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The hot dog stand became Shake Shack, a ritzy burger shop exclusive to just a few locales. The slow build-up was sensational. With the element of exclusivity to its advantage, consumers lined up when a Shack came to their city. Eventually, Shake Shack found a place on the U.S. Stock Exchange and achieved global scale. But almost 25 years since its humble beginning in the park, the brand’s still evolving.
In 2018, it reached a fork in the road.
We decided we could do it in a way that was uniquely Shake Shack.
Jay Livingston, Shake Shack CMO
As food delivery services rose in prominence and more consumers tapped into digital orders, Shake Shack’s leadership team wondered if it was time to explore an operational model more centered on convenience. This sparked the brand’s first interest in investing in drive-thrus, but they faced the challenge of how to implement them without marring the brand. Like many businesses that go through similar evolutions (see: Starbucks), Shake Shack had to decide if and to what extent it should hold onto its hyper-local legacy, at the risk of alienating customers that expected a specific buying experience.
“Shake Shack never thought it would do a drive-thru,” the brand’s CMO, Jay Livingston, told Adweek. “We had been on record saying it would be so challenging for us, because [of] the way we cook our food from scratch, the way we really prioritize in-line hospitality and a guest experience.”
Sometimes market disruptions leave brands with little choice but to take a leap.
Come 2020, with the pandemic in full swing, Shake Shack took action on the idea it conceived a few years earlier. It built its first drive-thru at a Maple Grove, Minn., Shack, and opened it up in December 2021. The next year, nine more drive-thrus followed. Now, it operates 12 in total, and this year it’s planning to open up 10 to 15 more.
“We decided we could do it in a way that was uniquely Shake Shack. So, we decided to move forward, and we decided to move forward very quickly,” said Livingston. “That pushed us into the place of saying, ‘All right, how do we make the experience great for our guests?’”
