Founder Jerry Murrell once posted a sign at one of his Five Guys Burgers and Fries restaurants that read, “If you’re in a hurry, there are a lot of good hamburger places nearby.”

The cheeky words didn’t quite catch on as a marketing slogan, but the top-quality, cooked-to-order food that inspired them is the only advertising the fast-casual chain has ever needed. On the strength of a simple menu of never-frozen hamburgers, fresh-cut fries and sesame-seed buns from its own bakeries, Lorton, Va.-based Five Guys has ballooned from a handful of stores when franchising began in 2003 to about 270 today, making it one of the fastest-growing companies among R&I’s Top 400 chains.

Although this year’s crop of leaders in sales growth hail from across the chain-menu spectrum, a few themes are worth noting. Besides Five Guys Burgers and Fries, the fast-casual segment spawned several others, among them Baton Rouge, La.-based Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers, Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Pei Wei Asian Diner and Wheat Ridge, Colo.-based Qdoba Mexican Grill. Also making the list were multiple brewery-themed casual-dining concepts, including St. Louis Park, Minn.-based Granite City Food & Brewery and Glenview, Ill.-based Bar Louie.

Despite the challenging economy and reports that consumers are trading down in their dining-out choices, a host of higher-end chains—including Dallas-based Fogo de Chão and Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Kona Grill—posted impressive sales and unit increases.

“It’s the value we offer given what we are charging and what we deliver,” says Jair Coser, founder and president of Fogo de Chão, which saw sales grow 33% to $128 million in 2007 from $96 million the prior year.

At a typical steakhouse, Coser explains, a customer might spend $100 for a meal that includes one type of steak. At Fogo de Chão, where dinner checks average $70 per person, guests can sample unlimited servings of 15 cuts of meat, among them leg of lamb, beef ribs, pork chops and linguiça sausage. The price tag also includes a gourmet salad and vegetable buffet plus side dishes such as fried plantains, polenta and mashed potatoes.

To introduce customers in new markets to the concept—Miami; Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Kansas City, Mo., are on the docket for the rest of this year, which will bring the chain’s total restaurants to 19—each restaurant opens with a lower, introductory price point for 60 days. The promotion is clearly communicated to avoid any backlash when regular prices are instituted, Coser says.

Churrascaria-style steakhouses built around a similar formula are now proliferating across the United States, and the increased competition has mixed effects on Fogo de Chão restaurants, depending on the quality of the competing operation. For example, Coser says, some churrascarias don’t offer the same quality of meat that customers are accustomed to finding at steakhouses, whereas Fogo de Chão features only certified Angus beef.

“When they’re good, it helps,” he says. “When the competition executes the concept badly, we need to work harder to let customers know that we are different, that we do it the right way.”

Forging a path toward national expansion calls for clearly defined selling points for consumers and sustainable growth strategies for companies. For Five Guys Burgers and Fries, the simplicity of the concept, along with a strategy of selling territories rather than individual franchises, makes it especially easy to replicate, Murrell says.

“What typically happens in franchise operations is they have one or two pretty good restaurants that the public likes and then they have a hard time duplicating it because [the system is] so complicated. We’re only selling hamburgers and fries and a hot dog, that’s it. We should be able to teach just about anybody how to do that,” Murrell says of the concept’s explosive growth.

At Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Kona Grill, an 18-unit upscale-casual chain targeting 25% annual restaurant growth, expansion is driven by individual locations rather than markets, says Chief Operating Officer Jason Merritt.

“We’re looking for where we can get an 'A’ site, whether that’s in New Jersey or Minnesota or Texas,” Merritt says. “We’re not limiting ourselves to one part of the country, nor are we going in and saying because we have one store in Chicago, now we have to build Chicago out.” He adds that the company eventually will take advantage of the economies of scale gained by filling out established markets.

Among current criteria for new sites is an overall population of at least 150,000 and a daytime population of about 85,000. Freestanding, endcap and inline models allow the chain to target various types of developments for its locations, all company-owned.

For consumers, Kona Grill’s unique package—an extensive array of cooked foods, a sushi menu and a vibrant bar/lounge scene—breaks through the clutter of offerings in the upscale-dining segment, Merritt says. The kitchen also delivers another point of differentiation: more than 40 scratch-made sauces prepared daily on-site by dedicated sauciers to complement the menu’s 55 items.

“Often concepts create a lot of dishes from scratch when they start off and then when they grow put in a commissary or have somebody else manufacture these [items] for them and ship them in frozen,” Merritt says. “We will not go in that direction.”

Contact writer at aperlik@reedbusiness.com

Fast-casual concepts such as Five Guys Burgers and Fries are among the chains posting the most-impressive growth figures.