The Accidental Empire of Fast FoodNYT, 15-Dec-09
By GLENN COLLINS
CONSIDER, now, the not-so-fast-food rollout. Of the anti-chain chain.
Indeed, to comprehend the prudent and eccentric global-expansion vision of Shake Shack, Danny Meyer’s mini-chain of burger-and-custard stands, it is useful to consider the essence of contemporary American fast food.
“The whole experience is to cram people into a cookie-cutter space, to feed them as many unhealthy calories as possible — then get them to leave,” said Mr. Meyer, the president of the Union Square Hospitality Group and the Yoda of Shake Shack. “That stripping away of human experience? That is where fast food went astray.”
Contrast and compare, then, with the three Shake Shacks in New York City, where patrons are cheerfully welcomed at the counter of a neighborhood-centered, urban-fantasy version of a burger roadhouse. On the menu? Whole-muscle, no-trimmings, fresh-ground, antibiotic-and-hormone-free, source-verified-to-ranch-of-birth, choice-or-higher-grade Black Angus beef.
Furthermore, “people have to wait in line just to place their orders,” Mr. Meyer, 51, said on a recent afternoon. “After that? They have to wait for us to cook their orders. And then? We hope they’ll stay awhile, as they eat. To enhance the communal experience.”
And since Mr. Meyer’s team is on the case, the imminent proliferation of the concept — four Shacks will open in 2010, and a long-range plan calls for even more — will be persistent. Thoughtful. Considered. Crafted. Correct. In short, exactly what might be expected in a venture where the entire burger-management team honed its skills in three-star restaurants.
And it’s all so Danny.
“A hamburger stand is a very democratizing amenity,” he said. “We hope that each new Shake Shack can become both a citizen of, and mirror of, their communities.”
The Shake Shack rollout is precedent-shattering for the Union Square Hospitality Group. “We’ve always resisted expanding anything, ever,” Mr. Meyer said. “We resisted offers in Las Vegas. We resisted reality TV shows. And it took six years with Shake Shack before we decided to go forth and multiply.”
He has put David Swinghamer — his longtime business partner — in charge of the Shacking of America. As Mr. Swinghamer says of the ramp-up: “This is not a formula that anyone else has, or would do.” (Mr. Swinghamer had supervised the Blue Smoke barbecue restaurants, which Mr. Meyer would like to replicate, but others will lead that push.)
If the deliberate pace of expansion hardly seems to suggest a world-domination strategy, nevertheless a global future is in Mr. Meyer’s sights. Next year Shake Shack plans to plant its standard in Kuwait — way beyond its well-worn subway stops.
Mr. Swinghamer said the Shack in Kuwait will be managed by Alshaya, a local company that handles 50 brands in the Middle East, including Starbucks, Dean & DeLuca and Le Pain Quotidien.
In the United States, however, Shacks will not be franchised. Mr. Swinghamer said that “in five years we could have 20, mostly up and down the East Coast.”
Scheduled to open next year is an outpost on the ground floor of a Miami Beach building on Lincoln Road designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron. (It designed the bird’s nest stadium at the Beijing Olympics.)
Another new Shack will land at Prince and Mulberry Streets, to be opened this spring.
On the Upper East Side, Mr. Swinghamer has leased a ground-floor space next door to the Barnes & Noble on the southeast side of East 86th Street near Lexington Avenue.
It is to open sometime next year, around the time another Shack will make its debut in the theater district at the southwest corner of 44th Street and Eighth Avenue, Mr. Swinghamer said.
Schnipper’s Quality Kitchen, three blocks south at 41st Street and Eighth Avenue — whose menu includes premium burgers — seems sanguine about the impending Shack.
“We serve a much more varied menu,” said Andrew Schnipper, its chief executive, who is also looking for more locations.
Mr. Swinghamer professes not to see competition with Schnipper’s. “All boats rise with the tide,” he said.
Shake Shack has also been trying to transplant its Noo Yawk sensibility to an octagonal outpost on the Boston Common (in a crumbling former men’s room). So far Bostonians have mostly greeted the prospect with snark. Some said that since hometown milkshakes are called frappes, the interloper might more properly be emblazoned with the words Frappe Shack.
Mr. Swinghamer said Boston Common is still on his radar. After all, Mr. Meyer brought a Chicago-style hot dog — celery salt, sport peppers and all — to condescending Manhattanites.
Mr. Meyer’s accidental empire began with a hot dog cart in 2001, part of an art installation in Madison Square Park. “To our astonishment, every day, a line would form,” Mr. Meyer said. The cart expanded into a burger stand, “and none of us had any idea that that could be a success.”
The Shake Shack prototype cost a bit shy of $1 million, even though the prefabricated building, designed by James Wines, “arrived like the falling house” among the Munchkins, Mr. Meyer said. “One day it wasn’t there? And the next day it was there.”
In future, Mr. Swinghamer said, each new Shack will cost over $1 million and will be in what he called “special places in each community.”
Thus, the popular Shack satellite at Columbus Avenue and 77th Street “is across from a museum and has a distinctive glass ‘sidewalk shed’ that is an indoor cafe,” said Randy Garutti, chief operating officer of Shake Shack.
And at Citi Field in Flushing, Queens, home of the New York Mets, Shake Shack is crowned by the beloved skyline silhouette that once topped the demolished Shea Stadium scoreboard.
Mr. Meyer said that keeping a sense of community was one challenge in expanding the Shacks, along with maintaining the original’s quality, hospitality and “glint in its eye.” He referred to the bad puns that he seems to favor, such as the fall “Shacktoberfest,” and the winter “Have Yourself a Merry Little Custard.”
The Union Square Hospitality Group does not discuss revenues, which have been estimated at $70 million by trade publications.
Shake Shacks “are profitable,” Mr. Meyer said. “They don’t need a robust economy to work. They have a highly focused menu. They are replicable. There is no reservation operation. There is no florist. And it’s a fun thing.”
The premium burger market “is a really hot niche,” said Malcolm M. Knapp, who heads a restaurant consulting firm in Manhattan that bears his name.
He said of Shake Shack: “They can make a lot of money. Burgers are not only American comfort food, but they are also American ethnic food.” This is why “Americans go abroad hankering for a burger,” Mr. Knapp said, and why a global premium-burger strategy could be well received.
The popularity of the Shake Shacks has been wildly beyond expectations, partly due to their humble order average of $13, “perfect for this economy,” Mr. Swinghamer said.
Remarkably, with more than $4 million in yearly sales, each of the Manhattan Shacks outdistances both premium and mass-market burger chains. McDonald’s, for example, has an average of $2.29 million in yearly revenues from each of its 13,958 outlets, according to Technomic, a Chicago-based restaurant consultant. The Shacks also outdo a premium-burger legend, the Virginia-based Five Guys Burgers and Fries; its 535 stores each average $1.03 million in sales.
Some customers think the Shack rollout is long overdue. “The quality is there, so if they don’t screw it up, they’ll be O.K.,” said Sandy Hawkins, a 61-year-old inventor from TriBeCa who was consuming his Shackburger under heat lamps on a recent frigid afternoon in Madison Square Park.
So how fast and how far can the Hospitality Group take this? Five Guys began franchising only in 2003, and has now ballooned to 535 stores. “Our focus is not on how many you do,” Mr. Swinghamer said bluntly. “If we can’t do it right? We won’t do it.”
Mr. Meyer commented that “we will grow as broadly as we can, without losing the quality, the hospitality, the community. And the sense of humor.”
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