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INSIDE THE NYC KITCHEN FUELING SHAKE SHACK'S $4 BILLION BURGER EMPIRE

Published Tue, May 21 2024 1:45 PM EDTUpdated 4 Min Ago
Nicolas Vega
@atNickVega
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Every new Shake Shack menu item is developed in its Innovation Kitchen. 
Shake Shack

Below the dining area of Shake Shack's bustling West Village location sits a
culinary laboratory constantly cooking up new ideas. 

The Innovation Kitchen, as it's known, is responsible for developing burgers,
sandwiches and shakes that will be served both at home and at Shacks as far away
as Bangkok, Thailand.


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"Any of the new menu items that you see in any of our Shake Shacks all over the
world have all been developed, researched, agonized over and tasted right here,"
John Karangis, executive chef and vice president of culinary development at
Shake Shack, tells CNBC Make It. 

Shake Shack has nearly 350 locations in the U.S. and another 134 around the
world and is valued at more than $4 billion. With dozens of new locations
opening later this year, the team in the Innovation Kitchen is constantly
developing new offerings. 

We want to be incredibly thoughtful to the place or the neighborhood where [a
new Shake Shack is] going to be.
John Karangis
Executive Chef, Shake Shack

"Whenever we open a new Shake Shack we want to be incredibly thoughtful to the
place or the neighborhood where we're going to be," Karangis says. "Our team
will go out months or sometimes years in advance and do extensive research to
understand what's really important to that place and those people and that
culture." 

When Shake Shack opened its first Japan location, for example, the Innovation
Kitchen's team flew 6,700 miles to Tokyo to explore the city's unique flavors.
What resulted was the Shack-ura Shake, which featured cherry blossom jam mixed
into the chain's famous vanilla custard. 

In order for a menu item to reach customers, it needs to be approved by Shake
Shack's 13-person tasting panel. The panel evaluates everything ranging from the
taste of food to the specific order in which ingredients are stacked on a burger
bun. 



"We agonize over what additional supporting ingredients could go on it,"
Karangis says. "Should onions and pickles go on top or on the bottom? Everything
really matters."



And it's not just the taste that needs to be taken into consideration. How
delicious an item is is only one of the factors that the Innovation Kitchen team
thinks about when developing new recipes. 

"We need to make sure we can market it in a way that can support our financial
goals," Karangis says. "We need to make sure our teams in our Shacks can
consistently execute it at a very high level. If one of those was to fail, we
wouldn't be set up for success."

In the case of the Shack-ura Shake, the frozen treat proved to be a hit and made
seasonal appearances in Japan each spring before eventually making the move
stateside. 

Shake Shack's latest limited time offering — a barbeque inspired menu — was
months in the making. Karangis and his team made "at least 25 different
versions" of each of the new burgers before settling on the final "build" for
the nationwide release. 

The team at Shake Shack's Innovation Kitchen made more than 25 versions of the
new Carolina BBQ Burger before settling on a final build.
Shake Shack

Though the Innovation Kitchen normally focuses on those limited releases, some
items like avocado and crispy onions have graduated to being full-time mainstays
on the core Shake Shack menu. 

Karangis likes passing by a Shake Shack when he's not in the kitchen and seeing
if customers are enjoying the items his team developed. Once in a while, he
says, he'll ask someone "How is that?"

"At the end of the day, our job is to make someone's day or their meal a little
more enjoyable," he says. "It feels really good to know we accomplished that."

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