Five Guys' Burgers Are Pricey — But Where Does Its Beef Even Come From?

Five Guys is famous for its top-notch burgers, but like most things in life, that high quality comes with a matching price tag. A basic hamburger at Five Guys (the most expensive fast food chain) will set you back north of $10. (Luckily, Five Guys' generous servings of fries help soften the blow to your wallet.) As anyone who's hosted a cookout will know, meat makes up the majority of the ingredient cost of burgers, which begs the question: Where does Five Guys source its beef?

In America, Five Guys' beef provider is Schweid & Sons. This family-owned, New Jersey-based company has been in the ground beef industry for nearly half a century. Its premium ground beef can be found in supermarkets across the country and is is also behind the beef at other iconic American destinations, including The Cheesecake Factory and Dollywood (one of the U.S. amusement parks with the absolute best food).

Schweid & Sons and Five Guys go way back. The family-owned beef purveyor started working with the burger chain in 2002 when Five Guys only operated a handful of stores. Five Guys began franchising in 2003, and two decades later Schweid & Sons remains the primary ground beef purveyor for the chain's 1,500 locations across the United States. Clearly Schweid & Sons is doing something right because Five Guys has some of the highest quality beef in the fast food industry.

The company is widely recognized as a high-quality ground beef brand (with steep price tags to match), but it's worth noting the company doesn't actually raise its own cows – instead, it buys raw meat from major American meat suppliers, which it processes into over 50 beefy blends, including a special proprietary blend just for Five Guys. While you can't buy the exact burger blend used by Five Guys at the grocery store, you can at least get your beef from the same source. In a Reddit thread discussing how to recreate a Five Guys smashburger, one user promised, "The Key is Schweid and Sons. You can't go wrong." (By the way, here's the lean-to-fat ratio you need to make a burger like Five Guys.) If all of this has you craving a beefy fast food meal that won't break the bank, try this clever ordering hack to snag two Five Guys burgers for the price of one.