Is All Of Five Guys' Food Seriously Made Fresh And Not Frozen?

When you head out for a bite of fast food or pop into a quick-service restaurant, you're probably expecting a certain quality of food — but fast doesn't always mean bad. If the modern trend of high-quality eating has taught us anything, it's that restaurants are changing to meet the demands of the consumer with better ingredients and more sustainable practices. However, some quick-service restaurants, like Five Guys, have been ahead of the game since the beginning.

It's true that all of Five Guys' food is made fresh and never frozen. In fact, the restaurants don't even have freezers — not a single one — so the food couldn't be frozen even if employees wanted to. When it comes to meat, the product is delivered fresh every few days and placed into coolers or refrigerators until it's ready to be used or up to 30 hours total. From the early days of business in the 1980s and '90s, the founders of Five Guys wanted the restaurant to become synonymous with fresh food, so they made it their mission to keep freezers out of the kitchen and keep ingredients as high-quality as possible.

Five Guys joins a list of popular fast food chains that use fresh, not frozen ingredients, but it has its own quirks that keep customers coming back, despite the high prices. According to a behind-the-scenes look from Business Insider, when a meat shipment arrives, employees work together to "inspect each vacuum-sealed package" and "make sure [the meat is] the right temperature." Although they never arrive frozen, those patties you know and love don't start as perfectly smashed pucks but rather as handmade meatballs weighing about three or four ounces. Even after being smashed into patties, the burger meat is kept cool in the refrigerator.

Five Guys is not just renowned for its lack of frozen products but also for the quality of its products, particularly its burger meat. The fast food joint uses a combination of an 80/20 blend of ground chuck and sirloin, which is the kind of beef you'd need for a Five Guys-style burger at home. Another unique aspect of the chain's meat is that there are no additives, no onions or seasoning, or anything else in between. You won't find any dreaded "pink slime" in these smash burgers, either. Fortunately, the menu offers plenty of add-ons like lettuce, bacon, onions, and peppers, and you can always make things interesting with that standard mountain of fries. And yes, there's a psychological reason why Five Guys gives you so many extra fries.