Aussie TikToker Abra Kebabra Reviews posted a video of his receipt after a visit to the first and so far only down under location of the fairly overrated American chain Five Guys Burgers and Fries, apoplectic over his order of (what appears to be) 5 cheeseburgers, 1 bacon cheeseburger, 3 large fries, and four milkshakes came out to $215 Australian dollars ($159.39 USD).
For comparison’s sake, we examined the video as closely as possible to reconstruct the order at a Downtown Brooklyn, New York Five Guys location’s web page, finding the same order would cost $107.43 here – in a very expensive commercial urban real estate market – fully $52.04 less than it does in the Aussie town of Penrith, a suburb approximately 35 miles west of Sydney. So to further underscore how much this guy got screwed, we checked a Five Guys in the town of Roxbury in North Jersey, 35 miles west of Manhattan, and the same order costs $97.21, nearly 61% less.
What the hell is going on there? The Australian state of New South Wales charges a 10% value added sales tax on all goods and services, but that’s not appreciably higher than the 8.895% that New York City and State nick at the Downtown Brooklyn Five Guys and the roughly 6.21% added to the bill at the Roxbury, New Jersey Five Guys. That’s too many dollarydoos for mediocre food.