How Shake Shack’s New West Village Innovation Kitchen Is Shaping the Future of the Brand | Eater NY

"Under the West Village Shack, the Innovation Kitchen is a five-person test kitchen that randomly sends batches of 20 to 100 new items upstairs to get immediate feedback; experiments so far have included a pancake-and-bacon frozen custard, a beef hot dog with pumpkin mustard, bacon, cranberries, and sage, and a cheeseburger topped with tempura watercress, crispy mozzarella, and black garlic mayonnaise, with staff also tinkering with a chocolate chip cookie and a beef bourguignon–inspired burger. The team has few restrictions beyond staying true to Shake Shack’s roadside-stand style, but developing hits can take time—the chili went through 13 iterations and the nuggets required reworking the breading and new breading stations rather than simply cutting existing chicken down. Reviews have been mixed: Eater’s Ryan Sutton praised the nuggets’ “craggy, almost geological coating,” while Robert Sietsema complained that the coating falls off and the nuggets are “way too salty,” a point echoed by a BuzzFeed reviewer; a grilled-chicken sandwich tested here was called “average” and “mealy” by Sutton. The Innovation Kitchen is designed to let Shake Shack remain nimble and avoid large-scale missteps while testing items for possible national rollout." - Stefanie Tuder