Case Study: Five Guys achieves operational efficiency and franchisee empowerment with CrunchTime

Five Guys Empowers Franchisees With Crunchtime

Five Guys, a fast‑casual burger franchise with nearly 1,600 locations and over $2 billion in system‑wide sales, needed a scalable back‑of‑house operations platform to control food and labor costs as the brand rapidly expanded across more than 120 franchise groups. Corporate sought a solution that would provide franchisees of vastly different sizes the flexibility and autonomy to manage inventory, scheduling, payroll integration and compliance while giving leadership enterprise‑level visibility.

Five Guys implemented the CrunchTime Franchise model (including Teamworx, BizIQ, NetChef and mobile apps like Reconciler and Counter) to give managers real‑time COGS reporting, granular data, scheduling tools and integrations with payroll and POS systems. The platform drove tighter inventory and labor control—managers use it daily—and Five Guys consistently kept actual vs. theoretical food cost variance well under the 1% target (.035% in 2017, .041% in 2018, .024% YTD 2019), while enabling easier scheduling, delivery support and future payroll/tip integration.

Five Guys

George Anthony

Systems Administrator