While burgers and fries are great on their own, nothing is better than burgers,
fries, and a milkshake, and Five Guys makes some of the most delicious milkshakes around.
Here's what makes the Five Guys' milkshake different from other fast food frozen treats.
Five Guys proudly advertises that its milkshakes are "hand-spun,"
which is the kind of phrase we're used to seeing on menus and signs.
But what does it actually mean? The answer is pretty straightforward:
A hand-spun milkshake is made by a human being who puts ingredients into a container and blends them.
While this might seem like the obvious approach to crafting any milkshake, many fast food chains
don't actually do it that way. At McDonald's, for example, the milkshakes are machine-made from
"shake syrup," which almost makes them a different thing altogether.
While Five Guys isn't the only chain that has hand-spun milkshakes,
there are other qualities that set the Five Guys version apart from the crowd.
As is the case with most works of art, a great milkshake starts with a great foundation.
At Five Guys, rather than messing with multiple ice cream flavors or a bunch of flavored syrups
to create different milkshake variations, the restaurant starts with a consistent base that will
always taste great: vanilla. Widely considered to be one of the world's favorite flavors,
vanilla is anything but basic. At its best, vanilla is fragrant and complex
while still providing a relatively blank canvas for the layering of other flavors.
Because one of the big draws of the Five Guys hand-spun milkshake is the fact that it is fully
customizable, starting with an expertly crafted vanilla base means that you're pretty likely to
end up with something that tastes good, whether you choose to add one topping or ten toppings or
go with a classic vanilla shake with nothing but a little bit of whipped cream to add some oomph.
All Five Guys milkshakes start as vanilla, but if you're looking for something a little
more interesting, it's hard to beat the customization that this burger joint offers.
There are ten individual mix-ins: bacon, cherries, Oreo cookies, peanut butter, bananas,
coffee, chocolate, malted milk, and strawberries. Whether you choose one, two, or all ten, the
base price of the milkshake will remain the same, which is a serious incentive for experimentation.
We truly believe that bacon should be added to basically any milkshake you order at Five Guys,
especially the popular Elvis-inspired milkshake made with peanut butter,
bacon, and banana. Even if you're not a meat-eater,
there are a ton of other creative combinations to choose from: over 40,000, to be exact!
In other words, they're so good because there's
bound to be something that'll fit your own unique tastes!
If the milkshakes at Five Guys are so good,
it makes perfect sense to wonder why it took the chain almost 30 years to roll them out.
The answer lies in one of the foundational policies that helped make
Five Guys synonymous with high quality, fresh tasting burgers, and fries: the no-freezer rule.
To make absolutely sure that no frozen items could make their way into the kitchens at Five Guys,
ingredients that need to be kept extra cold are actually kept in coolers rather than freezers.
The founders knew this would prevent them from serving popular items like milkshakes
and ice cream, but it was a hit that, for a long time, they were willing to take.
In an interview with Inc., founder Jerry Murrell came right out and said:
"If we put one frozen thing in our restaurant, we'd be done. That's why we won't do milkshakes.
For years, people have been asking for them! But we'd have to do real ice cream and real milk."
Thankfully, he finally caved and agreed to allow freezers for this one item.
A lot of processed, pre-made, and fast food items are synonymous with long lists of ingredients,
many of which are hard to pinpoint as food, exactly. This is another area
where the milkshakes at Five Guys are very different from their competitors' offerings.
At Five Guys, the milkshakes are made with just a few simple ingredients: primarily milk,
nonfat milk, sugar, whey, and whatever toppings you choose to have mixed in to your creation,
so you know exactly what you're getting when you order one of these hand-spun milkshakes.
The same cannot be said for other hand-spun milkshake options at fast food restaurants.
By contrast, a Burger King milkshake contains over twenty ingredients, many of them in the
difficult-to-pronounce category, and including both regular and high-fructose corn syrup. The
Icedream base alone that Chick-fil-A uses for its milkshake contains several artificial colors,
along with the 20-plus ingredients that make up the Chick-fil-A Chocolate Milkshake.
Besides using fresh, natural ingredients, there are several other ways that Five Guys
differentiates itself in a sea of fast food restaurants specializing in burgers. Employees
are trained to hold themselves to high standards of food safety and preparation, and in another
out-of-the-box move by the Five Guys corporate team, they're not allowed to use timers because
"Good cooks should know when the food is done."
Another nontraditional move? The restaurant doesn't really spend money on advertising,
relying instead on positive reviews and word of mouth. To take things a step further, employee
compensation is tied to the scores they receive through a robust secret shopper program, which
means that every Five Guys employee is financially motivated to make you the best possible milkshake.
While this is also one of the factors that make Five Guys' food more expensive than that of some
of their competitors, it's generally worth it to have better-tasting, higher-quality food.
There is something to be said for having fewer choices on a fast food menu because it means
that there is less of a chance that you'll order something that doesn't actually taste
so great. The Five Guys approach to the milkshake throws that bit of wisdom out the window,
offering customers practically unlimited options to create their
own flavor combinations thanks to an array of mix-ins. While this could create a situation
where customers try to one-up each other by creating gross flavor combinations,
it seems like that's kind of hard to do. There's something about all the ingredients that just
works, no matter how crazy you want to get with the additives. Go ahead, give it a try.
Bottom line? Experiment away, because the worst you're going to get is,
"Hey, that's actually not too bad!"
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