How has inflation hit Shake Shack?
We, as well as the entire restaurant industry, have had to pass along a portion of the inflation that we’re facing from wages, the price of beef, dairy, eggs, even paper and packaging. Everything costs us more. We’re lucky that we’re highly focused on delivering a great guest experience with premium, elevated ingredients [and] continuing to separate ourselves from traditional fast food. Guests still appreciate that.
Covid did change your business, right?
This company had hardly any digital sales prior to the pandemic. When Covid hit, we went full force on digital with the app, web, [and] third-party delivery. Now we have 43% of our sales coming from digital channels—and that doesn’t count our in-store ordering kiosks—even as our in-Shack business doubled.
What are the big advantages of digital?
We want our guests to think of our digital channels as a channel of choice, ordering ahead on their app or on [the] web, and picking up and doing delivery through both of those channels. They’re able to sit with the menu and understand it. But then we also can target our messaging to them when we have exciting new food products, are launching limited-time menu offerings, or run promotions. We’re able to get very strategic about who we’re targeting digitally.
How important a role do kiosks play?
They digitize the ordering process. They have pictures of all our menu items, and it really carries the guests through the journey. Guests gravitate to kiosks because they want some time to sit with a menu, but we see that they’re more likely to order our limited-time offers and premium-ize their products. They spend more with us, and we can redeploy labor. We’re excited to expand them to more Shacks.
Are there other changes to your stores that digital has brought?
We put in pickup shelves at most of our restaurants. Guests who are looking for that to-go experience can come in and pick up their order, and they don’t have to wait with everybody else who is waiting for their food to be made. And at the same time, that preserves an amazing guest experience for our guests who are dining in with their family or friends—there’s not a muddle of everybody kind of confused about where to go.
Restaurant operators are always talking about improving efficiency at their chains. How hard can you push for a specific wait time at Shake Shack?
We’re constantly evaluating and measuring the time from when somebody puts in their order and their food is made fresh and given to them. But we’re always going to be different from fast food because we cook our food fresh. And that just takes time. We’re not batch-cooking things and holding them under a hot lamp like many of our quick-service restaurant peers do. So when we say “Stand for something good” [the company’s slogan], it’s worth the wait, and our guests know that they’re getting something they can’t get at traditional fast food when they come to us.
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