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Shake Shack

September 26, 2018

Seattle Shake Shack Goes Super Local with Crowd Cow Beef

Seattle has been salivating over our forthcoming Shake Shack for months. The Emerald City may have the iconic Dick’s Burgers, mountains of local produce, and more oysters than you can shake a stick at, but something about the Danny Meyer-led chain’s cheeseburgers, crinkle fries, and ice cream concretes has created a rabid fan base for the soon-to-be restaurant.

The new Shake Shack will open in Seattle’s Westlake neighborhood, smack dab in the middle of the sprawling Amazon campus, and will come with a few locally-inspired menu items. Chief among them is the Montlake Double Cut, which Seattle Met revealed today would be a double cheeseburger made with local beef sourced from Crowd Cow, topped with Just Jack cheese from Seattle institution Beecher’s Handmade Cheese, caramelized onions, and a mustard-mayo sauce on a locally made Macrina bakery bun.

Shake Shack has a history of teaming up with local institutions to add regional-specific dishes to the menus of its new outposts. For example, for its Austin, Texas location, the company created a burger topped with jalapeno-cheese sausage from Texas barbecue spot Kreuz Market. However, this Seattle creation marks the first time the chain has ever made a change to its custom-blended beef patties.

Honestly, we can’t wait to try the Crowd Cow burgers. (I’m a vegetarian, and I’m still excited about the partnership.) Crowd Cow is an online service that lets consumers buy craft beef (and chicken, and pork, and fish) from local farmers, then delivers it directly to their door. The Seattle-based startup recently raised $8 million to expand their network of farmers and improve their supply chain.

This partnership was a savvy move on Shake Shake’s part. By partnering with a marketplace like Crowd Cow, they can feature locally raised beef from small farms without ever worrying about hiccups in their supply. If a certain farm can’t provide meat one week, Crowd Cow can always search its marketplace to source some more.

By developing a burger that’s not only regionally-inspired but also made of regionally-sourced beef, the New York-based chain can attract customers who might typically avoid chain restaurants. “Shake Shack was looking to do something very particular to Seattle,” Crowd Cow co-founder Ethan Lowrey told me over the phone.

Not only is their beef local, it’s also much higher quality than you’ll see in a store or restaurant — even the fancy ones. The cows in Crowd Cow’s marketplace are raised for steak, which means their meat is a superior grade. “Our secret weapon is our ground beef,” Lowrey said. “Even if you compare it with the nicest ground beef you buy in a store, it’s just night and day.”

By sourcing beef from Crowd Cow, Shake Shack can capitalize on recent demands for transparent meat sourcing. As my colleague Chris Albrecht wrote a few months ago:

According to The Power of Meat report, conventional meat sales were flat in 2017, while meat with special production (natural, organic, etc.) and claims about ethical animal treatment saw “dollar gains of 4.8 percent and volume growth of 5.1 percent.” 

As far as we can tell, this partnership is the first time that Crowd Cow has sold their meat to a high-volume restaurant. Let’s hope the growing startup can keep up with the demand of Shake Shack-crazed Seattleites.

Beyond beef, Shake Shack will also add a few local creations to its menu of concretes (basically, extra-thick milkshakes): one with seasonal pie from A La Mode Pies, one with Theo’s dark chocolate, and another with brittle made from Sea Wolf croissants.

There’s no official word on the opening day for the Westlake Shack Shack, though it’s rumored to be sometime in the next few weeks. If you get to stop in and order the Montlake Double Cut, be sure to tweet us @TheSpoonTech and tell us how you liked it.

August 10, 2018

Shake Shack Gives Self-Service Kiosks a Second Chance

A little over a year ago, Shake Shack opened its first-ever location powered by self-service kiosks in the East Village. At the restaurant, all ordering and payments were made through digital kiosks — no human intervention necessary.

Except human intervention actually was totally necessary. In a matter of months, customers practically declared mutiny and Shake Shack abandoned the concept. “The kiosks are also supposed to make things go quicker, but the wait is even longer,” one commenter noted.

But it seems the Danny Meyer-backed chain is giving the concept another go. This week Shake Shack announced it will expand its kiosk locations; but with some differences from the pilot.

Most notably, the selected stores will feature a more hybrid concept, offering both cashiers and kiosks. This combo is a wise move on Shake Shack’s part, since kiosks still cause a fair share of confusion and there are many who would benefit more from interacting with an actual person. Guests will also be able to use cash if they prefer, as the card-only payments were a point of grief with the original kiosk-concept location. Right now, Shake Shack currently has five locations that offer this hybrid kiosk-human structure, and plans to open more in areas like San Francisco and Seattle, where labor costs run especially high.

And labor costs will continue to be an issue. On its second-quarter earnings call, Shake Shack reported that those increased year over year by 26.3 percent, partially driven by increases to minimum wage.

That’s where the kiosks come in: “We are learning how the kiosk experience changes the flow in the front-house, the extent to which we are back to speed at service, kitchen throughput, how it best enhances the guest experience, its ability to deliver labor leverage in the future and how ordering behavior may be impacted,” said CEO Randy Garutti.

Automation in quick-service restaurants is becoming more and more commonplace, to make an understatement — and it’s not hard to see why. Analysts say that kiosks could help McDonald’s recoup $2.7 billion in sales. The fast food leader said it plans to add kiosks to 1,000 stores every quarter for the next two years.

And kiosks were all the rage at this year’s National Restaurant Association show, which had products from 365 Retail Markets, Adusa Inc., and Apex. And those are just the first three on the alphabetized list.

Shake Shack stands a somewhat better chance of succeeding with kiosks this time around. That’s partly because they’re still accepting cash and party because people’s perception towards automation has shifted since the first iteration. Consumers in general are more comfortable with kiosk interfaces in 2018 than ever before, whether at the airport or eating lunch.

However, it’s best not to paint too rosy a future at the moment. Shake Shack and others may be touting an ideal solution with these kiosk-cashier hybrid locations, but there are no significant numbers yet on how well the locations will perform. And with labor costs continuing to rise, the pressure to automate more and more restaurant operations will increase. Understanding when and where to do that — and when and where not to — will be key to any fast-casual chain’s success.

Interested in the future of restaurant tech? Come to the Smart Kitchen Summit! Use discount code SPOON for 25% off of tickets. 

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