Shake Shack Bets on New Casino Partnership
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In Boston, Shake Shack is opening a location in a casino. The restaurant will be at the Encore Boston Harbor resort, and it will open its doors Saturday (Sept. 11) at the resort’s WynnBET Sports Bar. Customers will be able to order at the sports bar and to bring their meals to the gaming tables and machines.
The Context
In today’s connected economy, brands that use their goods and services as an entry point into a connected suite of experiences have the opportunity to embed their offerings in consumers’ daily routines. Of the eight pillars of the connected economy — how we pay, shop, eat, bank, travel and have fun, connect with others and maintain our well-being — an in-casino location touches on at least three of them in a major way (eating, having fun and connecting with others).
The move to connect the dining and gambling experiences has been a successful one in the past. For instance, Sioux City Journal reports that the local Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Sioux City, born of the Hard Rock Café brand, brought in more than $107 million in casino and sports betting revenue in FY2021, and that’s from only one of the two dozen global locations it runs.
What Consumers are Saying
A PYMNTS survey conducted in the spring reached out to over 15,000 U.S. consumers and was published our June 2021 report, How Consumers Live In The ConnectedEconomy™. The study found that, of consumers who are highly connected when it comes to travel and leisure, 50% are also highly connected in their eating routines, and 96% are highly connected when it comes to social engagement. Given that this group accounts for four in 10 consumers, Shake Shack has a huge opportunity to capture casino goers’ cross-category connectivity with this location’s features: its mobile ordering and digital payment capabilities.
What the Experts Are Saying
High-quality food is no longer enough for brands to make it in today’s competitive marketplace.
“It used to be, if you had great practices and great marketing and a great product, you’re good to go,” Jason Thomstatter, head of digital commerce at Mars, told Karen Webster in an interview, as part of the ConnectedEconomy™ series. “And I think now it becomes much broader than that, right? You have to have that overall experience, and you have to be able to be tying that into the end-to-end way your consumer’s operating and interacting with the brand on a day-to-day basis.”
The location plays into Shake Shack’s broader move to go from being a place where consumers get their food to a destination for connected experiences.
“[We] hope that the experience of eating at a Shake Shack is so much more than the food, but it’s rather that elevated experience, and [that it] makes you want to come back for the experiential element even more so than the food,” Steph So, head of digital experience at Shake Shack, told Webster. “…We want to be wherever our guest is. We want to be where folks are having fun.”
