Five Guys and The Impacts of Hurricane Ian

Hello, my name is Dan Beaulieu. I am a Franchisee with Five Guys Burgers and Fries in Southwest Florida. We operate 9 locations that took a direct hit from the majority of the eye wall from an almost category 5 Hurricane Ian on September 28th. Our locations cover the area from Bonita Springs, FL northward up to Port Charlotte, FL. The reason for this GoFundMe page is to reach out to my fellow franchisees, Five Guys corporate office, customers who were not impacted by the storm and our Five Guys Fanatics, to assist us in helping some of our employees that were most severely affected by this storm.

Although almost every employee did not avoid some type of personal impact from this storm, others were hit harder than most. I would assume that many of you have seen some of these extreme examples on television. These are some of their stories without including any of their names to maintain their privacy...

One of our Assistant Managers from our Cape Coral, FL location: Her house was destroyed, as well as her two cars were flooded out. She had to temporarily move to panhandle in Florida with family and was working with her parents to buy her a car so she could get back down here as she wanted to get back to work at Five Guys. One of her biggest concerns was losing her job that she loves at Five Guys.

One of our Team Members from Bonita Springs area: Her roof fell into the house and the entire house is unlivable. She had her car in the shop getting repairs prior to the storm and that shop took on some serious damage and she is not sure when she will get her car back. Yet she still has shown up everyday with a smile in her face.

Our location that had the team members with the most impact was the location closest to Ft. Myers Beach on Summerlin Rd. Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel Island and a lot of the neighborhoods in that area had significant flooding and extreme winds and took the hardest and longest of the impacts of this storm. One of these Team Members has 6 kids and he had to throw away all of their clothes, furniture and almost everything in their apartment due to the flooding in their home.

Two brothers at this store had to relocated and literally lost everything. They just went back to school and had to get donations for books, backpacks, clothes, etc.

There are at least four similar stories of unlivable, flooded homes with loss of all if not most of their personal belongings and treasures from just this one store alone. Each one of them is struggling in some way.

We are reaching out to each of you to help us attempt to do the following for as many of these employees as we can help, depending upon each of their individual needs:

1) Assist with getting them into an apartment or a home to rent, whether through security deposits, first and last months rent, etc.

2) Help them buy items for their homes (i.e. appliances, furniture, etc.). Most of them had to put all of these items on their curbs due to water damage and most did not have flood insurance. Yes FEMA is helping but it is slow and does not provide for everything.

3) Assist with those in need of vehicles. If they didn't have insurance, help with down payments on vehicles and if they did, help with any deductables. Ultimately the goal is to get them back to having reliable transportation so they can get back to normalcy and get their lives back on track.

4) Help with clothing and school supplies. It's been tough on the kids, especially with no power for weeks, inability to use the water in some areas, limited internet and losing all of their prized possessions.

Please help us help them! Five Guys in Southwest Florida operates like an extended family with some team members with our Five Guys family for many, many years. Just like how Five Guys was originally started with the Murrell Family, we are just an extension of that. We kindly ask for any financial support you can provide toward improving the lives of some of our Southwest Florida Five Guys family. THANK YOU IN ADVANCE!