What is Shake Shack Kierland Commons?
Shake Shack Kierland Commons is the burger counter on the Scottsdale Road side of Kierland Commons, at 15030 N Scottsdale Road, and it has been open since Thursday, September 15, 2016. It was the third Shake Shack in Arizona. The chain, which Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group grew out of a hot-dog cart in New York’s Madison Square Park in 2004, announced its Valley arrival in 2015 and opened Scottsdale Fashion Square on February 26, 2016, Uptown Plaza in Phoenix on March 9, and then this one, which Macerich had announced on January 28 as the Commons’ new “modern roadside burger stand.”
The menu is the national one, and that is the point: ShackBurgers of 100 percent Angus beef with no hormones or antibiotics, flat-top Vienna beef dogs, cage-free crispy chicken, crinkle-cut fries, hand-spun shakes and frozen custard. What makes this location its own is the Kierland Campfire, a concrete sold only here: chocolate custard, marshmallow sauce, graham cracker and dark chocolate chunks from Zak’s Chocolate, the Scottsdale bean-to-bar maker. At the opening the company pledged 5 percent of Campfire sales to the Arizona Humane Society. The two Arizona-wide concretes, the CamelShack with banana cream pie from The Bakery Phx and the Peanut Butter Toffee Crunch, are here too.
The room followed the chain’s build-out template of the time: tabletops cut from reclaimed bowling-alley lanes by CounterEvolution, chairs by Uhuru of sustainably forested ash, booths by Staach of FSC-certified lumber, and walls clad in reclaimed mushroom and tobacco wood. There is a patio, and it pours beer from Huss, SanTan and Phoenix Ale, Brooklyn Brewery’s ShackMeister Ale, and the Shack Red and Shack White that Frog’s Leap makes for the chain.
Who it is for: the lunch crowd from the Kierland office towers, families from the Westin Kierland, and anyone in the Kierland & Quarter district who does not want an hour’s wait at a sit-down room. Our verdict: it is the best quick lunch in the Commons, the Campfire is a real reason to pick this Shack over the others, and the patio with a local beer is a better use of a Kierland evening than it has any right to be.
Ordering at Shake Shack Kierland
Order the Campfire. The Kierland Campfire concrete is the one thing on the menu you cannot get at Fashion Square, Uptown Plaza or any of the Valley Shacks that opened later. Order it as the dessert, not as a side; the custard is dense and the Zak’s Chocolate chunks are generous. If you want a shake instead, the chain’s hand-spun shakes use the same custard, but the concrete is the better format for the local add-ins. The CamelShack, with salted caramel and banana cream pie, is the other one worth trying once.
Then the burger. The ShackBurger, single or double, is the order; the flat-top Vienna beef dog is the chain’s roadside heritage and is better here than most people expect. Crinkle fries are the fries; cheese fries are the upgrade. Prices follow the chain’s national menu and we did not find a Kierland-specific price list in print; budget $15 to $20 a head with a drink, more with a concrete and a beer.
Drink local. The patio and counter pour Huss Brewing, SanTan Brewing and Phoenix Ale Brewery beers alongside the ShackMeister Ale from Brooklyn Brewery and the chain’s own Shack Red and Shack White from Frog’s Leap. A beer and a burger on the patio at 5 p.m. is the cheapest happy hour in the district; see our happy hour guide for the sit-down competition.
Timing. Hours are 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. The weekday lunch line from the office towers peaks from noon to 1:30; weekend evenings run a line out the door from 6 to 8 while the dining rooms across Scottsdale Road at Scottsdale Quarter are quoting hour-long waits. Mid-afternoon on a weekday is empty. There are no reservations; order at the counter or on the app and pick up at the window.
Getting there and who is there. The Shack is on Level 1 on the Scottsdale Road side of the Commons, in the restaurant row with Zinc Bistro, North Italia and Snooze. Angled street parking inside the center turns over fast; the garage behind the shops is the fallback. The crowd is families with strollers at lunch, office workers on weekdays and hotel guests at night, and it is one of the more comfortable rooms in the district for a child who will not sit through a steakhouse; see Scottsdale with kids. What to skip: the house lemonade when a local beer is right there, and a shake if a concrete is already on the tray.
The burger stand in the white-tablecloth district
Kierland Commons was one of the first lifestyle centers in the country when it opened around 2000, and for its first fifteen years its restaurant row was built for dinner: Zinc Bistro and North Italia from 2002, P.F. Chang’s, RA Sushi, Mastro’s Ocean Club, The Cheesecake Factory. Macerich, which owns the 430,000-square-foot center, spent the mid-2010s adding the casual layer: Snooze in August 2015, Postino WineCafe in 2016, and Shake Shack, announced in January 2016 and opened that September. The property manager at the time, Jesse Benites, called Shake Shack “one of the most talked-about and critically acclaimed restaurants in the country,” which was the language of a landlord who had landed a tenant with a line.
Shake Shack’s Arizona entry was a 2015 and 2016 story across the Valley. The chain was opening in new markets fast; Phoenix got its first two Shacks within twelve days of each other in early 2016, and New Times wrote that the chain was “taking over the Valley” when the Kierland deal was confirmed. Each Arizona Shack opened with a local concrete and a local charity: the CamelShack’s 5 percent went to St. Mary’s Food Bank, the Kierland Campfire’s to the Arizona Humane Society. It was the chain’s template everywhere, but the local chocolate from Zak’s and the local beers made it land.
The Commons was the right third site. Fashion Square was the mall; Uptown Plaza was Central Phoenix; Kierland was the north Scottsdale money, the resort across the street and the office towers above. The restaurant has outlasted most of the lifestyle-center burger wave that followed it, and it has stayed on the Kierland directory for a decade. The record after the opening is quiet, which is typical of a chain that is simply busy: New Times’ 2020 all-day guide to the center filed it among the lunch and dessert stops, and the Kierland Campfire is still on the menu board.
We could not find a published seat count, a square footage or a Kierland-specific price list, and the chain’s own location page was blocked to us when we checked; the hours above come from the Kierland Commons directory. Honest assessment: a Shake Shack is a Shake Shack, and nobody should drive across town for one. But if you are already in the Kierland & Quarter district, this is the best quick meal in it, the local concrete is a genuine reason to prefer it to the other Valley Shacks, and the patio with a Huss beer is the easiest evening on this stretch of Scottsdale Road. It belongs on any list of Scottsdale burgers with Rehab Burger Therapy, on the chain side of the ledger.