Five Guys is a genuine anomaly: 1,900+ locations worldwide and still 75% owned and actively run by the founding Murrell family, with no PE takeover and no outside CEO in forty years. The labor record cuts the other way — a California class action over unpaid overtime and breaks for 2,206 workers settled for $1.2M in 2023, but only after a federal judge rejected the deal four times as too small — and most locations are franchised, so pay is set shop by shop. At this scale with zero US environmental commitments, family ownership is the best thing about it and the ceiling on the verdict.