Fresh off writing about Outback, I was reminded that I have another entry for the Please Take My Money series. Because the other day I was at Shake Shack in Stratford with the girls.
Spoiler: they struggle to take my money.
The food is great, that’s probably a whole separate post. But the checkout experience is not great.
Shake Shack has kiosks now. You walk up, place your order, sounds fantastic. In practice, not so much. On at least two occasions I’ve started an order at the kiosk, gotten partway through, and then hit a wall where they want so much personal information that I just gave up and found a human instead.
I can’t remember every specific field, but it was well past the point of reasonable. Honestly, even asking for a phone number is too much. You have screens. Put my name on them. That’s all you need. But they wanted more than just a name, enough more that I stopped, abandoned the kiosk, and got in line.
Which brings me to the other problem. There isn’t really a line anymore. Because they want everyone using the kiosks. So the first time this happened I had to stand there and get someone’s attention, which took about ten minutes. And yes, I feel that strongly about this that I waited that long. To be fair, I didn’t think it was going to take that long when I started waiting. Then the sunk time kicked in and there I was, committed.
Yesterday wasn’t quite that bad. I flagged someone down and they came over reasonably quickly. But I still had to flag someone down, which shouldn’t be necessary if your kiosk wasn’t demanding my personal information just to sell me a burger.
Once I was actually at the point of paying it was fine. Tap, done. That part works. It’s everything before it that’s the problem.
I like Shake Shack. I genuinely enjoy their food. That’s exactly why this is frustrating. Just let me order and pay. You don’t need my data to do that.
Low marks, Shake Shack. Do better.
