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Five Guys Famous Burgers and Fries, a D.C.-based chain that has garnered rave reviews up and down the East Coast recently entered the New York metro area. I visited their Queens location and, despite Five Guy's obsession with cooking all their meat well done, I found the burger quite good.
The Guys recently opened a shop in Hackensack, N.J. Now here's where it starts to get interesting. Überblogger Jason Perlow reports that Burger Boys, an independent joint, has also set up shop in nearby Fairview. They copied Five Guys' menu format. No big deal, right? But that's just the tip of intellectual property rights infringement iceberg. Rather than give these con artists any free advertising, I chose a pic of the Five Guys ordering area from Perlow's site. The shots he took of Burger Boys are pretty shocking.
How shocking you ask? Let's put it this way. Burger Boys didn't stop at copying the Five Guys' menu. They also lovingly reproduced the Guys' interior design, presentation of the food in brown paper bags and its insistence on cooking everything well done. I almost forgot, the Boys dress their staff in red T-shirts and hats, just like the Guys. I'd love to think that this is merely some confluence of East Coast burger synergy, but clearly it's a simple case of out-and-out theft of the Five Guys' concept.
