Sporked tried Shake Shack's Butterscotch creme brulee shake. This week, Shake Shack added five drinks to the menu: three lemonades, a returning fan-favorite holiday milkshake, and the topic of today's review. Whether Sporked is ready for them or not, the new Butterscotch Crème Brûlée Shake is here for the holidays. Shake Shack was nice enough to send your favorite milkshake reviewer a gift card; let's find out whether it's already the most wonderful time of the year. * Shake Shack Butterscotch Crème Brûlée Shake Review New Shake Shack Shake! - Pros: Shake Shack has no issue turning elevated desserts like Tiramisu into milkshakes, but this might be their closest translation yet. If you can believe it, the flavor and mouthfeel of crème brûlée (a chilled custard-based dessert) translates super well to the frozen custard-based milkshake format. The honeycomb pieces in the shake perfectly replicate the texture of burnt sugar on top of crème brûlée, furthering how much this feels like drinking a crème brûlée through a straw. Shake Shack rarely misses, and this is no exception. Cons: The addition of butterscotch furthers the holiday vibes, but I'm not sure it's totally necessary. Crème brûlée and butterscotch are both strong flavors; I'd rather experience them at their best separately than have them fighting for dominance in my mouth (even if the fight is this harmonious). I'd love to see a standard Crème Brûlée Shake hit the Shake Shack menu in the future. Credit: Griffin Parker / Shake Shack Rating: 9/10 Sporks What else is new to the Shake Shack menu? In addition to the new Butterscotch Crème Brûlée Shake, the Christmas Cookie Shake has returned to the menu for the... thousandth time? It's an eternal annual offering even if other holiday shakes have landed better with me personally. Outside the milkshake portion of the menu, Shake Shack has also dropped three new variants on their Shack-made Lemonade. The new Strawberry Lemonade is labeled as a limited edition release, while the new Blood Orange Cranberry and Pink Lemonades appear to be permanent. I snagged all three at the same time I got this milkshake; keep an eye out for that review very soon right here on Sporked.

Shake Shack Q3 revenue rises 15% as record openings and licensed international expansion drive growth. The fast-casual chain beat quarterly earnings estimates, logged its 23rd consecutive quarter of positive same-Shack sales, and signaled Q4 entries into Panama, Vietnam, and US regional casinos through a capital-light licensing structure unlike any traditional FDD-based franchise model. Published: Nov 06 2026, 8:24 AM EST | By Scott Keys Shake Shack (NYSE: SHAK) delivered third-quarter results on November 5 that topped Wall Street estimates on both revenue and earnings per share, while simultaneously setting a quarterly record for new-unit openings - a combination that management says reflects the sustained execution of a strategy built on culinary differentiation, digital investment, and an international expansion approach that is structurally different from most franchise growth plays familiar to US investors. Total revenue for the quarter ended September 30 rose 15.2% year-over-year to $423.3 million, driven by $408.0 million in direct Shack sales and $15.3 million in licensing revenue, according to the company's earnings press release and shareholder letter filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Diluted earnings per share of $0.39 - or $0.40 on an adjusted pro-forma basis - cleared analyst consensus estimates of $0.33 headed into the print. Net income reached $17.8 million, up from $13.7 million a year earlier, as adjusted EBITDA climbed 16.0% to $62.8 million on a margin of 14.8% of total revenue. System-wide sales, which combine company-operated and licensed locations and serve as the broadest measure of brand momentum, grew 12.8% to $644.8 million for the quarter. Same-Shack sales rose 2.5% year-over-year, extending the brand's positive streak to 23 consecutive quarters and its positive traffic run to five straight quarters - 0.8% traffic growth even against what management acknowledged was the toughest prior-year comparison on the calendar. "Our teams stayed focused on what matters most, taking care of each other and our guests, and I am incredibly proud of how our 15,000 team members and our licensed partners showed up over the last few months and for the results they produced," CEO Rob Lynch said in the shareholder letter. Lynch identified three consistent drivers of comp growth: operational discipline at the restaurant level, culinary innovation that the brand leans on to separate itself from conventional fast food, and targeted digital media investments designed to lift guest frequency and lifetime value. Shake Shack opened 21 new company-operated Shacks during the quarter, a record for any Q3 in the company's history, alongside 16 new licensed Shacks. That brought year-to-date company-operated openings to 54, compared with just 30 at the same point in 2025. At September 30, the system comprised 427 company-operated and 311 licensed locations for a total of 738 Shacks, with the company's corporate filing noting its current footprint has since crossed 750 locations. For franchise investors and industry observers, one of the more structurally instructive angles inside these results is what those 311 licensed locations actually are - and how the model compares to the standard franchise frameworks that dominate most QSR and fast-casual development narratives. Shake Shack does not offer a traditional US domestic franchise opportunity. There is no FTC-regulated FDD package, no published franchise fee analogous to those at Wendy's or Five Guys, and no franchise disclosure document available to individual investors interested in the brand. Within the United States, the licensed business consists primarily of non-traditional venues - airports, stadiums, and campus locations - operated by established concessionaires with multi-unit credentials. Internationally, the