Shake Shack’s CEO on His Vision for Shake Shack’s New Test Kitchen
Skift Take
The launch of the Innovation Kitchen is like everything else the brand has done up until this point: relentlessly slow to roll out and completely worth the wait.
Shake Shack-branded chicken nuggets, black sesame shakes, and cold brew matcha lattes can only mean one thing: the test kitchen that the company has been talking about for years is finally open and the team isn't wasting any time with putting the new space to work.
Shake Shack's new Innovation Kitchen will function much like Chipotle's Next Kitchen in New York or Chick-fil-A's test kitchen in Atlanta. It's a dedicated space for the team to try out new menu items and new technology, get nearly instantaneous guest feedback, and be able to make faster decisions on whether those menu items are ready for wider rollouts.
The space is built directly underneath Shake Shack's corporate offices in the West Village neighborhood in Manhattan. Corporate employees don't ever have to leave the building to get to a Shack now — the ground floor level was built out into a new Shake Shack restaurant, and the test kitchen sits behind large glass doors in the basement level of the building. The basemen
