Shake Shack + Monstarlab
Shake Shack is a critically acclaimed, modern-day ”roadside” burger stand, using innovation and delicious food to deliver a premium customer experience.
Monstarlab is a product design and development agency in Brooklyn, New York, that specializes in innovative mobile and web strategy, design, and development for enterprises and startups.
Summary
- Shake Shack wanted to take the next step toward the “Shack of the Future.”
- Working with Monstarlab, Shake Shack built a self-service kiosk application that introduced digital ordering to the in-store experience and streamlined the ordering process, allowing more employees to engage with customers.
- With the Square Reader SDK, Monstarlab was able to build and test hardware and payments within 24 hours.
- The kiosk is currently up and running at Shake Shack in New York, providing valuable feedback about customer behavior around payments and ordering.
Building a Self-Serve Kiosk for Improved Hospitality
With the recent success of its newly launched mobile app, Shake Shack wanted to explore other technologies to further improve the guest experience and put more control into guests’ hands. It decided to build a self-service kiosk application that introduced digital ordering to the in-store experience and streamlined the ordering process, allowing more employees to engage with customers where human interaction was most needed and appreciated.
“Square offers us a way to think outside of the box in terms of what’s possible for transactions and experiences in-Shack. We’re freed from the restrictions put on us by legacy products, and the Square suite of tools enables a variety of new opportunities.”
- Anoop Pillarisetti, Digital Product and Strategy at Shake Shack
Monstarlab jumped in only to realize that it could take weeks or months before it could get documentation and hardware to test from legacy providers. Luckily, Monstarlab came across the Square Reader SDK. Monstarlab was able to get hardware at a local retail location, and within 24 hours, it had built an integrated prototype for taking payments with Square hardware.
The full integration process was fast and simple, even without payments domain expertise. Out of the box, the Square Reader SDK provided a PCI- and EMV-compliant solution that took multiple payment types, including credit cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. With a bit of tweaking, the SDK passed transaction information to Shake Shack’s accounting system smoothly and even allowed unique transactions types such as free employee meals. For Monstarlab, the Square Reader SDK let it focus on what it’s best at: creating a great experience for clients.
“The Square Reader SDK is one of the few products where an engineer who knows iOS but has zero domain knowledge in payments can build a secure, compliant solution that has hardware talking to apps. Developers can do what they’re good at, while Square can do what it’s good at.”
—Adam Mack, Lead System Architect at Monstarlab
With payments, security, and accounting squared away, Monstarlab delivered a custom kiosk experience to Shake Shack that is now live in store. Shake Shack is currently still collecting findings, but early results show that the experience is frictionless for guests, and Shake Shack is considering extending tests to more locations.