An outdoor burger stand in a city park may seem an unlikely spot for a power lunch, but Shake Shack has emerged as one of the hottest spots for tech dealmakers in New York. Opened in a corner of the Flatiron District's Madison Square Park in 2004, Shake Shack, the kitschy brainchild of high-end restaurateur Danny Meyer, attracts a wealth of Web 2.0 types conducting business over a self-serve, meat and milkshake sort of meal.
For hungry techies, part of the appeal is the Shack Cam, a Web camera that lets people gauge waiting times from the comfort of their computers -- a nice perk for a venue where the lines can seem endless. There's even a special program, known as a bot (@shakeshack), for Twitter users to compare notes on wait times and other Shake Shack tidbits. "As you might guess, rainy day, no line," read one recent post by Fred Graver, a TV writer for shows including "Cheers," "Late Night with David Letterman" and "In Living Color" whose office in the SparkSpace incubator at Rose Tech Ventures LLC overlooks the park. "Anyone around Mad Sq Park today want to grab shack?" queried Union Square Ventures associate Andrew Parker one winter morning. "Will likely hit the line around 12:15."
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It's not just New York's Web 2.0 crowd that's enamored of Shake Shack.
"Twitter had a very special date in New York City," blogged
Biz Stone, the co-founder of San Francisco-based
Twitter Inc.,
in July. "We met with another startup, had lunch at the famous Shake
Shack, and spent some quality time together in Union Square." But it
was a snowball fight in December organized over Twitter by
Charlie O'Donnell, founder of career development site
Path 101 Inc.,
that cemented the friendship between Webpreneurs and Shake Shack. Not
only did Shack staffers join the game, but they handed out free
post-game hot cocoa to everyone who played.
