It’s true that milkshakes tend to cost anywhere from 2 to 5 dollars. But why are the milkshakes at Five Guys even more expensive?

It’s the same reason why their burgers and fries are expensive as well. The Five Guys milkshakes, like the burgers and fries, taste so delicious they’re instant classics.

Here are the reasons why:

The Vanilla Base

Five Guys doesn’t fool around with crazy ice cream flavor or various flavored syrups for the foundation of their milkshake. They simply start with vanilla. Boring as that may seem, it’s also the one flavor that just about everyone enjoys. In fact, it’s so popular that it rivals chocolate the as most popular flavor of them all.

But vanilla isn’t actually simple, even though the name is synonymous with everything ho-hum and boring. It’s actually quite complex, and fragrant as well.

Yet it’s a relatively neutral background for many other flavors. That’s why it’s a great foundation for the Five Guys milkshake. The vanilla goes well with just about everything. In fact, even a Plain Jane vanilla milkshake without extra ingredients except a tiny bit of whipped cream still taste fantastic.

10 Possible Mix-ins (At Least)

You know how other places have different flavors of milkshakes, with their own particular sets of ingredients? That’s not the case with Five Guys. Instead, you have 10 mix-ins to choose from. You’re not limited to a certain number of mix-ins, either.

Here’s a list:

1. Malted Milk. This one’s a traditional staple for milkshakes.
2. Chocolate. It’s a blend of sweet cocoa sauce with chocolate fudge.
3. Peanut Butter. This is the PB Crave all-natural peanut butter, that’s been sweetened by honey.
4. Bananas. The bananas are fresh (just like everything else at Five Guys) and they’re in some sort of simple syrup.
5. Cherries. These are Amarena sour black cherries that they’ve blended in-house.
6. Strawberries. These are (obviously) fresh strawberries that’s also in simple syrup.
7. Salted caramel. It’s sweet caramel with just a pinch of sea salt.
8. Coffee. This isn’t just some instant coffee mix from Robusta beans. It is real coffee brewed in-house from Arabica beans.
9. Bacon. It’s the same applewood-smoked bacon you’d find in the Bacon Cheeseburger, but it’s crumbled for the milkshake. Yes, bacon does go nice with everything. This is additional proof.
10. Oreo Cookies. Actually, some Five Guys locations may offer more than 1 type of this. They can offer the Oreo cookies, the Oreo Crème, and the Double Stuff Oreo. That means you can have more than 10 options for your milkshake mix-ins.

You can pick up to all 10 of the mix-ins, or you can just go with one or two. In any case, the mathematicians say that you have at least 40,000 possible combinations to try. That sure beats out other fast-food joints that boast of more than 20 different milkshake combos. If you try at least one combo per day, then it’ll take you 109½ years to try them all.

Great -Tasting Combos

You pay the same price whether you get a single mix-in for your milkshake, or all 10. That tends to encourage a bit of experimentation.

Theoretically, this means that you’re gambling. There may be times when your experiment will go wrong, and the particular ingredients you chose won’t mix well together. And that can a rather pricey gamble, when you over $5 for a milkshake.

But surprisingly, it’s not the case. It seems as if the wizards at Five Guys didn’t just randomly pick these mix-ins. It seems apparent that they picked these ingredients with care.

Let’s start with the fact that each one of these ingredients taste good enough on their own. Each one offers something for those who generally appreciate the flavor. So, if you like chocolate and you go with just the chocolate flavor, then you’ll like. The same goes with all the other flavors.

Then you mix them up, and somehow the combination works whichever ingredients you pick. That’s true for even the weird combinations. Someone tried to put everything in the milkshake. It works. Another guy tried putting everything except coffee, and it’s good too. Even weird-on-paper matchups like cherry with peanut butter somehow works as well.

The very worst you might say is that it’s “not bad”. And that’s astounding when you have more than 40,000 combinations to try.

Of course, it’s also a lot of fun to connect with buddies through social media and find out what combinations they’ve tried. That’s part of the fun.

But there’s nothing stopping you from going the safe route with classic combos. If you want something that’s sure to please, then go with Oreo with coffee. Cherry with Chocolate is also great.

Have fun with your Five Guys milkshake!