Five Guys: Revenue surges by £90m as loss slashed at burger chain

Sales at the European arm of Five Guys surged by more than £90m as it slashed its loss by over 50 per cent during its latest financial year.

The London-headquartered division has reported a revenue of £542.9m for 2023, up from the £452.3m it achieved in 2022.

Newly-filed accounts with Companies House also show that its pre-tax loss was cut from £35.6m to £16.2m over the same 12-month period.

At the end of 2023, Five Guys operated 256 restaurants in the UK, France, Spain and Germany, up from 242 in 2022.

Five Guys’ UK revenue increased from £278.6m to £316.4m while its sales also grew from £61.3m to £77.9m in France, from £61.1m to £77.9m in Germany and from £51.3m to £70.6m in Spain.

The average number of people employed by the division rose in 2023 from 8,054 to 8,480.

Five Guys ‘confident’ of further growth

A statement signed off by the board said: “The group continued its expansion and the directors are confident in the growth plans going forward in all territories.

“The high levels of inflation experienced in 2022 continued into 2023 and, whilst the group was not completely immune to this, we were able to manage out cost base effectively and implement modest price increases to offset the impact of rising input costs.

Five Guys was founded by the Murrell family in 1986 and is still owned by them today.

The UK arm was launched in 2012 when Five Guys entered into a joint venture with Sir Charles Dunstone, the co-founder of Carphone Warehouse, with its first store opening in London’s Covent Garden in 2013.

That specific joint venture generated a revenue of £316.4m for 2023, up from £278.6m, while its pre-tax profit fell from £11.5m to £8.2m.