Shake Shack: Keeping Score from a Park Cart to Wall Street

A Hot Dog Cart in the Park

In 2001, Union Square Hospitality Group, the restaurant company founded by Danny Meyer, set up a hot dog cart in New York City’s Madison Square Park as part of an effort to bring the park back to life. For three summers, people lined up at the cart every day. That popularity led the city’s Parks Department to give Shake Shack a contract to build a kiosk in the park, which opened in 2004. It became known for burgers cooked to order, crinkle-cut fries, and shakes.

The lines kept coming, and so did new locations. By late 2014, there were 63 Shacks in nine countries. Shake Shack itself ran 31 of them, all in the United States. Other companies ran the rest — 5 in the U.S. and 27 abroad — under licensing agreements. In 2013, Shake Shack brought in $82.5 million in revenue and earned $5.4 million in net income.

Opening the Books

To keep growing, Shake Shack decided to sell shares to the public — and that meant opening its books to anyone who wanted to look. On December 29, 2014, it filed a registration statement, known as an S-1, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The S-1 laid out the company’s financial results, its risks, its leaders — including CEO Randy Garutti and chief financial officer Jeff Uttz — and the measures management used to judge performance.

One of those measures was average unit volume, the average yearly sales of a single Shack. In 2013, a U.S. Shack run by the company averaged about $5.0 million in sales, and a Manhattan Shack about $7.4 million. Another was Shack-level operating profit: sales at the company’s own Shacks minus four costs of running them — food and paper, labor, other operating costs, and occupancy costs such as rent. In 2013, it equaled 26.0% of Shack sales. The S-1 also reported same-Shack sales, which measure the change in sales at Shacks that have been open at least 24 months. Ernst & Young, an independent accounting firm, has served as Shake Shack’s auditor since September 2014.

The shares were priced on January 29, 2015, at $21 each, above a price range that had already been raised from $14–$16 to $17–$19. Shake Shack sold 5 million shares, raising $105 million, and planned to use the money to pay down borrowings on its credit line and to open and renovate Shacks. The next day, the stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SHAK, and by that afternoon it was up 130%. The company told investors it could eventually run at least 450 Shacks of its own in the United States.

Counting Every Dollar in 2020

Five years later, the COVID-19 pandemic showed why tracking money closely matters. In March 2020, Shake Shack drew down its $50 million revolving line of credit. Same-Shack sales fell 12.8% in the first quarter, including a drop of 28.5% in March alone. By mid-April, the company had about $112 million in cash, and Restaurant Business reported that it was burning through $1.3 million to $1.5 million a week. It had laid off or furloughed more than 1,000 workers.

Shake Shack had also received a $10 million loan under the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which was promoted as relief for small businesses. After raising more money by selling new shares to investors, CEO Randy Garutti and Danny Meyer said in April 2020 that the company would return the entire loan “so that those restaurants who need it most can get it now.”

New Leaders, Sharper Numbers

In May 2024, Rob Lynch, the former CEO of Papa John’s, became Shake Shack’s CEO. That August, after one of its regular reviews of the Shacks it owns and runs, Shake Shack decided to close nine of them in California, Ohio, and Texas. It said those locations were underperforming, some were pulling sales away from nearby Shacks, and none were expected to earn acceptable returns in the foreseeable future. The company reported the decision in an SEC filing and estimated the pretax cost at $28 million to $30 million. For the full year, its income statement showed $32.4 million in impairments, losses on disposed assets, and Shack closures (see the exhibit).

The company also changed how it manages its restaurants. A new labor model focused on matching staffing to each Shack’s needs, and the company credited it with improving labor expense. In 2025, a company-wide performance scorecard began tracking each Shack’s results on people, performance, and profits. Managers also got better data and analytics. Meanwhile, the average net cost to build a new Shack fell below $2 million in 2025, about 20% less than the year before. Shake Shack still reports a version of that S-1 profit measure, now called restaurant-level profit (Shack sales minus the same four costs), and labels it “non-GAAP” when it presents it alongside its GAAP results. The company says management uses it to build budgets and forecasts, and it is one of the measures in some employee bonus plans.

Who Keeps Score Now

In November 2025, chief financial officer Katie Fogertey stepped down from the role, staying on as a senior advisor until March 2026. While it searched for a replacement, Shake Shack set up an “Office of the CFO,” a group of experienced leaders from financial planning, accounting, treasury, data science, and investor relations. In February 2026, Peter Herpich, the company’s corporate controller and a certified public accountant, was named interim principal financial officer. Then, on May 11, 2026, Michelle Hook became CFO. Hook, also a CPA, had been CFO of the restaurant chain Portillo’s, where she helped take that company public in 2021, and before that she spent more than 17 years at Domino’s. At Shake Shack, she oversees accounting and treasury, financial planning and analysis, tax, investor relations, and external reporting.

In fiscal 2025, a 53-week year, total revenue rose 15.4% to about $1.45 billion, and Shake Shack ended the year with 659 Shacks — 373 company-operated and 286 licensed. Its audit fees to Ernst & Young for that year were about $1.7 million. In August 2026, the company reported second-quarter revenue of $417.6 million, up 17.2% from a year earlier, with same-Shack sales up 3.5%. As of July 1, 2026, there were 703 Shacks, 406 of them company-operated. For all of 2026, Shake Shack expected revenue of $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion and 60 to 65 new company-operated Shacks — steps on what it calls its “Road to 1,500 Shacks.”