How do you make Shake Shack’s offline thoughtfulness work online?
Born from a three-year-old hot dog cart in Madison Square Park in 2004, Shake Shack has become a New York institution. The reason? Well, the food tastes great but Shake Shack’s edge lays in its thoughtfulness: the original Shack was designed to be harmonious with the park it originated in, its burgers star 100% all-natural Angus beef, its menu is free of trans fat, gluten-free options are available, and the buildings comprise green materials and sustainable woods where possible. It’s the sort of stuff that inspires lines around the block around the clock. But that was the offline reality. Online, things were different.
As Shake Shack grew from a single stand in New York City to fifteen restaurants in three countries, its website stood still. Flash made for a clunky website experience and for tiresome updating. And, with mounting demand to bring new locations to more communities, the site simply couldn’t keep up.
Our mission was to bring Shake Shack’s thoughtfulness online. And this is how we thought about it.
Shake Shack has very avid fans – a lot of them, too. They share photos of burgers, burgers in mouths, fries in burgers, shakes, insignia and design, people lining up, and in-store whiteboards. They check in on Foursquare (over 165,000 check-ins at the time we posted this), they Tweet and they Like. So we created an area where Shake Shack’s most passionate connoisseurs can see what each other is doing – and we did it in a way that would not get in the way of people hunting for burgers.
