Five Guys

The critical need for DAM at Five Guys

In 2003 Five Guys began offering U.S. franchise opportunities and sold more than 300 stores in just 18 months. Fast forward to today and there are over 1,600 locations (1/3 company owned and 2/3 franchisees) open in 19 countries and another 1,500 units in development worldwide.

International expansion highlights need for operational efficiency
This rapid growth and expansion worldwide created a need for one cloud-based system that would consolidate their assets, organize them in an easily searchable way, and give easy access to the asset library to employees across the globe.

They also needed a database that provided tracking so they could see who was using which assets and what was being done with them. They wanted a platform that could add expirations to assets and collections so when they would share files with the press they could only have access to them for a limited amount of time, making sure they wouldn’t use outdated assets.

Pre-Bynder problems that needed solving

Before adding Bynder, Five Guys stored their marketing and branding assets in a variety of places and distributed them in a variety of ways. Each person and department had their own preference on how files were stored and distributed. Some used Dropbox, others used personal computers, external hard drives, shared folder intranet systems as well as an extranet. And when it came time to share larger files, they used tools like WeTransfer.

Because of all the different ways people were storing assets, colleagues in the corporate office found it difficult to track down the right people and the right storage system to get the files they needed. Employees who had been with the company for many years could muddle through it but for those who were new to Five Guys, trying to find assets they needed became an exhausting exercise. International employees had difficulty accessing the right content as well.

Ultimately, Five Guys knew they had to find a better way to organize, store, and share assets across the company and a quickly expanding group of franchisees.

The transformation with Bynder

Expanding their DAM rollout to include more teams
Since implementing Bynder, Five Guys has ramped up to about 100 users and over 14,000 assets. While they began their rollout with the marketing department who use it to house the entire range of branding assets, they have expanded the scope to also include the real estate team. They use it to build collections of store images to show to prospective landlords and franchisees in the field.

Simplifying the search with collections
Whenever the Five Guys marketing team is working with specific internal departments or external agencies, vendors, and the media, they can send them a link to collections of assets tailored to the recipient instead of giving them access to the entire database of assets. This helps to reduce search time and speeds up the delivery of assets.

The future with Bynder

Five Guys is expanding rapidly and is now a truly global company. They are looking to Bynder as their center of truth and one unified structure for all their assets as they continue to grow. A hub that all franchisees can access easily for both uploading and downloading assets, ensuring that they always have access to the latest brand and marketing materials.

Keeping a worldwide brand consistent across time zones, languages, and cultures takes innovative tools that streamline processes, save time, and help speed up the go-to-market campaigns across all company departments. With Bynder, Five Guys has found a foundational and scalable DAM platform that they can grow with.