Shake Shack’s Checkout Was Built to Rob You

A class action filed December 16, 2024, in the Superior Court of California for the County of Los Angeles lays out exactly how Shake Shack engineered its online ordering process to extract fees from customers after they were already too deep into checkout to realistically stop. This is not a billing error. The complaint describes a deliberate, multi-step system that exploits how the human brain processes prices.

The Non-Financial Ledger

Picture this. You are tired. Maybe it is a weeknight. You pull up the Shake Shack app because you know what you want and you just want it delivered. You browse the menu. You pick your items. The app shows you a running cart total: $21.67. You enter your name. You enter your address. You enter your email. You enter your credit card number. You are one tap from done.

Then the payment screen loads. And the number has changed.

Shake Shack has added a $2.17 “Service Fee.” It has added a $3.00 “Courier Fee.” That is $5.17 in charges that were not mentioned once during any previous screen. The $1.99 delivery fee that was advertised to you earlier? That was never the real delivery cost. There was always going to be a “Courier Fee” on top of it. You just were not told.

Here is the thing about that moment. You have already done the work. You typed everything in. You mentally committed to the meal. And even if you notice the fees and feel the wrongness of it, the complaint is clear about what happens next in most cases: you pay anyway. Because starting over means researching whether there is even a way to avoid it. It means finding another restaurant. It means your dinner gets pushed back thirty minutes. And Shake Shack, having designed this process, knows that math perfectly well.

This is not carelessness. The complaint cites research on “drip pricing,” a documented consumer manipulation technique. The mechanism is simple: show a low number first. Let the brain attach to it. Reveal the real number only after the customer has invested enough time and personal information that quitting feels more expensive than complying. The first price you see in a purchase process becomes your psychological anchor. Everything else gets evaluated against it, even if the everything else arrives after you have already handed over your credit card details.

Shake Shack went further than just burying the fees. It gave them confusing, technical-sounding names. “Courier Fee.” “Service Fee.” These names do not tell you what you are actually paying for. The Federal Trade Commission, in its own guidance on this exact issue, documented that consumers routinely report being unable to figure out what they are paying for or whether they are getting any benefit at all from a fee charged. That confusion is the product. The confusion keeps people from fighting it.

What Aviva Copaken experienced on November 12, 2024 is not a one-off glitch. The class alleged in this complaint is described as numbering well into the thousands of California customers alone. Each of those people had the same experience: a price shown, a price changed, a gap they were never warned about and could not practically avoid once the checkout machine had done its work on them.

The deepest injury here is not the $5.17. It is the knowledge that the company built a machine specifically calibrated to take money from you in the last moment you have any realistic chance to say no. And then made sure that moment was designed to feel like it was already too late.

Legal Receipts: What the Complaint Actually Says

The following quotes come directly from Case 2:25-cv-01734, filed February 27, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Nothing is paraphrased.

“Shake Shack does not inform consumers the true costs of its food and delivery service and it misrepresents the price of any given food item, when in fact those costs are actually higher. Moreover, the additional fees assessed are never reasonably disclosed to consumers until it shows up as a line item in their shopping cart — after the purchase process is largely complete. This process fails to provide an adequate advance warning to customers that additional fees will be imposed on their purchases.”
— Complaint, paragraphs 31–32

• This paragraph establishes the core legal harm: misrepresentation of price is not disputed as unintentional. The complaint frames Shake Shack as actively suppressing the real cost until the final screen.
• “After the purchase process is largely complete” is key language. It means customers have already surrendered their name, address, and payment details before the true price appears.
• The phrase “fails to provide an adequate advance warning” directly maps to the California CLRA’s requirement that prices shown to consumers must be the full price they will be charged.

“Many consumers do not notice these fees are being added to their order. Others believe that they have no choice but to pay these fees. And others still notice the previously undisclosed fees but decide to go through with the purchase anyway unsure of how it can be removed from their Cart after it was automatically added: they have already invested substantial time and effort inputting their information into the Shake Shack’s system.”
— Complaint, paragraph 33

• This passage documents three separate consumer traps in one paragraph: the invisible fee (didn’t notice), the coerced fee (felt no choice), and the sunk-cost fee (noticed but felt trapped by time already invested).
• The complaint is arguing that the design of the checkout process is itself the mechanism of harm, not a bug in it.

“Junk fees are fees that are mandatory but not transparently disclosed to consumers. Consumers are lured in with the promise of a low price, but when they get to the register, they discover that price was never really available. Junk fees harm consumers and actively undermine competition by making it impractical for consumers to compare prices, a linchpin of our economic system.”
— The White House, The Price Isn’t Right, March 5, 2024, as cited in Complaint paragraph 37

• The complaint invokes direct White House policy language to frame Shake Shack’s fees as a pattern the federal government was already tracking and condemning before this lawsuit was filed.
• The phrase “that price was never really available” is the crux: the advertised $1.99 delivery fee was never the real delivery cost. Shake Shack’s own pricing architecture made it impossible to pay what was advertised.

“Businesses are free to explain how they set their prices or to subsequently itemize the charges that make up the total price that they charge customers. However, the price they advertise or display must be the total price that customers will have to pay for the good or service. Knowing the price of a good or service is essential to competition, and displaying a price that is less than what the customer will actually be charged is deceptive.”
— California Department of Justice, SB 478 FAQ, as cited in Complaint paragraph 39

• The California DOJ statement confirms that itemizing fees after the fact is permitted, but only when the total displayed upfront is accurate. Shake Shack displayed a subtotal, not a total, and called it a total.
• This language directly supports the CLRA §1770(a)(29) claim: advertising a price that does not include all mandatory fees is now explicitly illegal in California.

