imo the best time in the day to go is after 10pm !
For those not in the know, new yorkers have been relaying shake shack line lengths using Twitter through a shake shack account a.k.a Shake Shack Flash Mob. I decided to take the data created over the last four months and try to answer the question: When should we try to grab lunch at Shake Shack? After all, no one wants to be in a 60-minute or “third tree” line behind 50 tourists.
As a quick disclaimer: While the mob is active, the sample size is too small to time it down to the minute, but the data does seem to point towards the following conclusions:
- Pre-noon lunch: Hit-or-miss. You’d think by scrambling down there before noon you’d be okay, but there’s no guarantee. Make sure to check the shake shack webcam
- Post-noon lunch: Not much data collected but not surprising. The flash mob knows better than to insult the Shake Shack gods by irreverently trying to grab lunch during lunch-hour
- Post-3 pm lunch: This is the ticket. Either starve yourself till then or get a job that allows you to wake up at 11 am
- General tip: If it’s raining, cold or really hot, the line will be shorter than usual but don’t be surprised to still find people braving the elements
- Funniest shake shack tweet goes to ceonyc: “line very short….swarm! Swarm!”
Who’s graciously tweeting away line lengths?
- whitneymcn - Whitney McNamara, wrote the perl code that makes the Shake Shack twitter account work
- innonate - Nate Westheimer, entrepreneur in residence at Rose Tech Ventures
- fredwilson - Fred Wilson, a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures who came up with the Shake Shack twitter bot idea.
- ceonyc - Charlie O’Donnell, CEO of Path101
- reecepacheco - Reece Pacheco, CEO of Overtime Media
Here’s the full list of shake shack tweeters:
Update: Eater reblogged this post and pitched the shake shack flash mob. Nice.
Update2: Thrillist reblogged the post referencing the shake shack flash mob as “vigilante nerds”
