A BOGO offer apparently worked too well for Five Guys. | Photo: Shutterstock.
Promotions that get out of hand have been around for as long as the world discovered the concept of hand. But it has taken on a new meaning in the era of social media.
The latest exhibit of this came from Five Guys, which earlier this week apparently ran a buy-one, get-one burger offer to celebrate its 40th anniversary.
Five Guys does not do this sort of thing very often, and the fast-casual burger chain’s customers responded. Customers were greeted by long waits and supply issues while some of the chain’s operators shut down mobile ordering, according to social media reports.
The next day, the company offered a mea culpa, along with a promise to make it right. “We vastly underestimated your response to our 40th birthday offer,” the company said in a post on various social media platforms. “As a result, we let our customers and our crews down. We are truly sorry that we didn’t meet your or our expectations. We’re replenishing fresh product to our locations now.”
We’re sorry, and we are going to make it right. pic.twitter.com/dnJwJO53zk
— Five Guys (@FiveGuys) February 18, 2026
Welcome to 2026, Five Guys. This kind of thing happens all the time.
We’re in a world of extremes right now, certainly in the restaurant space. Social media can drive large numbers of customers into your restaurant and, if you’re not careful, the response can get out of hand in a hurry.
In recent years, we’ve seen big chain after big chain celebrate campaigns that hit historic levels of success. In December, both Burger King (Spongebob) and McDonald’s (Grinch) watched promotions beat their own aggressive projections. Starbucks in November watched customers buy up every Bearista cup the company had. Go back a year and Wendy’s own Spongebob promotion generated remarkable sales for the chain. Jack in the Box tapped into that in January with its own “Jibbi” backpack charms.
Since 2023, chains have reported same-store sales of 20% or more 12 times, something that never happened before 2019, at least this century.
The opposite works, too, unfortunately. When a series of food safety issues hit Chipotle in late 2015 and 2016 the reaction from consumers far exceeded even the Jack in the Box food safety incident in the early 1990s. John Schnatter’s rant on an earnings call in 2017 had a similar impact on Papa Johns.
More recently, McDonald’s faced customer ire over prices while Starbucks faced customer ire over, of all things, Middle East policy.
These are big chains with large marketing departments run by smart people that use data and analysis and whatnot. If they can be surprised by customer reactions, anybody can.
To be sure, marketing departments spend a lot of time trying to get the attention of customers on social media and can only dream of the type of virality that would generate bun shortages.
It’s not for a lack of trying, by the way. Companies have pushed more new limited-time offers than they ever have, largely to gain the attention of that very customer. And they are pushing discounts and offers on their apps or in their stores, all to generate traffic that is tough to come by right now. The vast majority of these promotions come and go without the need for a social media confession.
Nevertheless, when running any sort of promotion these days, be ready for the worst. Because you never know how consumers are going to respond.
