USA TODAY: … about a year before opening Five Guys, Murrell was in a Pittsburgh hotel when he came across a book by J. Willard Marriott Sr., who got his start in the hospitality business with an A&W franchise. He had an epiphany.
“He said anybody can be successful in the restaurant business if you serve a good product, (have a) friendly and clean atmosphere and reasonable price,” recalls Murrell. “I said, ‘Heck, if that’s all there is to it, let’s do it.’ ”
So the Murrell family — Murrell, his wife and five sons — set out to open a burger business. The banks refused to give them funding for their burger venture, so they scraped together enough money to build their own equipment and get a small place nobody else wanted to rent. They sought out the best ingredients — paying top price for meat, getting a renowned local bakery to bake their rolls, buying the most expensive bacon — and decided they would cook only in peanut oil, which cost five times as much as the oil other burger restaurants were using… (more)
