Beloved Five Guys Burger joint arrives in Marysville

MARYSVILLE — Look out, Dick’s Drive-In. Another burger chain with a cult following has moved to Snohomish County and it is going to expand.

In the last year, Five Guys Burgers and Fries opened one location in Lynnwood and another at Lakewood Crossing Shopping Center in north Marysville.

The Five Guys chain has been gathering kudos, awards and an army of loyal followers since the first store opened in Virginia back in 1986.

Last month, Consumer Reports magazine ranked Five Guys at the top of a reader’s survey and in a dead heat tie with California’s legendary In-N-Out Burger.

Five Guys beat In-N-Out Burger to take the top spot in Zagat’s 2010 Fast Food Survey.

According to Mike Cummings, owner of the Marysville and Bellingham Five Guys stores, the secret is in the quality of the food.

“We use the highest quality meat and it’s fresh. We never freeze anything,” he said.

Cummings pointed to a rampart of bulky potato sacks that lead customers through the seating area and up to the order window. “Obviously the potatoes are fresh. There are no frozen bags of fries in the back.”

A sign on the wall lets diners know the name of the farm where the current batch of potatoes was harvested. The farm changes with each new shipment but it is always a northern farm sometimes located in Washington state.

The skin is left on Five Guys fries and they are fried twice in peanut oil to achieve the signature results.

Burgers are formed by hand. A regular hamburger has two patties although customers can opt for a “little” hamburger that has only one patty.

“People really like the fact that they can pick their toppings and it doesn’t just come a certain way,” Cummings said.

One way it doesn’t come is rare. Nationwide, all Five Guys burgers are cooked to the same temperature in order to meet health code guidelines for ground beef.

Both the burgers and fries are cooked in an open kitchen so customers can watch their food being prepared. It’s a fairly fast process but, as everything is cooked to order, the wait can be long if the store is busy.

Customers can snack on peanuts while they wait for their food. A large self-serve box of peanuts is always left open in the dining room. It’s a nod back to the company’s old Virginia roots.

From the original Five Guys store in Arlington, Va., the company has expanded to over 40 states and four Canadian provinces. Western Washington Five Guys fans will soon be able to get their favorite fast food in other nearby cities too, thanks to Cummings.

The 39-year-old former director of operations for Five Guys’ Utah and Idaho territories joined up with another Five Guys executive for the rights to develop 52 stores in Nevada, Southern California, part of Northern California and part of Washington. He has two locations between Everett and the Canadian border now and plans to put in three more.

“We’re looking in Burlington and Everett and maybe Monroe. It’s all still tentative,” Cummings said.

When choosing a location, Cummings likes strip malls best. He likes an end cap so he can add a patio. He also likes to be near a busy anchor store such as Costco to maximize on walk-by and drive-by traffic.

One thing he has not had to worry about is advertising. The Five Guys chain has its own set of followers and relies heavily on word-of-mouth. There are no specials and no coupons.

“We didn’t do any advertising. We just opened up the doors and people started coming in,” Cummings said.

He also said that a Godfather’s Pizza store he once owned couldn’t do in a month what his Marysville Five Guys store does in a week.

If there is one drawback to Five Guys Burgers and Fries, it is found in the restaurant’s online nutrition chart.

There are no salads at Five Guys. Nothing is low calorie. In fact, the fries made Men’s Health magazine’s 20 Worst Foods in America list last year.

But unless Virginia-born filmmaker Morgan Spurlock decides to shoot “Supersize Me II,” don’t expect the line ups at Five Guys to get shorter any time soon.