Shake Shack opens at Westfield Centre food court on June 28

Shake Shack opens at Westfield Centre food court on June 28Photo courtesy of Shake Shack
Jay Barmann
Published on June 21, 2021

Starting next week, San Franciscans don't have to go to Cow Hollow to get your Shake Shack fix. The chain is opening its second San Francisco location in the heart of downtown, at the Westfield San Francisco Centre mall (845 Market St.), just a hop and a skip from the Powell Street BART station.

The newest Shake Shack, which is actually the seventh location for the Bay Area — with others in Oakland, Palo Alto, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Larkspur — will debut on Monday, June 28, just in time for everyone's Pride party hangovers. It will be in the basement food court at the mall, directly accessible from the BART station's upper level.

"We’re incredibly excited to be opening at San Francisco Centre and expanding our footprint in the Bay Area," says Andrew McCaughan, Chief Development Officer of Shake Shack, in a statement. "We love the energy in our Bay Area Shacks and are looking forward to serving up our burgers and Shakes at San Francisco Centre."

All the Bay Area Shake Shacks serve the Golden State Double — which is made with Richards Grassfed Beef, cheddar cheese, pickles, and smoked garlic aioli. And this latest location will also feature two new menu items that rolled out nationwide in April, the Avocado Bacon Burger, and the Avocado Bacon Chicken — both are made with Niman Ranch bacon, and the fried chicken sandwich is made with freshly sliced avocado, lettuce, pickles, and buttermilk herb mayo.

On opening day next Monday, under the company's Stand for Something Good initiative, one dollar of every order will be donated to La Cocina, the local nonprofit that helps support women-owned food businesses in the Bay Area.

It remains to be seen if this new Shake Shack opening will draw the same ravenous crowd that the Bay Area's first Shake Shack saw back in 2018. That first local Shake Shack debuted at Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto to a crowd of over 1,000 fans, as the Chronicle reported. Subsequent openings here have not been quite so mobbed, with last February's opening in Cow Hollow just merely busy — and with the addition of the Shack App that allows pre-orders of food, and skipping the long lines. App orders don't, however, allow for beer or frozen custard to be included, so that's a drawback. An Oakland location also opened during the pandemic, late last fall.

The Cow Hollow location, as you know if you've been, is at Fillmore and Filbert and shares space with Michael Mina's upscale grocery spot, Indie Superette.

Shake Shack launched as a "roadside" burger kiosk in Manhattan's Madison Square Park in 2004, a creation of famed restaurateur Danny Meyer, to near-immediate popularity, featuring old-fashioned "smashed" burgers that have since gained traction on legions of menus. The chain has grown in the last 17 years to around 200 locations across the U.S., and around 100 international locations.