Not Just a Burger

Moments before the Shake Shack opened on March 20th this year, it appeared as if the people in line had been patiently queued up there since the Shake had closed last season. It was an endless coil that constricted around Madison Square Park, where the Shack has claimed its territory.

For the life of me, I could not figure out why this line has been so painstakingly long. The burgers and shakes are delicious, but can’t they hurry it up in that little burger box? In an effort to NOT write about “the line,” and instead write about what it is that goes into making these hour-long burger queues, I was put to work at the Shack last week.

Danny Meyers’ burger stand isn’t your old school, small-scale childhood hangout. The day before I was working the fry station, the Shack had done $13K in sales.

To get these results, everything is timed and set to a science. Hungry lunchers only think about the wait time spent before arriving at the cashier window. However, behind the scene, managers are instructing cashiers to speed up or stall the orders (by chatting up the patrons) so that the guys on the grill can stay on track with the current tickets.

The managers are also clocking the time it takes the burger to be passed off to the patron from when he/she places the order, which, in a moment of maximum efficiency was a mere 6 minutes last week. A burger being passed off to a patron is NOT a simple process—and this is at the heart of the people build-up that is lurking around the park.

Once an order is placed, which, let’s say is a Shack Stack, a Hopscotch, and a side of cheese fries, each element of this delicious lunch is made to order.

Components of the Shack Stack—two burgers with cheese plus a Shroom Burger—a deep-fried portobello stack stuffed with cheese and rolled in breads crumbs—are pulled off the grill and from the fryer and assembled. The Hopscotch—hand-dipped vanilla custard with butterscotch sauce, toffee, and chunks of Valrhona chocolate—is blended together. And the fries, piping hot, are doused with homemade cheese sauce as the ticket-holders name is called.

The line inside the Shack clearly moves faster than the one outside, but a perfect park-side lunch can only be made so fast. Get in line!