I'm a huge fan of Five Guys in general, and have found them to be pretty consistent--clean stores, friendly, efficient, competent employees, etc. This store not so much.
My husband and I were there on Monday at maybe 11:15 AM, shortly after they opened (we were order #1). We walk in and 2 young guys are working. They are pleasant enough but appear to be stoned. Ah, Santa Cruz. I order my burger in the lettuce wrap with mushrooms as I always do. He says they don't have lettuce wraps today but do have lettuce bowls. Here I was thinking lettuce is lettuce, silly me. Ok, fine, put it in a bowl. We both order fries, mine with no salt. He has to ask me again, after we sit down, what topping (singular) I ordered on my burger. When our food comes up it's all in one bag (they usually put the no salt fries in a separate bag) so I ask which one has no salt and he says neither one has salt, with no apology or offer to fix it. They were just too lazy to shake salt on one order of fries and not the other. Ok, whatever, the husband can salt his own fries.
My lettuce bowl was slightly wilted, mangled lettuce bits with the burger and mushrooms plopped on top. Tasted ok, though.
The store was filthy, which is weird since they'd just opened and served zero customers before us, so clearly it hadn't been cleaned the night before, and they hadn't used the first 15 minutes they were open to clean anything either. The counter where you pick up your food was smeared with grease and crumbs and the floor had peanut debris all over it. Makes me wonder how clean the food prep area was. My husband reports the bathrooms were kinda gross (although he's pickier about public bathrooms than I am, so take it with a grain of salt).
It was an unusually warm day in Santa Cruz, and I realize a lot of buildings there probably just don't have AC since it's so rarely needed, but it was HOT in the restaurant with the sun beating down on the windows along the side of the building. It would have helped to prop the doors open for ventilation, but the stoned kiddos apparently didn't think of that. They did think to turn on the music, which was way too loud. I realize you're now picturing me as a cranky old person, and I'm okay with that. But in my defense, even my rock musician husband thought it was too loud.
The final insult was that they had only the dull, unpopular colors of crayons for coloring index cards for the bulletin board, so my husband used a sad shade of grayish blue to color them a sort of retro yelp review on an index card. I believe it included the words "seriously?" and "you can do better." I hope he found that cathartic because I imagine the employees just rolled it up and smoked it after he left. read more