Extra toppings are built into the price of the burger, which means customers can add any or all 15 to their order at no extra cost.
As US cult burger chain Five Guys opens its third outlet in Sydney on Monday, March 10 at Martin Place’s slick new metro interchange. The big question is: will it still draw the crowds?
Five Guys first came to Australia in 2021, opening in Penrith before adding an outlet on Sydney’s George Street and expanding to Victoria. Lines were long and stats were broken, with Melbourne’s Southbank recording the highest-grossing opening trade weeks in the history of international Five Guys.
Fast-forward to 2025 and Sydney’s burger game is as strong as ever, with excellent options from restaurants such as The Gidley, Saint Peter and Neil Perry’s Next Door, to more casual offerings such as Mary’s, Paul’s, Burger Park, Self Raised Bread Shoppe … and the list goes on.
Operators of the franchise think crowds will come and are banking on its location next to the escalators near the Castlereagh entrance to the metro to get more people in and out. Five Guys’ head of operations for Australia, Phil Keelan, says the location was partially informed by Five Guys’ Italian expansion, which links into railway stations and leverages commuters’ tendency to purchase before they jump on a train rather than off.
Martin Place is the fifth local store and Five Guys’ first underground venue in Australia. It also has the most seats, with 96. It opens alongside a number of food outlets in or near the burgeoning hospitality hub, including Petit Loulou and Lune.
Keelan concedes that a regular Five Guys burger, which costs about $18, is on the more expensive end of the spectrum. But with the chain’s highly customisable menu, letting customers build their burgers from scratch, and 15 signature extra toppings (such as grilled mushrooms, onions and jalapeno peppers), it represents relatively good value for money.
Toppings are built into the price of the burger, so customers can add any or all 15 to their order at no extra cost.
Five Guys does a couple of other things differently to its US burger chain counterparts. Potatoes are hand-cut into fries each morning, burger patties are made in-store by hand from Australian beef, and lettuce is hand-shredded.
Globally, Five Guys is known for its famously fastidious head office, which is in Virginia. The potatoes sourced for Five Guys’ fries have to be grown below a specific line of latitude, and only one particular barbecue sauce (imported from the US) can be used. There are also no freezers or microwaves.
However, does a mountain of guidelines a good burger make? Keelan thinks so. Five Guys’ food menu “hasn’t changed in 39 years” and is replicated internationally, so Keelan can compare Australian consumers with the rest of the world.
Statistically, Australians like to customise burgers more than the rest of the planet, he says. “We like to think [we’re] more discerning,” he says. And Australians also don’t skimp; we hold the crown for upgrading to two patties.
If the interior looks familiar, it’s because the signature red-and-white colour scheme comes straight from the Five Guys playbook. Designers working on a new store have to refer to a 400-page building tome that staff refer to as “the cookbook”.
While Five Guys has made rare menu exclusions on cultural grounds, with bacon unavailable in some countries, the burger menu created in the 1980s has barely budged since. It isn’t overly vegetarian friendly, and doesn’t cater to local burger preferences, such as egg and beetroot.
When Five Guys becomes more established in Australia, Keelan says they’ll push for some local inclusions. If Oreos and Biscoff can find their way into milkshakes, why not a local edible icon like the Tim Tam?
Open daily
Tenancy B1, 39 Martin Place, Sydney, fiveguys.com.au
Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.
Scott Bolles writes the weekly Short Black column in Good Food.
