The CEO of Five Guys has said he gave his employees a $1.5 million bonus to avoid being assassinated, after the company made an error with a promotional discount.
Five Guys ran a buy-one-get-one-free deal in February to celebrate the fast food chain’s 40th anniversary, prompting patrons to flock to its restaurants en masse.
Customers waited in lines that extended down the streets outside stores, but outlets ran out of food and staff became quickly overwhelmed.
Many stores were forced to end the promotion early, which sparked a major backlash on social media.
CEO Jerry Murrell, however, gave a $1,000 bonus to 1,500 stores across the US in an effort to make up for the chaos caused by the promotion.
‘I didn’t want anybody shooting me in the back or anything after the first day, because we really screwed it up,’ Murrell, 82, joked to Fortune last week. ‘We had no idea that we were going to get that kind of response.’
The comment appeared to be a reference to the December 2024 assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City.
Thompson, 50, was shot from behind by a masked gunman – believed to be 27-year-old Luigi Mangione – as he walked to a midtown Manhattan hotel for the health insurance company’s annual investor conference.
Five Guys CEO Jerry Murrell, seen in 2013, said he gave his employees a $1.5 million bonus after a chaotic day in the workplace because he ‘didn’t want anybody shooting me in the back’
The comment appeared to be a direct reference to the December 2024 assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City, who was shot in the back by a masked gunman believed to be Luigi Mangione
Murrell also joked that he was ‘gonna buy my wife a new fur coat’ but decided it was better to give his employees a bonus instead.
‘She still looks at me like I’m stupid, but I thought it was worth it,’ Murrell told the outlet. ‘They worked so hard. They were so overwhelmed.’
Five Guys re-ran its 40th birthday promotion for four days earlier this month after apologizing to customers for the botched rollout in February.
‘You visited our restaurants in overwhelming numbers, and we weren’t ready for you,’ the company told customers in a statement announcing the revamped promotion.
‘We didn’t meet our own standards, and that’s not something we take lightly.’
‘We were genuinely humbled by the response,’ Murrell added.
‘Forty years is a long time, and the outpouring of support for our 40th birthday reminded us why we love what we do.’
Mangione is facing both state and federal charges for the killing of Thompson, and the possibility of life in prison if he’s convicted in either case.
He has pleaded not guilty in both cases.
Mangione, a University of Pennsylvania graduate from a wealthy Maryland family, is accused of shooting Thompson from behind as he walked to a midtown Manhattan hotel on December 4, 2024.
Murrell, with his wife Janie in 2006, joked that he was ‘gonna buy my wife a new fur coat’ but decided it was better to give his employees a bonus instead
Mangione, in court in December 2025, has plead not guilty to state and federal charges related to the shooting death of Thompson
Brian Thompson, 50, was shot from behind as he walked to a midtown Manhattan hotel for health insurance company’s annual investor conference
Police say the words ‘delay,’ ‘deny’ and ‘depose’ were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.
Mangione was arrested five days later after he was spotted eating at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles west of Manhattan.
His lawyers have argued that authorities prejudiced his case by turning his arrest into a ‘Marvel movie’ spectacle, including by having armed officers parade him up a Manhattan pier after he was flown to New York and by publicly declaring their desire to seek the death penalty before he was indicted.
The defense, earlier this month, asked a judge to postpone his federal trial until early next year, and said they will seek to have his state murder trial delayed until September.
Mangione’s lawyers said that the current trial schedule would put him ‘in the position of needing to prepare for two complicated and serious trials at the same time.’
In January, US District Judge Margaret Garnett dismissed a federal murder charge – murder through use of a firearm – that had enabled prosecutors to seek capital punishment, finding it legally flawed.
She wrote that she did so to ‘foreclose the death penalty as an available punishment to be considered by the jury’ when it weighs whether to convict Mangione.