“Plaintiff Copaken used the Shake Shack app to place a food delivery order on November 12, 2024. When using the website, Plaintiff was repeatedly informed that her cart total was $21.67. However, Plaintiff’s purchase included a $2.17 ‘Service Fee’ and $3.00 ‘Courier Fee’ that — for the reasons described above — in fact represented additional food and delivery fees tacked on to Plaintiff’s order. Plaintiff would not have made the purchase if she had known that Shake Shack would tack on additional fees.”
— Complaint, paragraphs 42–45

• This is the specific, documented instance of harm at the center of the class action. A real person, on a real date, was told $21.67 and charged $26.84.
• “Would not have made the purchase” establishes the causation required for damages: the deception was the direct reason money changed hands.

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health: The Hidden Tax on Convenience

Hidden fees on food delivery do not merely extract money. They redistribute who can afford convenience and who cannot, with specific and documented consequences.

• The complaint identifies “hundreds of thousands” of California customers affected. For lower-income households already using app-based ordering because they lack car access or time to travel, an unexpected $5-plus fee per order compounds an already unequal food access system.
• Drip pricing causes consumers to commit to purchases they would otherwise have reconsidered. This means people who would have cooked, ordered from a cheaper alternative, or skipped the meal are instead paying a premium they did not budget for, directly reducing money available for other nutritional or health spending.
• The psychological cost documented in the complaint is real and underreported: consumers who feel trapped at checkout, who recognize they have been deceived but proceed anyway, experience what consumer research identifies as “purchase regret” and erosion of trust in digital commerce as a whole.

Economic Inequality: The Price Comparison Breakdown

The White House report cited in the complaint names the specific structural damage that hidden fees cause to economic competition, and it goes far beyond any individual transaction.

• When a company hides mandatory fees until the final checkout screen, price comparison becomes practically impossible. A consumer cannot meaningfully compare Shake Shack’s true delivery cost against a competitor’s true delivery cost if only one company is showing its real number at the point of decision.
• The complaint notes that other major fast-food chains in the U.S. do not assess fees outside of those properly disclosed at the outset. This means Shake Shack’s deception gives it an artificial competitive advantage: it appears cheaper than competitors in every moment before the final screen, then captures the sale by making withdrawal too costly.
• The class likely spans thousands of transactions over multiple years within California alone. At $5.17 per transaction, across hundreds of thousands of customers, the total amount extracted without disclosure runs into millions of dollars, all of it profit that was extracted through concealment rather than earned through competition.
• Low-income and working-class consumers are disproportionately harmed because every dollar of unexpected fees represents a larger share of their discretionary income. The sunk-cost trap described in the complaint hits hardest for people who cannot afford to waste the time of starting over, and who are least equipped to absorb surprise charges.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

What Now? Fight Back.

This lawsuit is in motion. Here is who holds power over this outcome, which regulators can act, and what you can do right now.

Corporate Leadership

• Chief Executive Officer, Shake Shack Inc. [REDACTED – Not in Source]
• Chief Financial Officer, Shake Shack Inc. [REDACTED – Not in Source]
• General Counsel, Shake Shack Inc. [REDACTED – Not in Source]
• The Board of Directors, Shake Shack Inc., headquartered in New York, New York

Legal Team Pursuing This Case

• Jeffrey D. Kaliel and Sophia Goren Gold, Kaliel Gold PLLC, Oakland, California
• Scott Edelsberg, Edelsberg Law P.A., Los Angeles, California

Regulatory Watchlist

• Federal Trade Commission (FTC): Already proposed a rule to ban junk fees. File a consumer complaint at FTC.gov/complaint. The FTC’s own guidance is cited in this lawsuit as the standard Shake Shack violated.
• California Attorney General (DOJ): SB 478 is now active California law. The California DOJ’s own FAQ is cited in this complaint. File a complaint at oag.ca.gov.
• California Department of Consumer Affairs: Accepts complaints regarding deceptive business practices under the UCL and CLRA, both of which are central claims in this suit.
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB): Has authority over deceptive financial practices, including junk fees in digital commerce. File at consumerfinance.gov/complaint.

What You Can Do

• If you ordered through the Shake Shack app or website in California and were charged a “Service Fee” or “Courier Fee,” you may be a class member. Contact Kaliel Gold PLLC or Edelsberg Law P.A. directly to preserve your inclusion in the class.
• Screenshot your checkout screens on any food delivery platform, every time. Document the price shown before final payment versus the amount actually charged. This evidence is what makes class actions possible.
• Share this case with every person you know who uses food delivery apps. The class is only powerful if people know they were harmed. Most people paid this fee and forgot about it because the amount felt too small to fight alone. It is not small when multiplied by hundreds of thousands of transactions.
• Support local mutual aid food networks and community fridges in your area. Every dollar extracted by hidden fees is a dollar that could have gone to a neighbor who needs it. Redirect that energy into building food access systems that are not built on deception.
• Organize at the neighborhood level: local tenant and consumer groups can collectively submit regulatory complaints, which carry more weight than individual filings and force regulators to respond on the record.