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A viral video appearing to show Shake Shack prices increase after a customer selects a 0 percent tip has sparked a debate over tipping culture and whether the restaurant chain charges customers more for declining to leave a gratuity. Shake Shack told Newsweek it was not their policy.
The video, posted by B.D.Powell on TikTok, and since shared across social media platforms, shows a customer ordering three shakes at a Shake Shack location at Salt Lake City International Airport. The shakes initially appear on the ordering kiosk at $5.99 each.
After the customer reaches the tipping screen and selects “no tip,” the kiosk displays a message saying there has been a pricing update to one or more items in the cart. When the order is reviewed, the three shakes are shown at $6.49 each—a 50-cent increase per item.
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The video has attracted thousands of views and prompted accusations that Shake Shack is effectively penalizing customers who choose not to tip. However, the video does not by itself establish that selecting a 0 percent tip caused the prices to change.
In an emailed statement to Newsweek on Monday, Shake Shack said: "It is not Shake Shack policy, nor that of our licensees, to increase the price of menu items when no tip is added. The pricing issue shared online occurred at an airport Shack that is owned and operated by our licensee HMSHost. HMSHost investigated the matter and determined it was an error within their kiosk technology that they have informed us has since been resolved. We’ll continue working with all our licensed partners to make sure every guest is taken care of at Shake Shack."
What Happened In The Video?
In the video, the customer said that his wife had told him Shake Shack made its food more expensive when customers did not tip, prompting him to test the claim.
The ordering screen initially showed the three shakes at $5.99 each. At checkout, customers were presented with tipping options of 15, 18 and 20 percent, alongside an option to leave no tip.
After the customer selected the no-tip option, the kiosk displayed what appeared to be a pricing error or update, which said: "Uh Oh! There has been a pricing update on one or more of your cart items. Please review these changes in your cart.”
The video showed the price of each shake subsequently increasing by 50 cents. The three shakes then appeared at $6.49 each. That represented a total increase of $1.50 across the three items.
The apparent connection between the two events quickly became the focus of online discussion, with viewers questioning why the prices would change immediately after the customer declined to tip.
But commenters also pointed out that the video does not show what would have happened if the customer had selected a tip rather than 0 percent.
Some online users posted that the company should face fines from regulatory agencies, while others suggested the price change could instead have been caused by a scheduled pricing update or a time-specific promotion ending while the order was being placed. Others questioned whether the airport location's pricing system operates differently from standard Shake Shack restaurants.
The Airport Location Is Operated By A Licensee
The location shown in the video is not a typical corporate-operated Shake Shack. Salt Lake City International Airport lists HMSHost as the concession operator of its Shake Shack location.
Airport restaurants can also have pricing structures that differ from locations outside airports, making it important to establish whether the prices displayed in the video are standard Shake Shack prices or prices specific to the airport concession.
Why Are Customers Being Asked To Tip?
The controversy has also revived questions about Shake Shack's approach to tipping.
The company was founded by restaurateur Danny Meyer, who has historically been a prominent critic of the traditional tipping model.
Meyer previously eliminated tipping at several restaurants operated by his Union Square Hospitality Group, as reported by CBS, arguing that the system created large pay disparities between front-of-house employees who received tips and kitchen workers who generally did not. At the time, he described his alternative as “hospitality included,” with higher menu prices intended to incorporate employee compensation.
In 2016, as reported by Fortune, Meyer said Shake Shack had demonstrated that a restaurant selling a burger for around $6 could pay workers well without relying on tipping.
Meyer has also said that the inspiration for his no-tipping experiment came in part from Shake Shack itself.
“The inspiration from this came from Shake Shack,” he said at the time. “There’s no tip jar there. I said ‘if a place, charging $6 for a burger, can do this, why can’t a place with an average $60 check do this?’”
Meyer eventually reinstated tipping at his restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic, as reported by CBS News, saying the economic circumstances of the restaurant industry had changed and that his objection was less about tips themselves than the difficulty of distributing them fairly among restaurant employees.
More recently, Meyer has expressed skepticism about the expansion of tipping into transactions such as coffee and takeout. In 2023, he argued that customers should not feel obligated to tip in situations where there is little or no traditional table service.
"If you’re just taking out food, and it was just a transaction—I give you money, you give me a cup of coffee—I don’t think there’s any obligation to tip whatsoever,” Meyer said on CNBC’s Squawk Box.
That history makes the viral Shake Shack video particularly notable: a company founded by one of America's best-known advocates for moving away from traditional tipping is now at the center of a controversy over a digital tipping prompt.
08/10/2026 1:54 P.M. ET: This article was updated with a statement from Shake Shack.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Ben Kelly and Gray R. Thomas
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