Published: May 21, 2010
Shake Shack Strikes Gold With Peanut Butter Bacon Burgers!
By Rocco 'Boss Hog' Loosbrock
The ever popular Westside, New York burger joint, "The Shake Shack" successfully taught all of the high paid Wall Street financial gurus, marketing advisors and business experts a thing or two about the power of simple "Buzz Marketing" and the law of supply and demand.
When the restaurant found themselves with an excessively large supply of "specialty bacon" left over from a big "Pancake and Custard: promotion they had been running, Manager Mark Rosati wisely utilized the proverbial wisdom of the old assaying, "When you have lemons, make Lemonade!"
This time, what manager Rosati had, was NOT lemons, but a ton of gourmet bacon left sitting around in the restaurant. So in a way that would have made Elvis Pressley proud, except for the fact that he forgot the bananas, Rosati quickly devised a recipe for "Peanut Butter Bacon Burgers," … and a STAR was born.
According to both "The Gothamist", "The New York University News," and the Westside Independent, they ran the "Special Menu Item" for only a week, relying on regular customers and other interested Bacon Freaks to create a "Buzz" on the street, by calling up and telling two friends, who told two friends, who told two friends, and so on.
Before long, this limited edition, "Word of Mouth" phenomenon had people waiting in lines that went all the way around the block, as if people were in line to catch the opening or closing night to a popular Broadway musical. No reports of violence, line crashers, pace jumpers or ticket scalping were reported, so apparently people were willing to behave and avoid the risk of missing out on this once in a life time experience by being turned away like in "Seinfeld-esque" variation of the "Soup Nazi" episode.
Nobody wanted to hear those fatal words: "No Burger For You!"
Sadly and surprisingly, once the gourmet bacon was gone, so was the menu item and The Shake Shack has made it clear that no amount of personal requests, cards, letters and phone calls are going to change their mind.
So if you were there, it's something that you will be able to tell your grandchildren, similar to those glory filled golden dream stories of seeing the Beatles at Shea Stadium.
If you weren't, I'm sure that with time, one of the fast food franchise chains will pick up the gauntlet and proceed to offer "a version" of the original item, that will be hopefully a lot closer to the authentic item than one of the numerous Beatles Tribute Bands that still make a living touring across America, 40 long years after the fact.
Signing off at Pigging out!
Rocco "Boss Hog" Loosbrock
(NewsBlaze readers use coupon code Blaze to get 10% off your next bacon order)
Rocco owns and runs a Bacon of the Month Club called The Bacon Freak Bacon is Meat Candy Club as well as a Wine Club called the Coastal Vineyard Wine Club
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