Shake Shack: Recipes & Stories

Shake Shack has always been about “moving mountains.” It’s a deliberate striving for excellence that began intuitively; it was just the way we did business. But as we’ve grown, our culture had to be shared, articulated, and intentional. Danny taught us that. But when it comes to moving mountains, I guess I learned that growing up. My mom taught me to never see obstacles in life, to push through to the next challenge, and to believe there’s nothing you can’t achieve. When my brother and I were 8 or 9 years old, she’d call and tell us, “There’s chicken in the fridge, cook it up and have it ready for dinner when I get home!” If there was work to be accomplished, saying “No” was not an option. She just expected us to get stuff done. And have fun doing it.

My dad taught me to always believe in me—no matter what! He gave me intellectual curiosity and inspired me to want to learn, to ask why, to never let the status quo be good enough, to take my thinking to the next critical level. And to do it all with passion!

If I were to interview you for a job today, I’d look you in the eye and say: “There’s something you have to know to work here. Moving mountains is the baseline requirement of your job. And if that’s not for you, then this place isn’t for you.” Today, Shake Shack’s attitude reflects that. We believe anything’s possible. We work to make things just a little bit better each day. We are realistically confident that anything can be achieved, and we work hard to find the “Yes!” in every interaction.

We push each other, too. I was lucky to be born with a positive mind-set. I wake up every day believing this day could be the best day of my life. But that attitude has downsides I’m well aware of. I don’t wake up worried about the world, so it’s important that I surround myself with a few people who do. I love it when our team pushes back and together we find a better answer. I surround myself with leaders who are different, who want to find great solutions and who share the common desire to make Shake Shack just a little better today than yesterday.

The bigger we get, the smaller we need to act. We believe that each time we add a link to our chain, we do it with the same attention to detail, the same passion, and the same creativity as the first. Who ever wrote the rule that a “chain” couldn’t be a positive force for good? We believe we’re building something special—a “chain” that becomes even stronger as it grows.

We challenge the givens, every day. It’s why we grind your burger fresh every night from only the best cuts of hormone-and- antibiotic-free beef using only whole muscles, never trimmings. We spin your milkshake by hand, made from our own frozen custard that’s made fresh all day. We use the finest ingredients—many shared in this book—to make our favorite versions of the classics you love. We work with the best local purveyors and tell them with confidence, “You’ll grow with us as we grow.” We love to challenge conventional wisdom. And prove it wrong!

Hospitality. At the core of our team training is our favorite quote from the great Maya Angelou, who said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Since day one, we’ve been in the “feel” business, re-creating and undoing everything people were wired to believe about traditional fast food. Somehow, when we put that all together, the Shack creates a natural, effortless connection that people gravitate toward. It’s a defining thing, not an intellectual construct. It’s something people all over the world can put their arms around. It’s easy and it’s fun. It just feels right when you’re together at the Shack with the people who matter to you. You enter with excited anticipation, and you leave feeling just a little bit happier.

We stand for something good. And we’re doing it one burger at a time. At the end of the day, my ultimate role and the role of our leaders is to surround ourselves with amazing human beings and create an environment where A+ people make the right decisions. When we do that, magical things happen. As Danny Meyer says, “It’s that simple. And it’s that hard.”

I was asked to speak at a conference held by Conscious Capitalism, an organization devoted to mindful business practices and supported by the likes of Whole Foods and The Container Store. As I was finishing my speech, I knew that my team was working hard outside preparing burgers for an unsuspecting crowd of 200 CEOs, presidents, and industry leaders.

We had spent much time the previous two days talking about taking care of our people. On a panel about the importance of the minimum wage, I’d told them that nothing upsets me more than hearing the term “flipping burgers” to designate the lowest form of work. I’m proud of our hardworking team. We are a career choice for many, a place to start, or restart. A place to build confidence and ultimately a place that can lift you up even further.

So as I finished my speech, I told the crowd, “My team is outside cooking burgers for you. But guess what? You’re not going to get one until you do me a favor.” Then I asked, “When was the last time you looked at a person in the eye who flipped your hamburger, thanked them, and gave them the dignity they deserve?” I got choked up. People immediately went behind the tent to shake hands with our crew. It was awesome, a real example of if we really believe what we preach, maybe we can push the world a little bit. Maybe next time you grab a burger in your hometown, you’ll do the same.

ON TRAINING

When Randy hired Peggy Rubenzer from deep management experience at Southwest Airlines and then PF Chang’s, there was no consistent process in place for promotion and pay increases. Each Shack managed their people differently. “I wanted to make sure that the brand our employees experience is consistent with the brand our guests experience,” she explains. “I wanted to help create a culture that breathes more life and more passion and more energy into the things they do every day.” Peggy began to design accessible online training modules, where employees can engage at their own pace. “I went through training, learning every job like a new hire would.

“You know those companies that slap five values on a wall and hope that becomes the culture? Not for us. We know that each person you bring into your culture somehow changes it. So we created a course that says, ‘This is how you get promoted.’ We call it our Steppin’ Up model because through their own initiative our team members step up to the next level of pay and responsibility.You click into Station Training, and you can learn every station in the kitchen. Two certifications and you get a training title and a pay increase. And upward through six certification steps. We wanted to show there’s a reason why you’re getting more money and a better title. We remove the randomness, provide crystal clear direction and opportunity, and say, ‘Now it’s up to you!’”

