A traveler passing through Salt Lake City International Airport says her Shake Shack order got noticeably pricier the instant she tapped “no tip” on the self-checkout kiosk, and the video she posted has now been viewed 4.2 million times. B.D. Powell ordered three classic milkshakes — vanilla, cookies & cream and strawberry — and watched her total climb by $1.50 right after declining to leave a gratuity.
Powell said the kiosk flashed a message reading, “Uh oh! There has been a pricing update on one or more of your cart items. Please review these changes in your cart,” and that each shake, which she says normally runs $5.99, was suddenly priced at $6.49. As reported by the New York Post, Powell said in her video, “Everything just went up fifty cents,” and warned her followers not to go to Shake Shack. She said she tested the theory by re-ordering the same shakes to see if declining a tip triggered the change.
Shake Shack has denied that it raised prices because a customer declined to tip, telling the Post that no such policy exists at the company. The airport location isn't run by Shake Shack corporate at all — it's operated by concessionaire HMSHost, a subsidiary of Swiss travel-retail operator Avolta AG, which manages the restaurant and its kiosk systems, according to SanDiegoVille. HMSHost operates food and beverage concessions in nearly 80 North American airports, and per the same outlet, Shake Shack is investigating the incident jointly with the licensee.
A Software Glitch, Not a Punishment?
Unlike corporate-owned Shake Shack restaurants that run a standard point-of-sale build, licensed airport venues operate on third-party concessions software — a distinction that has tech observers and commenters suspecting a glitch or a synchronized menu-price update at checkout rather than a deliberate no-tip penalty, the SanDiegoVille report notes. Licensed airport terminals often run customized third-party hardware and middleware, which could explain why a pricing-update message appeared unexpectedly rather than a clean total.
The kiosk in question offered 15%, 18% and 20% gratuity options along with the “no tip” button that Powell selected. Self-service kiosks like this one have become Shake Shack's largest ordering channel nationwide since 2024, driving total check sizes up by a “high teens percentage” compared with traditional cashiers and now accounting for more than half of in-restaurant sales, according to Nation's Restaurant News. The chain began a systemwide kiosk rollout in 2023 aimed at lowering labor costs and boosting average checks.
Founder Once Championed Skipping the Tip
The episode carries an ironic edge given Shake Shack founder Danny Meyer's own public stance on counter-service tipping. In interviews in 2023 and 2024, Meyer said customers picking up food or buying coffee have “no obligation to tip” for simple transactions, a philosophy he first tested through no-tipping experiments at his Union Square Hospitality Group restaurants in New York, as detailed by Moneywise.
This isn't the first time Shake Shack's self-checkout tip prompts have drawn fire. The chain faced public pushback in 2024 when customers posted open letters on social media urging it to remove tipping screens from self-service transactions, according to We Got This Covered, which reported on a similar Los Angeles case where a customer's order jumped after declining a tip. Digital self-checkout screens across the fast-casual sector frequently default to gratuity options between 15% and 20%.
Tipping Fatigue Is a National Trend
The uproar lands amid broader consumer frustration with digital tipping. A March 2026 survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers by restaurant tech company Popmenu found that 35% of diners reduced how much or how often they tip in 2026 because of inflation and what researchers called “tipping fatigue,” with only 22% still tipping at fast-food establishments — down from 27% in late 2025, per a release distributed through PR Newswire.
Popmenu's own January 2026 blog post found that 60% of consumers felt “fed up” with automated tipping requests at non-traditional checkout counters, and that the share of pickup orders featuring a digital tip prompt fell from 78% in 2022 to 62% in 2026. Digital tip prompts had expanded rapidly across point-of-sale systems during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the backlash has been building since. A 2025 study in the International Journal of Hospitality Management found that prompting customers for tips on digital screens before service is delivered triggers immediate psychological reactance and frustration, since it inverts the traditional timeline of evaluating service after receiving it.
What Comes Next for HMSHost and Shake Shack
Federal and state consumer protection regulations prohibit so-called drip pricing — displaying an initial price and then increasing item costs or adding unadvertised fees before payment — a practice that can expose retailers to class-action litigation and regulatory enforcement, according to legal framework outlined by The Legal Examiner. State attorneys general and the FTC have increasingly cracked down on unexpected add-on charges at checkout.
HMSHost runs Shake Shack locations in 13 major U.S. airports, including Boston Logan, Phoenix Sky Harbor and Orlando International, under long-term master concession agreements with airport authorities, according to Avolta. Whether the Salt Lake City price jump traces back to a timed menu-pricing sync error or a glitch in the kiosk's software integration remains unresolved, and Shake Shack has not said when its joint investigation with HMSHost will conclude.
