It should come as a surprise to no one really that the national burger chain Five Guys Burgers and Fries picked our sun-drenched Town of Marana as the place to roll out milkshakes — in November.
New York might have been the tasting ground since last spring, but let’s face it, no one in New York is craving a milkshake when the temperatures flirt with freezing.
Beginning Wednesday, Five Guys at 7077 N. Thornydale Road at West Ina Road will begin serving premium creamy shakes that start with a base of vanilla ice cream and milk. You then customize it with mix-ins including Ghirardelli sweet cocoa sauce, fresh strawberries marinated in simple syrup, crumbled Oreo cookies, all-natural peanut butter sweetened with honey and fresh bananas.
A 16-ounce serving is $3.99 and like Five Guys burgers, you decide how to dress it up with as many or as little toppings as you like. In addition to fruits and premium chocolates, you also can blend in Ghirardelli caramel pinched with sea salt, coffee and malted milk. There’s also apple wood smoked bacon cooked and crumbled to order.
“The No. 1 comment we get is ‘When are you guys going to get shakes?’” said Doug Vaughan, who owns the Tucson area’s six Five Guys restaurants with D & J Holdings partner Jeff Noyce.“We are so excited. It is going to be the missing link for us.”
Vaughan, a retired PepsiCo executive from Kansas, said Five Guys tapped D & J Holdings because of the Tucson area’s year-round milkshake-friendly weather. But he said the company also liked the way Vaughan and Noyce have run their restaurants since opening the first one at North Campbell Avenue and East Glenn Street in September 2010.
“They have confidence that we can step up and do the rollout flawlessly,” Vaughan said during a recent Tuesday lunchtime while nibbling fries at his newest restaurant at Spectrum Mall on the south side.
Vaughan said he anticipates his other Tucson Five Guys restaurants — 2802 N. Campbell Ave.; 4362 N. Oracle Road near Tucson Mall; 5566 E. Broadway; and 9484 E. 22nd St. — will begin serving the milkshakes by mid-December.
Vaughan and Noyce have the franchise rights to all of Southern Arizona including Sierra Vista and Casa Grande, he said.
The partners have been on the lookout for locations in Sierra Vista and would like to be open in that market sometime in the next year.
