Five Guys UK - Brixton Avis 4

Read some good reviews on Google about Five Guys and so tried a delivery for a family order and our experience next to the good reviews, well “The Emperor’s New Clothes” comes to mind. We were all looking forward with anticipation of our evening meal, but when the order arrived with the tiny burgers tightly wrapped in foil like a sad packed lunch and marked only in numbered stickers that we supposed were intended to somehow differentiate what was actually wrapped inside, it was a huge disappointment and at the price of a “gourmet burger” it felt like an utter rip-off, and gourmet this certainly ain’t, in fact I think they make roadside burger vans look gourmet in comparison. The only thing gourmet was the price. The bread was the cheapest, sweetened unfermented ultra processed ‘cotton wool’ bread you could find, and the rest of the ingredients as the bright coloured ultra processed cheese slices pretty much of the same low quality, looked and tasted no better. The burger small and dry, nothing seemed fresh. The fries mediocre, but packed in an open paper cup and so inevitably spilt all over the bag, and at almost £7 a portion of chips that’s just unacceptable. The delivery was swift and that’s about the only positive, although to arrive so quickly is indicative that the food was likely not freshly prepared or freshly cooked off, and it tasted as such when the whole order arrived cold. As for the “All Beef Hotdog”, one bite and it was binned, couldn’t have tasted more processed if it tried, and by “All Beef”, I take it that’s ambiguous loophole deceptive marketing whereby whatever vague content of beef may be in the product is the all beef part, because nothing about it resembled and nor tasted like actual beef. Food and presentation, would give zero stars if the opinion was available. Waste of money. Really disappointing. NEVER EVER AGAIN!

Update following Five Guys response : Thank you for a quick response, however having worked in the artisan bread industry for many years, there is absolutely no way we accept the sweet tasting burger buns qualify as top quality artisan fermented bread that we would regard as real bread, and as we expect and have enjoyed in other burger restaurants describing their produce as gourmet burgers at this higher price point. The cheese too I would also describe as ultra processed and the bright colour reflective of what some would describe as “plastic cheese” associated with poor quality cheap produce. I stand by our review noting our disappointing experience which concurs with many of the other poor reviews expressed on Trustpilot. : We would also like to note, given we relied on the overall positive rating on Google reviews in choosing our local Five Guys, we firstly reverted back to Google to give our review. But days later, from what we can tell, our review is still not live on Google while we have noticed at the same time that a flurry of nothing but five star reviews have successfully gone through since. Given the marked difference in review ratings here from Google which currently at time of writing is 4.5/5 based on 367 reviews in contrast to Trustpilot that we subsequently looked at which is a much poorer 2.2/5 overall rating based on 998 reviews, we cannot help but wonder if the stark disparity in ratings may be due to some censorship on Google filtering some negative reviews, and if this were the case we feel it unfair and that it would render Google reviews misleading and unreliable. Certainly the majority disappointed experiences noted on Trustpilot which at time of writing currently stands at 55% being at the lowest 1 star rating, are more reflective of our experience and in hindsight we only wish we had looked beyond Google reviews before ordering a family delivery at Five Guys.

I visited a store to place a take away order. Somehow I ended up home with a spicy burger I never ordered because my order was never read back to me.
I only realised the issue when I got home so I wrote to share some feedback because also the fries were overcooked so my dinner was ruined. The reply from customer service was basically that the chips are darker now and the store for sure read my order back.
Not great customer service

Terrible service in Brixton store. Burger order wrongly taken and when I saw it on the receipt I corrected it with a member of staff. When it arrived it was still wrong and the fries were the wrong size. I sent it back, was told that they would make it again but after 15 mins it had still not arrived. When I went to ask, I found that it had been sitting ready but not called. It was then handed to me without a word, the suggestion clearly being that I should have accepted what was wrongly given to me in the first place. There was almost no one else in the restaurant so you can’t even say you were busy.
When you are charging £20 for a take away burger, fries and drink you can’t treat customers like that, no matter how good the food is.