Entrepreneurial Leadership
BUS 508
October 28, 2012
Professor Etido Akpan
I had to make my own living and my own opportunity! But I made it! Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come, get up and make them. (C.J. Walker) That is exactly what Jerry Murrell did when he found out his sons did not want to go to college. He started Five Guys Burgers and Fries, naming it that because of his five sons who are all co owners of the business. Each son found a way to work within their passion. Jim, the oldest came up with the idea to franchise the privately owned company. Matt, the next to the oldest does marketing and operations. Chad, leads training and Ben, heads the I T department. The youngest son Tyler, cooks and oversee the bakeries.
During the opening of Five Guys Burgers and Fries in 1986-2002, they opened six locations. The business was an overnight success story. Five Guys is currently a privately owned company and do not plan to go public. Since 2002 Five Guys have opened over 750 locations. They are growing by almost six stores per week and will soon be celebrating the big 1,000. While most restaurants don’t pay top dollar for their ingredients, Jerry Murrell won’t have it any other way. Murrell went out searching high and low looking for the best of everything. He paid top dollar for his meat, he bought the most expensive bacon, and even bought peanut oil which cost five times as much as the oil other burger restaurants were using. Murrell also used a local bakery to bake their rolls. GQ magazine calls this franchise “the best $5 burger a man can eat”. Although, their menu consist of mainly burgers and fries, they have manage to continue to build a recipe to success. Once they tried selling a chicken sandwich but it didn’t work well for them so they went back to what they know. They still use the same vendors that they used when they first started in 1986. While once having a blind taste test to decided if they would start using frozen...