This week, Five Guys celebrated the launch of its flagship store at Dubai International Airport’s Terminal 3 (T3). The store marks the first Five Guys branch in an airport outside of the USA.
Campaign Middle East spoke to the leaders behind the store opening to understand the challenges of cementing a new branch in an airport. They had some interesting thoughts to share on the strategy of the new branch’s location and the team effort it took to get the quick service restaurant’s new location to the masses.
Shamal Holding owns the licensing rights as a franchisor for Five Guys in the UAE. The move to open a branch at DXB airport was in an effort to bring the brand’s familiarity and promise of quality to tired travelers.
“Our customers have grown to love the brand for its quality and the 250,000 customisable ways they can enjoy their favorite Five Guys burgers and hotdogs. That is what the brand is loved for,” said Dina Jreissati, Senior Executive Vice President, Marketing & Communications, Shamal Holding.
“At Five Guys UAE, we pride ourselves on maintaining a strong and consistent brand identity while also embracing some creative marketing strategies,” she said.
“For the pre-launch, we collaborated with Five Guys on a social media teaser campaign that performed extremely well, with overwhelmingly positive sentiment,” said Michelle Lee, Vice President, Brand & Communications, Dubai Airports.
“We placed our iconic peanut sacks on the airport conveyor belts as a fun visual teaser, hinting at the arrival of Five Guys. It sparked a lot of curiosity and created impressive engagement on the social channels for both Five Guys UAE and DXB,” Jreissati added.
The results from the campaign were incredibly successful, with high engagement rates across major social media platforms.
“The campaign achieved 11 million views and 1.7 million engagements across Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, making it the second most-viewed piece of content for us in Q2,” Lee said.
Social media influencers and media personnel attended the launch event on Wednesday, July 10. The inaugural event tied together the bright and lively elements of the Five Guys brand.
Reviewing the launch event, Eugene Barry, Chief Commercial Officer at Dubai Airports, said, “It’s fun, it’s relevant, and it ties in the contemporary feel of the brand in an extremely innovative way.” The outlet had live music playing and fun interactions with visitors from the staff.
The team at Five Guys also had in-event activations running throughout the airport. “Five Guys did a mini ‘takeover’ of DXB, which included a live radio broadcast, a takeover of our Flight Information Display screens and a joint social media campaign,” Lee said.
As for the challenges behind launching the new store’s location, the team said they gave it their all to overcome any that came their way. The team said they maintained a very close relationship with Dubai Airports, not just commercially but also in terms of operations and communication as well.
“This is the biggest international airport in the world. The scale, volume, and expectations are very different,” Barry said. “But solutions were found very quickly in terms of innovation.”
Barry explained that Five Guys evolved its product offering to cater meals to customers based on the time they traveled. “The different kinds of products, like breakfast, which they didn’t have before on their menu, licensed bar, and coffee, have never been done by the brand before.”
“They adapted to an airport environment very quickly and the result of all of that is that you have a very successful outlet from day one that caters to more than just one purpose,” he said.
