Certain Habits

The New York Times wrote a good story this week about The Shake Shack, the latest—and first decidedly down market—addition to Danny Meyer’s New York restaurant empire (famous for Union Square Café among others).

The success of the Shake Shack is at once predictable—if you can’t sell a shake and burger in New York, you’re doing something wrong—and yet unexpected, by both the owners and the competition (if it was obvious, it would already have been done).

The recipe is simple. Great beef, carefully cooked burgers, and delicious shakes. The focus on quality ingredients and quality service for this humble food, though, is inspiring. And you’ve got to love the copy: “Whole-muscle, no-trimmings, fresh-ground, antibiotic-and-hormone-free, source-verified-to-ranch-of-birth, choice-or-higher-grade Black Angus beef.”

As you would expect, the Shake Shack is also fanatical about customer service. If the New York Times article is any indication, they would like their customers to stay, eat slowly, enjoy their food and the ambience. In other words, they practice what so few restaurants even bother to preach these days: their success is predicated not on how many turns they can do or how high they can push the average bill, but instead on quality service, food, decor, architecture and style that provide the customer a meaningful experience.

With lines out the door and an average ticket of $13, premium burgers have powered the Shake Shack to financial success.

Remarkably, with more than $4 million in yearly sales, each of the Manhattan Shacks outdistances both premium and mass-market burger chains. McDonald’s, for example, has an average of $2.29 million in yearly revenues from each of its 13,958 outlets, according to Technomic, a Chicago-based restaurant consultant. The Shacks also outdo a premium-burger legend, the Virginia-based Five Guys Burgers and Fries; its 535 stores each average $1.03 million in sales.