What was JoJo’s ShakeBAR?
JoJo’s ShakeBAR was the milkshake diner with a full bar that occupied the corner of South Street and 73rd Place at Scottsdale Quarter, 15037 N Scottsdale Road, Suite J150, from July 15, 2023 until October 2025. It was the first Arizona restaurant of a Chicago chain that Robbie Schloss founded in 2019 and named for his daughter, and it was the seventh JoJo’s overall, the third outside the Chicago area after Detroit and Orlando. Schloss told ABC15 he picked Scottsdale because his father and brother had gone to ASU and his brother had lived in the state for almost twenty years.
The concept was nostalgia at volume. The room, carved out of the former Stingray Sushi space, held about 200 seats indoors and out, with a garage door that lifted over the bar, a private dining area, a walk-up window on the street for shakes to go, a Pac-Man game glowing across the ceiling, arcade games for adults and children, a neon selfie backdrop, a Patrón tower on a dining table, and decor that nodded to the Suns, Route 66 and the LOVE sculpture at the Scottsdale Civic Center. Music, movies and TV from the ’80s and ’90s played all day.
The shakes were the product. The Girl Scout, Schloss’s own favorite, was an Andes mint shake crowned with chocolate-dipped s’mores, a torched marshmallow and a double chocolate cookie; the Gold Digger was caramel toffee with toffee, marshmallow, pretzel and a white chocolate macadamia cookie. Everything on the shake except the cup and the straw was edible, the s’mores and dipping were done at an on-site pastry bar, and any shake could be made boozy with the liquor of your choice. The food was diner fare: a Smash Burger, a Honey Fried Chicken Sandwich, onion-ring towers, loaded fries, Buffalo mac and cheese, Pop’s Pot Pie, salads and a weekend brunch.
It was for birthdays, teenagers, and parents who had promised dessert, and for the Quarter’s bar crowd at the boozy end of the menu. Our verdict: it was a genuinely fun room that was always more dessert bar than restaurant, and two years was about how long north Scottsdale needed to decide it did not need one.
What a night at JoJo’s was
The shakes were the meal. A JoJo’s shake was a milkshake with a second dessert stacked on the rim, and the price of entry was accepting that. The menu offered seven signature shakes that guests could customize, with the Girl Scout and the Gold Digger the two that made the press. Seasonal shakes rotated through: the Pumpkin Patch Shake in fall 2023 came topped with a taffy apple, a slice of pumpkin pie, a chocolate-toffee pretzel stick and a toasted marshmallow; the Cowboy Shake was chocolate rocky road with cowboy cookies, a chocolate haystack and a chocolate-covered potato chip; the Winter Wonderland Biggie Shake was peppermint with a Christmas-tree cookie, a marshmallow present, a candy cane and a doughnut-hole snowman. Regulars split one.
The bar was the other half. Any shake could be spiked. Beyond that there was a cocktail list with a whiskey selection, a “frozen milk bar,” “boozy bars” that dropped an alcoholic popsicle into a cocktail, giant espresso martinis (the holiday Polar Espresso Martini had a peppermint rim), Santa Sangria served in a souvenir boot, Caramel Apple Mules and an Apple Pie Shot. Beer and wine were on the list too. Prices for shakes and plates were never published in the coverage we found.
Hours and the walk-up window. The restaurant ran Monday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Sunday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., with brunch on the weekend mornings. The walk-up window on South Street sold shakes to shoppers who did not want a table, which on weekend evenings, when the dining room filled with birthday parties, was the smart way in. The garage door over the bar opened the room to the patio in the cool months.
The takeovers. What JoJo’s did better than most chain rooms was turn itself into an event. In fall 2023 it ran a Pumpkin Patch Extravaganza from September 22 to November 3, $11 a person to pick and paint a pumpkin, with Basic Witch mixology classes for adults at $35 and succulent-pumpkin workshops with The Flower Garage at $85. From late November into mid-January it became a Winter Wonderland, with an eight-foot nutcracker, giant ornaments, thousands of lights, a Patrón tree holding four mega margaritas, $11 ornament painting, $35 Holly Jolly mixology classes, $85 wreath making and $55 gingerbread-house decorating that came with an entrée and a Biggie Hot Chocolate.
Who went. Families from Kierland & Quarter neighborhoods, teenagers filming the shakes, and the Quarter’s own evening crowd, the people who had eaten at Dominick’s or Sorso and wanted a nightcap in a cup. Parking was the Quarter’s garage, which never fills. It made several of our Scottsdale with kids itineraries for exactly that reason.
The Chicago diner that came for the sunshine and left in two years
JoJo’s belongs to the post-pandemic wave of out-of-town concepts that read the 2020s migration into north Scottsdale and came to meet it. Schloss had built the brand in Chicago from 2019, three city locations drawing what AZ Big Media called hundreds of visitors a day, and by 2022 he was planning a national expansion. Scottsdale Quarter, which had lost its Stingray Sushi years earlier and had a corner to fill, got the liquor license in July 2022; What Now Phoenix reported the project that month with an early-2023 target. The target became June, then the restaurant opened on a Saturday in mid-July 2023, which is the normal arc of a Valley build-out.
The opening press was warm. KTAR, ABC15 and AZ Big Media all ran the Pac-Man ceiling and the 200 seats, and the seasonal takeovers that fall and winter were covered as events in their own right. For a while it worked as a destination: a diner where the shake came with a whole slice of pie on it was new to the Valley, and the Quarter, which is bigger and glossier than Kierland Commons across the road, was the right stage for it.
Then it ended quietly. In mid-October 2025 a letter appeared on the restaurant’s social accounts: “We are officially closed and will deeply miss our amazing guests who made this location so special.” It thanked people for “the past two years,” pointed them to Chicago, Naperville, Detroit and Orlando, and promised “more exciting announcements and future openings on the horizon.” AZFamily reported it on October 16, Phoenix New Times on October 14, and ABC15 asked a spokesperson why; none was given. The record does not say whether the lease, the summer, the labor or the concept did it, and we will not guess. What is clear is that it was the chain’s only location west of the Midwest, and that it has not returned.
The space it left is the corner of South Street and 73rd Place, in a center whose restaurant row turns over fast; as of this writing no replacement has been announced for Suite J150, and the Quarter’s directory is the thing to check. The site had been Stingray Sushi, whose Quarter room closed with the rest of that brand by 2017, which makes two concepts in a row that arrived loud and left without a note.
Honest assessment: JoJo’s was an honest novelty. The shakes were as absurd as advertised and the room was built for a good time, but a dessert bar with diner food is a once-a-year visit for most families, and a 200-seat room on a Scottsdale Quarter lease needs more than that. It joins the Quarter’s long list of lost rooms on our Scottsdale bars and clubs ledger, and for the oversized-milkshake brief the district is now back to the counter at Shake Shack across the road.