The CEO of Five Guys Gave His Executive Bonus to 1,500 of His Employees

After a botched promotional event left employees scrambling, Five Guys CEO Jerry Murrell, who is 82 and has been with the company since its founding, knew that he needed to make it up to his employees. So, instead of accepting his $1.5 million bonus as the company's CEO, he decided to write checks to 1,500 locations giving each of them a $1,000 bonus.

Following the news that he had decided to disburse his bonus to employees, many wanted to better understand why he felt that was necessary. Here's what we know.

Jerry gave the bonus to his employees in part because he was taking the fall for a promotional event at Five Guys locations that went awry. It was a BOGO deal that launched on Feb. 17 to celebrate the chain's 40th anniversary, and led to locations running out of food, lines that stretched out the door, and employees who felt overwhelmed. In an interview with Fortune, Jerry took responsibility for the debacle and said that the bonus was his way of apologizing.

“I didn’t want anybody shooting me in the back or anything after the first day, because we really screwed it up. We had no idea that we were going to get that kind of response,” he said.

“I was gonna buy my wife a new fur coat, and I spent it on [the bonus] instead. She still looks at me like I’m stupid. But I thought it was worth it. They worked so hard. They were so overwhelmed.”​

The chain also apologized to customers, saying that it wanted a do-over and then celebrating its birthday again in early March with better preparation. Jerry admitted during the interview that he never really believed in promotions, and the success of this one took him by surprise.

“I’m a funny guy,” he said. “I always think it’s funny when people go to sales. I never thought they worked."

"We tried this one, buy one, get one free. Holy smokes. I couldn’t believe all the people that jumped on that. I thought maybe increased sales like 20 percent or something — that was like 130 percent. So I felt I screwed up," he said.

The $1,000 was distributed to all of Five Guys's locations and could be distributed to the employees who had worked through the crisis caused by the promotional event.

Although $1,000 split among multiple employees is not a ton of money per employee, it's a nice symbolic gesture that shows that Jerry is trying to atone for putting his team through an unnecessarily tough time. Five Guys is one of the last fast food chains that is private and family run, and it seems like Jerry wants to give the restaurants that feel.

Hopefully he can take the issues his stores experienced as a lesson. People do line up for good deals, and stores should be ready to handle the increase in customers if a good promo is on offer.