Shake Shack Stanford Shopping Center — Restaurant in Palo Alto

Busy as all heck. I rolled up just before 5pm. No line visible so I went for it. Being my first time I was hopefully optimist. As I'm still trying to decide on my order with the touchscreen payment stations, I see the crowd pouring in behind me. Yikes.

I have food sensitivities. So it would have been very helpful to have been able to check ingredients online before visiting. Nope. Couldn't find them. Guess its proprietary. So I just ordered the single basic burger. Shake shack sauce onbghd side. They were so dang busy by the time my order was up, asking what was in their shake sauce invoked the ire of at least one nearby patron. Instead I asked for ketchup and mayonnaise on the side to go, at that point. Didn't make it in the bag. Glad I ordered cheese since I had no sauce.

Fries are ok. Not too salty. Just right. The burger. Well, the bun is delicious! Soft. Chewy. Grilled just right on the inside. The produce was crisp and fresh. Crunchy tasty dill pickle slices. The burger patty? WAY TOO SALTY! And cooked almost to death. Surprisingly they even have an option to cook it well done. I guess some folks like it cremated?

There was a glitch with my order and even though I had reviewed and edited my order before paying, an extra burger was charged. Picture attached. I was surprised at the price. But it was so hectic in there I didn't realize the total still included the burger I deleted. An employee quickly went to the order station and processed a refund for the erroneous burger. The place was packed at this point. Fries barely warm by the time I got in my car.

Forgot to mention not so handicapped friendly. I'm on crutches, so it was doable. However, the doors all open out and there were no handicap press plate door openers. And a wheelchair may not even fit past the pickup counter to get to the restrooms, which also have no openers. Inside of the women's restroom was clean and roomy.

I didn't get a shake. Oh well, not going back. Neither the fries or burger were worth the hassle for this 50+ aged...

The Stanford Shopping Center Shake Shack is extremely mismanaged. The food tasted fine, but it was not worth the chaotic experience that could have been avoided with better management. We placed the order on the app and had to wait a full 30 minutes for our food. At the 20 minute mark, we received the text telling us our order was ready. Assuming it would be out any minute, we waited another 10 minutes and then finally approached the counter. As I was waiting near the counter, I could see our food sitting there (my name is Alejandra so is a unique name), and them actively calling bags around ours but not calling ours. When we received our food, I mentioned the long wait to the person at the door. She said her kitchen was busy, but it's clear these problems are not with the backed up kitchen but with the mismanagement of the order processing out front. I have no problem waiting for food when there's high demand but things are in control; I do have a problem when the wait is because a restaurant is chaotic and slow in handing out hot and cold food. COVID has obviously shifted the to-go ordering process for many restaurants, Shake Shack included. However, it's been 6 months since the pandemic hit; if a restaurant can't get their act together in 6 months, they clearly cannot.

In part of our order, we ordered custard. When we opened the bag, the custard was half melted, meaning it had been sitting there for more than a few minutes while they neglected to call our name. There also were not any serving utensils (particularly spoons) which we would clearly need to eat the custard. We asked for a certain sauce that was supposed to come with a chicken sandwich on the side, and it was missing. Even though we were missing things, we were so frustrated and the pick up area was so chaotic it was not worth going back. This was our third experience at the Stanford Shake Shack, and this will be our last. Every experience has ben chaotic not unlike this one, and this...

UPDATE: My daughter told me the manager or someone responded to this review and was wanted to talk about trying again but I don't see anything like that here.

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I hate writing this review because my experience at Shake Shack was less than ...

Less than my experience in Shake Shack Manhattan, that's for sure as well as my experience at Shake Shack Brooklyn.

This was my third and last try since they come to California. They have tablets on the wall so you can order from there. The trouble is they don't give you a way to have it your way so to speak. For example, wanted to pay for an extra piece of cheese on my burger and there's no way to do that.

We had also asked for buns with no sauce which you couldn't do on the tablet, so a really nice employee there offered to do that for us. We saw she had a hard time communicating that to the kitchen. One of the buns did come out with the sauce. Had to ask for a plain one. We worked in restaurants for over 30 years so we have empathy for what the woman who was helping us had to deal with in talking to the kitchen. I give her credit for helping us since it's largely self serve. I don't recall her name but she was a young black woman with a really pretty headscarf. She was the one bright spot to the lunch.

It just wasn't up to par. I'm bummed out because we were really excited when Shake Shack came to California. You know, if you go to McDonald's and ask for a quarter pounder with cheese no mustard, no salt, you get a fresh burger and you can get extra cheese on it. I hate to say it but a McDonald's burger ordered like that is better than what we got at Shake Shack and that was the consensus of all 3 of us.

The shake was nice though. Not large but it was...