“There’s not a whole lot of direction out there for kids. Their employment may be the only place for them to blossom.”

—PEGGY RUBENZER, SVP, PEOPLE RESOURCES

“People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. People will never forget how you made them feel.”

LEADERS TRAINING FUTURE LEADERS

“I want everyone to drink the Kool-Aid like I did.”

—RUTH ALCEUS, ASSISTANT GENERAL MANAGER, ATLANTA

In 2010, Ruth Alceus was working at a Burger King in Miami Beach, living with her six kids in a sketchy neighborhood, when she saw an online ad that Shake Shack was opening. “I didn’t even know what it was, and I certainly was not thinking of advancing,” she remembers. Nonetheless, she interviewed with Zach Koff (now Chief Operating Officer, but then GM of his first Shack) and was hired. “Once I saw how they did things, how people communicated with each other, that made me think outside the box. Randy and Danny came to work with us and I thought ‘When does a CEO and chairman just show up like that?’ I got to know the people who came to cross-train us. I saw that they were regular people like me, but they were traveling the world. And I began to think I could do better things, too. It was pretty cool, and life changing.”

Two years later, when Coral Gables opened, Ruth was ready to be a manager, and moved there with her family. And in 2014, Ruth moved to Atlanta to help open the first Shack there, in Buckhead. “I always wanted to live here,” she says. “It makes a difference for my kids. For everything.”

“Anytime somebody comes to me with a problem, whether it’s work-related or not, I’m always listening. It’s part of my job to train and encourage our employees, to put out positive energy, to work with them one-on-one, to help set training goals and then help them reach those goals. I try to pay attention to all the little details; I watch their facial expressions. We try to keep it fun, but this is work! I was on the line, I get it. I know what ‘we are really busy right now’ means. It makes me a better boss. Today a guest dropped his shake. Twice! We just made him another. And another.” When the next Atlanta Shack opened, Ruth became its Assistant General Manager!

1. On duty. 2. Home training. 3. Youngest kids at 5:30 a.m. 4. GM Josh Kalson talks new hires.

5. Buckhead. 6. Helping Berverlie Dumas on custard. 7. Calming a guest whose order is “in the red” over 7 minutes. 8. Six kids make dinner at home.

From the sale of its first hot dog in Madison Square Park, community outreach was baked into Shake Shack’s culture. That impulse is interpreted in myriad ways as every Shack in the world chooses its own initiatives, donating time through Shack Gives Back volunteer programs and partnering with charities as big as the March of Dimes and No Kid Hungry (this page) and as hyper-local as in Austin’s efforts to clean up Lady Bird Lake, the Miami Beach team’s visits with kids at the Miami Children’s Hospital, Philadelphia’s commitment to the city’s Mural Arts Program, and Washington D.C.’s support of the Woolly Mammoth Theater Company.

It began innocently enough. Allan Ng, a North Carolina boy, came to Philadelphia as General Manager, charged with opening the first Shack there. “We had to win the city of Philly. They have a lot of pride,” he recalls. “No one knew about us. It was exhilarating but exhausting work.”

One day, Allan, a runner, pinned a note to the office door: “‘Hey, I’m going for a run, wanna come?’ A few people came out, and everyone had perma-smiles, everyone was sweating and happy.” What swiftly became Shack Track & Field has grown organically into a free community fitness club with runs and yoga classes and bike rides in cities nationwide. With branches in Moscow. And London. With its own Facebook page. And logo. And T-shirt. And partnership with SoulCycle. Marriages have begun there. It was the start of something good.

“Why would you want to ruin your business by going public?” Randy was asked recently, at one of the many investor meetings he attends, where, he says, he gets routinely questioned by Wall Street who “relentlessly pressure us to grow! grow! grow!…

“Nowadays, even the responsible growth we practice requires money. And while there are many ways to get it, for us, the best way to grow was to become a public company. What it takes to be a great public company is the desire to actually execute growth: a company needs a real fervor and excitement around it so it will never stop growing. When you think about Shake Shack as the next generation of the burger joint, an IPO was the way to help us rocketship into that place.

“But I have a favorite answer to that question, and that is this: Truly, becoming a public company was the best way to create opportunity for the people that got us here and the people who I firmly believe will take us in the direction we want to go.

“Shake Shack was born in a public park: As of January 29, 2015, it could actually be owned by the public. For Shake Shack, going public is a way to spread the culture we believe in. For our team, growth means so many more jobs at more income levels; it’s a way to keep more farmers and artisanal producers in business; a way to raise even more money for the charities and causes we believe in and support.

“Our brand is so personal; people are always telling us: ‘I want a Shake Shack in my town!’ Now they can take ownership of it. We’ve always been incredibly grateful for the people from all walks of life who genuinely love us, and who already feel like Shake Shack is theirs. What we’re really excited about is that now it actually can be. Our goal is nothing less than to be one of the best companies in the world, for the world, and for our team. Now let’s eat!”

“A crucial truth that gets lost in the hubbub around an IPO is that the business can now be owned in part by its greatest fans.”

—DANNY MEYER & RANDY GARUTTI, Letter to Shareholders