Case Study - Five Guys Burgers and Fries Overview Learn how Five Guys uses Saba to build award winning learning programs across all of their franchises. Their cloud-based learning program enables up-to-date, uniform training for all 21,000 employees to ensure Five Guys’ philosophy and commitment to quality are maintained as the company expands. Business Challenge Five Guys experienced extraordinary growth, from a handful of restaurants in 2002 to over 800 owned or franchised stores currently. They needed to provide high-quality training to Five Guys’ 21,000 employees to maintain a consistently exceptional customer experience despite the restaurant’s extraordinary growth rate. Business Benefits Enable up-to-date, uniform training for all 21,000 employees to ensure Five Guys’ philosophy and commitment to quality are maintained as the company expands Allow key content such as food preparation and safety, corporate history and philosophy, and customer service to be delivered via cost-effective online training Provide the ability to efficiently track progress — resulting in a remarkable all-staff completion rate of greater than 85% Has simplified training focused on Five Guys’ day-to-day operational details for regional, district, and store managers Streamline the deployment and simplifies the administration of existing and future applications through flexible, economical Saba Cloud

1. ®
Five Guys is a fast casual restaurant that provides a
one-of-a-kind experience for people who really know
their burgers and fries. From the quality of the fresh
beef and boardwalk-style fries to the spotlessly clean
restaurants and friendly, helpful staff — it’s little wonder
that Five Guys has earned numerous awards including
recognition as a Zagat Survey-rated business every
year since 2001.
The restaurant opened its first location in Virginia in
1986. Through 2002, Five Guys only opened a handful
of other stores — all in the Washington, D.C., metro
area. But then, Five Guys began to rapidly expand
through franchising across the U.S. and Canada. By
2008, the restaurant had nearly 350 locations, and
since then the chain has more than doubled again to
over 800 owned or franchised stores.
Managing this extraordinary growth while maintaining
Five Guys’ culture, values, and uncompromising
standards was an enormous challenge. In the
company’s early years, all managers were required
to attend Five Guys boot camp, an intensive week
of training at the restaurant’s Virginia headquarters.
Corporate trainers were also on-site when new
stores opened.
Case Study
Industry: Retail, Food Services
Use Case: Learning Management, Virtual Classroom
We are more consistent
with our service and
procedures now with our
800 stores than we were
when we had 15. Our
expectation is that Saba
Learning will help us
continue to build
on that.
Doug McKinney
Director of Training
Five Guys Burgers and Fries
Challenge
Provide high-quality training to Five Guys’ 21,000
employees to maintain a consistently exceptional
customer experience despite the restaurant’s
extraordinary growth rate.
Benefits
• Enables up-to-date, uniform training for all 21,000
employees to ensure Five Guys’ philosophy and
commitment to quality are maintained as the
company expands
• Allows key content such as food preparation and
safety, corporate history and philosophy, and customer
service to be delivered via cost-effective online training
• Provides the ability to efficiently track progress —
resulting in a remarkable all-staff completion rate of
greater than 85%
• Has simplified training focused on Five Guys’
day-to-day operational details for regional, district,
and store managers
• Streamlines the deployment and simplifies the
administration of existing and future applications
through flexible, economical cloud
Five Guys relies on Saba Learning as key ingredient in its recipe for success.

2. Case Study Five Guys Burgers and Fries
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®
In addition, there is increasing proof of Saba’s
contribution to company performance objectives.
Five Guys requires quarterly audits from third-party
experts to ensure its stores are meeting food safety
requirements and complying with brand standards.
External secret shoppers also shop all 800 stores
weekly. Top-performing stores and individuals earn
both recognition and cash awards.
“We have anecdotal evidence that stores where
employees are well trained with the help of Saba
are well in these evaluations,” Murrell said. “We are
investing in a sophisticated business intelligence
system that will allow us to truly tie Saba’s positive
impact and our secret shopper scores to year-upon-
year sales improvements.”
Enjoying Ease and Flexibility With the Cloud
Five Guys deployed its LMS from the cloud, eliminating
the need for a costly on-premise infrastructure or
dedicated IT support specialists. The software-as-a-
service/Cloud implementation enabled Five Guys to
roll out the solution companywide in a relatively short
time frame, while greatly simplifying administrative
time and effort.
Beyond that, managers were expected to train the
employees. With high turnover in the industry at large
— and with the restaurant’s breathtaking growth rate
— Five Guys decided to look for an online training
solution. After a thorough review of the top alternatives,
Five Guys selected Saba.
“We chose Saba because it easily integrated
with our point-of-sale system and provided the
language features and other capabilities we needed
for international expansion,” said Doug McKinney,
director of training for Five Guys. “But most importantly,
we felt like Saba would be easy to work with and
would provide us all the support we needed for our
explosive growth.”
Discarding Outdated DVDs
In the early years of Five Guys’ expansion, corporate
trainers and managers often used DVDs as well as
operations manuals and other paper documents. But
with the restaurant’s growth changing things so quickly,
the DVDs and printed materials became obsolete
almost as soon as they were produced.
“It got to the point where we would constantly have
to pause the DVDs and say, ‘Oh, we don’t do that
anymore — we do it this way,’” said Josh Murrell,
Five Guys training network administrator.
With Saba’s learning platform, all 21,000 employees
at both company-owned and franchise stores are
provided the same core training: eight online courses
prepared by corporate that cover food preparation,
food safety, Five Guys’ corporate history and
philosophy, and its commitment to customer service.
Along with additional hands-on training in the kitchen
for store employees, this has helped Five Guys
maintain its outstanding reputation.
“We are more consistent with our service and
procedures now with our 800 stores than we
were when we had 15,” McKinney remarked.
“Our expectation is that Saba will help us continue
to build on that.”
Tracking Learning and Evaluating Results
Five Guys also uses Saba to closely track each
employee’s progress toward meeting corporate
training goals. The company has created several
custom reports that draw upon the completion data
captured by Saba — helping to drive usage higher. All
franchise stores have full access to Saba’s capabilities
at no additional charge, and district managers earn
incentives for ensuring employees have completed
basic training.
“Currently, our curriculum completion rate is 86%,
which is really quite remarkable,” noted McKinney.
“Our turnover rate is also significantly lower than the
industry in general — and we believe this is at least
partly attributable to Saba.”