Five Guys Burgers & Fries

Background

When the popular US-based Five Guys burger chain decided to expand across the United Kingdom and into Europe, they had a clear vision: maintain the same great customer experience in every location, from Covent Garden in London all the way to Germany, France, and Spain. For Five Guys, this meant not just the same menu or decor, but also reliable in-store technology that could handle everything from employee check-in and point-of-sale (POS) systems to third-party delivery kiosks.

Twilight Zone Engineering, led by founder Paul Mintern, has served as Five Guys’ IT partner in the UK for over a decade. Paul’s team provides support and project management to ensure each restaurant runs efficiently. “We act as the IT department,” Paul says. “And for a quick-service restaurant chain with hundreds of sites, you have to ensure Wi-Fi, switches, and gateways just work—seamlessly, every day, in every store.”

When Five Guys decided to unify their networking hardware under a single vendor, they turned to UniFi for an integrated, license-free platform that could meet the demands of a fast-paced, high-turnover environment.

Business Objectives

1. Consistency Across 250+ Sites. With each new store opening or existing store refresh, Five Guys wanted a standardized, repeatable network stack. Prior to UniFi, they’d used a mix of Ruckus wireless, Cisco switches, and other legacy solutions. This patchwork resulted in higher costs and more complexity.
“A big factor for us was delivering a uniform setup,” Paul notes. “When we can replicate the same hardware and design across every location, troubleshooting becomes easier, performance is more predictable, and staff training is minimal. That was top of mind.”
2. Simplified Remote Management. With hundreds of stores spread across the UK—and more across France, Spain, and Germany—Five Guys needed a centralized management solution to monitor performance, push configurations, and troubleshoot issues. Site visits for every minor adjustment would be expensive and disruptive. “Because we had to support so many locations,” Paul says, “the ability to quickly see which site was having trouble or change a setting across multiple stores was critical. We needed to reduce the time we spent traveling to and from different restaurants.”
3. Robust Connectivity to Avoid Downtime. Quick-service restaurants rely heavily on stable internet for POS transactions, kiosk ordering, and even staff clock-in systems. If the network goes offline, sales come to a halt. Five Guys needed a network resilient enough to handle Britain’s varied broadband landscape—from fiber connections in city centers to slower ADSL lines in more remote towns.

Why UniFi

License-Free Platform That Scales. Five Guys had historically paid annual license fees for enterprise networking gear. Moving to UniFi eliminated recurring software charges, which was a key selling point.

“In retail, margin is everything,” Paul says. “When you compare a solution like UniFi to traditional enterprise vendors, you’re not saddled with an ongoing license cost for each device. That alone adds up to real savings across hundreds of stores. And, crucially, the hardware is still robust enough to handle daily restaurant demands.”

Standardized Hardware Stack

Each Five Guys restaurant now follows a core blueprint:

1. UDM Pro as the central gateway and router
2. USW 24-port PoE switches (often in pairs for redundancy)
3. U6 LR access points providing dual-band Wi-Fi 6 coverage for employees, kiosks, and any needed guest access
4. UniFi LTE backup for seamless failover in case wired broadband goes down

“For us, the U6 LR access points are ideal because many stores have tough, kitchen-grade building materials that can reduce signal,” Paul says. “With LR, we can always turn down the power if needed. It’s easier to dial back than to realize you don’t have enough coverage.”

Full Visibility via UniFi Site Manager With so many locations, Twilight Zone Engineering relies on UniFi’s Site Manager to see high-level performance at a glance, identify top bandwidth consumers, and quickly spot whether a store’s connectivity is throttled by staff streaming video.

Built-In Failover with UniFi LTE A stable connection is mission-critical to avoid downtime. If a store’s primary connection falters, the UniFi LTE module kicks in. “We get near-zero downtime now,” says Paul. “Previously, if the broadband cut out, the store had to go into offline mode, impacting sales. Now we have dual or even triple redundancy in some places—wired ISP, UniFi LTE, and even Starlink in some cases.”

The Four-Month Deployment

Rapid Rollout with No Store Closures. In the biggest phase, Twilight Zone Engineering migrated 170+ UK sites from mixed legacy gear to a uniform UniFi setup in just four months—without shutting down a single store.

• Tight Window: Each store upgrade happened between 8:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m., before doors opened.
• Repeatable Kit: Each site shipped with a pre-configured UDM Pro, PoE switches, access points, and an LTE unit.
• Simple Swap: Existing hardware was removed, UniFi devices installed, and everything tested in less than four hours.

Nationwide & Europe-Wide Reach Five Guys stores are dotted across the UK—from Scotland to Wales, urban centers to suburban retail parks. Twilight Zone Engineering planned an efficient route schedule to handle daily deployments. As each new European market opened (France, Germany, Spain), local teams replicated the UK model, relying on Twilight Zone Engineering for higher-level configuration and troubleshooting.

Additional Highlights

Supporting Staff & Delivery Riders Beyond POS devices, the network offers a separate VLAN and SSID for delivery riders (e.g., Uber Eats, Deliveroo) who might have poor mobile reception. “They can connect to the store’s Wi-Fi to pick up orders seamlessly,” Paul says. “In turn, that helps the restaurant serve customers faster.”

Preparing for Future Services Five Guys’ corporate offices, also running UniFi, are considering adding UniFi Access for door control and UniFi Protect for security cameras. “We love that the platform is modular,” Paul says. “We can keep the same core gateway and switches, then add cameras or door readers whenever it makes sense, without extra licensing fees.”

Ongoing Management and Growth With more European expansion likely, Twilight Zone Engineering sees UniFi as the long-term standard. Paul notes that it’s easy to plug new stores into the existing Site Manager setup: “Every new location just follows the same blueprint. That’s the beauty of a consistent hardware and software stack.”

Conclusion

Rolling out more than 1,500 UniFi devices across 250+ Five Guys restaurants in the UK and continental Europe required speed, adaptability, and robust technology. Twilight Zone Engineering standardized on UDM Pros, PoE switches, U6 LR APs, and UniFi LTE for redundancy—proving that a license-free, all-in-one platform can operate at significant scale.

By seamlessly connecting everything from POS systems and kiosks to HR portals and future security cameras, Five Guys ensures each new burger joint delivers not only the same classic menu, but also consistent, reliable connectivity in every corner of Europe.