keeping my self contained and not running out to fix every problem myself.  The hours, the travel and the phone calls never could bother me, but knowing that I could fix something very easily that another was going to struggle with, made my job difficult.  This is where my patience came in.  Being able to train some one to fix their own issues is very rewarding, but the natural reaction to fix the issue was always there.

The most enjoyable part of my job centered around watching others succeed under my watch.  I promoted a lot of employees and gave them opportunities to succeed.  Preparing an individual who was making minimum wage to take over a store making an honest salary is always going to be my favorite task for any company.

A work day at Five Guys varies depending on what shift you work. There are three different shifts available. 
Morning Crew:
Those working morning crew should expect to come at either 8:00am or 9:00am to do prep work. Everything is prepped for that day so how much is needed to be done varies. Typically, a gray shirt (manager) will cook bacon, slice tomatoes, shred lettuce, and prep other produce while red shirts (crew members) roll meat. The meat is raw meat so don't expect precooked patties. The store opens at 11:00am which gives a two to three hour time period to get prep done. Usually four to six people prep and it is possible to get prep done by 10:30am so everyone have enjoy a break and their employee meal.
Midshift:
Those working a Midshift usually work from 11:00am to either 6:00pm or 7:00pm. You do not open, you do not close, you work the hours the store is open and serving customers. There are five different stations that everyone is trained to work. P.O.S., B.O.H., Sets, Fries and Expo, or Grill. Each station coincides with each other, so if you take the time and effort to learn each station it will be easier to work each station. Midshifts get a break during slow times(2:00pm to 3:00pm), if available.
NIght Crew:
Those working night crew come in anywhere from 3:00pm to 6:00pm depending on availability and leave at either 10:00pm or close. Closers have four stations they can close. Grill, fryers, lobby, or B.O.H., with a manager counting tills and handling the money. There are usually four to five closers depending on how many red shirts and gray shirts are scheduled to close. Finished closing time depends on how much preclose was able to get done and how quickly and efficiently each person closes their station. The latest out time is 11:45pm on extremely busy nights, the usual expected out time is 11:15pm
Working at Five Guys teaches you customer service. The customer must always come first. It also teaches you communication and food service skills. It is fairly easy and is a good first job.
Management consists of well trained individuals including a GM with much experience in the customer service based field. 
Enjoy great co-workers who can usually put a smile on your face even when its the most difficult time of the shift.

Typical day at work?
You are required to come in 15 minutes before you are scheduled to start to settle down and have a quick team briefing. Online when you check the rota it tells you exactly what station you are on however don't depend on it as the managers tend to change everyone round so you cannot go in there and expect to be on the tills because they are more likely to put you on something else such as grill etc. Once the briefing is done everyone is set off to go on their stations and the day goes on. As you would expect, there are busy times and there are times when there is hardly any customers. 98% of the shifts are quite fun and enjoyable. Co-workers are always laughing and helping out if it is needed. There is only one 20 minute break included in any shifts which is quite stressful, especially if you are working a long 10 hour shift for example. 

What I learned?
The good thing about the job is that there are many stations that you get to be trained on such as tills, grill, fries etc. The biggest push is on customer service, always smile, take that extra mile for each and every customer and definitely be patient. There will be customers who are a absolute joke. However, once you are trained on everything you get not only a pay rise to £8.20 but also you get to train and become a manager. It roughly takes around 6 months for this to happen (as I have been told on the induction). 

Management?
VERY, VERY, VERY UNORGANISED.. The rota is being done last minute so there is no way of planning round the rota. Although managers are quite nice when you say you cannot do a certain shift. You practically have to beg for more shifts half of the time. Other times, they tend to phone and beg you to come in as soon as you can.

Hardest part of the job?
The one and only 20 minute break which you get regardless how long your shift is although it is paid for. Definitely one of the worst parts of the job if you have been employed for a company before that gives at least 2 or 3 breaks.

Most enjoyable part of the job?
Free lunches on your breaks are definitely the most enjoyable part of the job. Although you have to rush to eat it when you only have 20 minutes for a break but you cannot beat a  Five Guys burger after all and the milkshakes are to die for!

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Crew member 1022 salaries reported	$14.92 per hour
Shift leader 454 salaries reported	$16.61 per hour
Shift manager 351 salaries reported	$18.71 per hour
General manager 206 salaries reported	$59,992 per year
Team member 149 salaries reported	$14.75 per hour

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