company licenses entire countries or territories through privately negotiated master agreements with well-capitalized regional partners. Operators in Japan, South Korea, China, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and the Middle East hold such licenses, absorbing construction costs and day-to-day operating responsibilities in exchange for the right to carry the brand. The economics of that arrangement show up clearly in Shake Shack's income statement. Even though system-wide sales totaled $644.8 million for the quarter, the company booked only $15.3 million of that as recognized revenue. The remaining volume belongs to the licensed operators. For the first three quarters of 2026 combined, Shake Shack collected $42.1 million in licensing revenue against total revenue of $1.21 billion. The capital-light tradeoff is by design: licensed partners bear the construction and operating investment, allowing Shake Shack to extend its brand into dozens of markets without deploying corporate balance sheet dollars to those locations. The corresponding limitation is reduced direct oversight of execution - a risk the company flags explicitly in its forward-looking disclosures. CFO Michelle Hook pointed to both the revenue strength and the operational dynamics underlying the margin picture. "Our third quarter results demonstrate the resilience of our business and the progress we're making across our strategic priorities," Hook said. "Shack sales grew 15.6% year-over-year to $408.0 million, generating restaurant-level profit of $91.7 million, or 22.5% of Shack sales. Both our owned digital channels and third-party delivery are driving traffic growth, while our owned channels also enable us to capture valuable guest data and drive higher guest lifetime value through personalized engagement." That 22.5% restaurant-level profit margin was 30 basis points below the year-ago quarter. Labor costs rose to 25.4% of Shack sales, up 50 basis points, reflecting wage investments and staffing depth the company says is necessary to protect the guest experience. Other operating expenses reached 16.1%, 90 basis points higher than a year ago, driven partly by rising third-party delivery commissions as that channel captures a larger share of orders. Food and paper costs provided partial offset, falling to 28.3% of Shack sales from 29.3% a year earlier, as lower chicken, bun, and dairy costs more than outweighed still-elevated beef prices. Pre-opening costs of $7.0 million, up from $4.6 million in Q3 2025, reflected the accelerating pace of new Shack construction. On the licensed side, the quarter played out with meaningful geographic variation. Conflict in the Middle East continued to pressure results in the region, though the company noted those headwinds moderated compared with the first half of the year. That was offset by strong performance from new US airport locations, new Canadian openings, and locations in the United Kingdom. Licensing sales - the full gross revenue generated by licensed Shacks, which the company tracks as an operating metric though it is not recognized as revenue - grew 8.3% to $236.8 million. Shake Shack now expects to land at the high end of its 40-to-45 licensed Shack opening range for the full year. The fourth-quarter pipeline includes first entries into Panama and Vietnam, a domestic partnership with PENN Entertainment to open locations inside regional US casinos, and the announced entry into Brazil, one of the largest restaurant markets in the world by unit count. Digital channels have become a meaningful lever within the company-operated base. Owned channels - defined by Shake Shack as in-Shack kiosks, its app, and its web platform - represented approximately 60% of Shack sales in Q3. The company is building toward a formal loyalty program, but management notes that guests who transact through owned digital channels already visit more frequently and generate higher annual spend than those who do not, reinforcing the investment case for the technology infrastructure being assembled under its Project Catalyst initiative. For the full year 2026, Shake Shack maintained its guidance of $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion in total revenue and $225 million to $235 million in adjusted EBITDA, with 60 to 65 company-operated openings and licensing revenue of $57.0 million to $59.0 million. The guidance assumes continued low-single-digit same-Shack sales growth and a restaurant-level profit margin in the 22.0% to 23.0% range. Those targets sit against a long-term "Road to 1,500" company-operated unit plan in the United States, a destination that would require roughly three times the current domestic footprint and that management points to as the organizing principle behind its accelerating development investment. The company's next quarterly results are expected to be reported in early 2027. For operators and investors tracking the fast-casual sector, the fourth-quarter development report - covering the first full quarter of PENN Entertainment casino locations, the initial Vietnam and Panama openings, and the trajectory of same-Shack sales against a toughening year-ago base - will offer the clearest early read on whether Q3's momentum carries forward. Editor's Pick

Fast food chains are signalling that inflation is squeezing US consumers. Papa John's shares fell after North American same-store sales dropped 8.3%, and Cava slid 10% after it reported. Shake Shack edged lower. Executives told Yahoo Finance's hosts that higher gas prices and living costs are limiting how often Americans dine out. Gas prices eased somewhat, but the relief was modest. Papa John's is launching an "Unbox Better" strategy to win back customers. Its chief executive also pointed to GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, which are pushing people towards protein and chicken. Cava recovered from a July and August Cyclospora outbreak, though sales turned choppy when gas prices spiked. It raised the bottom end of its sales outlook.