Five Guys BOGO Deal Is Back — and Today Is Your Last Day to Use It
Five Guys botched its 40th birthday promotion so badly last month that the CEO went on the radio to apologize. Now the chain is in the final hours of a do-over — and this time it's online only, by design.
The Five Guys BOGO Deal: How to Get It Before It Expires
The deal is straightforward: buy one burger, get one free. Use code FGAFTERPARTY at checkout. Valid through Thursday, March 12. Online or app only — no in-store redemptions. One redemption per account. The free burger applies to the equal or lesser value item in your cart.
Since toppings are always free at Five Guys, stacking your customizations on both burgers is the move. There's no upcharge for extra grilled onions, jalapeños, or any of the chain's 15-plus free toppings.
What Went Wrong the First Time
On February 17 — the actual 40th birthday of Five Guys — the chain launched the original BOGO offer. The response was, in the company's own words, "unlike anything we've seen." Locations ran out of ingredients. Lines stretched for nearly an hour at some stores. The promotion collapsed under its own demand.
CEO Jerry Murrell didn't hide from it. "We screwed the first one up so bad, we're trying to redo it," he told WTOP. "We got overwhelmed last week when we tried it. So we're going to try to get it right this time."
The chain spent weeks preparing for the relaunch. Teams replenished fresh product and made, as the company put it, "the preparations we should have made the first time around." Moving the entire promotion to digital ordering — eliminating walk-in redemptions — was the structural fix designed to prevent a second meltdown.
$1.5 Million in Employee Bonuses
Five Guys is distributing approximately $1.5 million in bonuses to store crews across the system as a thank-you to employees who absorbed the chaos of the February promotion without warning.
It's an unusual move for a fast-casual chain — and a public one. The company clearly wants the goodwill story running alongside the deal story, not buried beneath it.
Five Guys at 40: The Numbers Behind the Name
Five Guys began in 1986 as a single carry-out restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, when founder Jerry Murrell and his wife Janie gave their sons a choice: college or a business. The sons chose the business. The name came from the five Murrell boys.
Four decades later, the chain has grown to more than 1,900 locations worldwide, remaining family-owned while scaling into a global fast-casual operation. It has never franchised in the traditional sense, maintaining a tighter grip on quality control than most chains its size.
The February chaos was, in a strange way, a validation of that brand equity. Customers weren't lining up for an hour because the deal was attached to just any burger chain.
The Deal Ends Thursday — Here's the Bottom Line
The offer is valid at participating locations in the United States and Canada. A Five Guys account is required, and the order must be placed through FiveGuys.com or the Five Guys mobile app. Walk-up counter orders do not qualify.
Founder Jerry Murrell said: "Forty years is a long time, and the outpouring of support for our 40th birthday reminded us why we love what we do."
