our business. Operations is blocking and tackling.” DE-RISKING THE SUPPLY CHAIN Lynch said Shake Shack has only scratched the surface on reworking its supply chain. That’s a big initiative for 2026. His goal is to take the risk out of the supply chain, which has long been relying too heavily on single sources, he said. “If that supplier gets hit by a hurricane or they just decide to go out of business, it disrupts our business,” he said. “So over the last six months, we’ve conducted RFPs across almost every facet of our business, and brought in multiple people to come in and compete for our business.” That has resulted in better quality and price, he said. FLEXIBILITY WITH GROWTH Shake Shack has seen more traffic challenges in larger urban markets, like
New York and Washington, D.C. “We’ve got great, high-volume restaurants in New York, very profitable, but not growing as rapidly as the resta of the country, and some of that is macro and some of that is micro,” he said. “We have some things to fix here.” But elsewhere, the brand is going gangbusters, in regions like Florida, Texas, Arizona and the Midwest, he said. “So that’s where our new restaurants are growing.” Texas, in particular, has responded incredibly well to marketing over the past six months, he said. And international growth is another opportunity. Shake Shack’s 235 international locations are licensed, and Lynch said the chain has been very selective about the partners overseas. The chain has developed some new smaller formats to give those partners more flexibility with real estate. And the brand has worked with then to develop menu items that fit better for specific regions, like a fish sandwich in Hong Kong, for example.
has gotten faster, cutting one minute from service times, said Lynch. And the chain has done that by becoming more efficient with labor. Restaurants used to ask the full crew to show up at opening at 10:30 a.m., for example, but the full crew wasn’t needed then because business didn’t get started for another hour. Now restaurants deploy more of those workers at peak times instead, which has helped speed service. That move has also improved retention. Shake Shack six months ago had an average turnover of 90 days for hourly employees. That has increased to 180 days. Other kitchen tweaks have paid off. The restaurants used to cook bacon on the flattop, which took needed cooking space away from burgers. So Lynch brought in ovens that could be used for cooking bacon to free up the space on the flattops to cook more burgers. “It’s not rocket science,” he said. “These are not things that Elon Musk is going to invest in. But it’s transformative for
JANUARY 2026 RESTAURANT BUSINESS
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