Shake Shack opens for business in Thailand
World-famous New York burger joint Shake Shack opened its flagship Thailand store at CentralWorld in Bangkok at 10.30am today.
The first 500 customers at the store this morning were given handcrafted bamboo Shake Shack fans woven by a community enterprise in Ayutthaya, ready for the summer season.
The restaurant’s menu offers American classics like burgers, hot dogs, chicken, fries and also a vegetarian ‘Shroom burger option.
Unlike other Shake Shacks around the globe, the flagship Thai store offers a glocalised Pandan Sticky Rice Shake priced at 230 baht.
The restaurant also serves ‘Shack Lemonade’ made fresh daily with lemon juice, sugarcane, lemon zest and a hint of lemongrass to honour Thailand.
The walls of the store in CentralWorld are decorated with a colourful mural by Thai artist Navin Rawanchaikul, in a style nodding to New York and featuring people, places and items that represent Thailand, like a tuk tuk and a yellow and green Bangkok taxi.
Shake Shack founder Danny Meyer posted a photo in front of the artwork with the caption…
“From a hotdog cart at Madison Square Park in New York City to our first Thai Shack at CentralWorld in Bangkok.”
Navin’s involvement with Shake Shack started long before the unveiling of the Bangkok burger joint. After Shake Shack started as a humble hot dog cart in New York’s Madison Square Park, Meyer decided to raise funds for the park’s development.
Meyer ran an art exhibition called “I <3 Taxi.” One artist featured in the exhibition was Navin Rawanchaikul himself, more than 22 years ago. Since then, Chiang Mai native Navin’s work has been featured all over the world from Paris to Venice to Vancouver.
In 2020, employees of a Shake Shack in Lower Manhattan were falsely accused of poisoning two police officers with bleach after the officers reported that their shakes had a strange taste, but an investigation cleared the staff of wrongdoing.
There are 240 Shake Shack outlets in the USA and 140 international restaurants, in Bahrain, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Kuwait, Mexico, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and now Thailand.
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