The Better Burger - America Shacks Up

How Shake Shack has customers (and many investors) salivating for its burgers and unique brand of hospitality.

- Rob Brunner, photographs by Grant Cornett

Shake Shack leader Randy Garutti tells a roomful of employees. “I want to challenge you to put us out of business.”

It’s less than 30 minutes before the 11 a.m. grand opening of what will be the 66th Shake Shack a gleaming, multimillion-dollar outpost located in a Victorian brownstone on Newbury Street, in Boston’s gold coast shopping district. The assembled workers sit riveted, but this last-minute dare is probably not what they were expecting.

Garutti, the company’s CEO, has been up since 3 a.m. He came to Boston on a late-arriving early morning Amtrak train, and he plans to hit three other Boston-area Shacks before heading home to New York. It has already been a long day. Is he having some kind of stress-induced, Howard Beale– style meltdown? Well, no. He’s just passing along a bit of the wisdom that has made his company one of the hottest restaurant businesses in the country.

Shake Shack has been inspiring excitement since it opened in New York’s Madison Square Park 11 years ago. Created by revered New York restaurateur Danny Meyer, it has since grown from a humble burger stand into a global chain with 41 U.S. outlets and 27 overseas franchises in cities such as Moscow, Dubai, Istanbul, and London. Fans line up for its signature Shack Burgers (flavor-packed beef patties served on squishy Martin’s potato rolls and wrapped in nostalgia triggering wax paper), hot dogs (Chicago-style or with beer-marinated shallots and cheese sauce), concretes (frozen custard blended with artisanal local ingredients; each Shack has its own unique creations), and house beer (ShackMeister ale, made by Brooklyn Brewery). The company went public in January, raising $112 million in an IPO that valued it at around $1.6 billion. At the time Shake Shack announced its impressive first quarter earnings in May, its stock price had more than tripled.