Author: Liam Akiba Wright
Translated by: Chopper, Foresight News
The US fast-food chain Steak ’n Shake has reported a 16% year-over-year increase in same-store sales for July at its US locations, attributing part of the credit to Bitcoin. However, there is a key piece of data that Steak ’n Shake has omitted: exactly how many customers actually used Bitcoin to pay?
This raises a question: Has the public relations value Bitcoin brings to brands now surpassed the actual commercial value it creates?
On July 10th, the burger brand announced that the revenue increase for the month up to the date of the announcement was built on top of a 16% growth from the same period last year. The brand thanked loyal regular customers on one hand, and on the other, singled out the Bitcoin holder community, stating that Bitcoin payments have lower processing fees compared to credit cards, and the saved costs are fully invested in upgrading to healthier ingredients.
The 16% sales increase was announced unilaterally by Steak ’n Shake, but the brand has never disclosed the following key information: the number of customers who checked out using Bitcoin, the corresponding total transaction volume, and the scale of processing fee savings brought by Bitcoin payments.
Without this data, it is impossible to distinguish whether the revenue growth came from Bitcoin payments or from other factors such as concurrent marketing campaigns, product price adjustments, promotional activities, menu updates, or changes in store structure.
Steak ’n Shake has publicly stated: Anyone who questions the value of Bitcoin is making a huge mistake.
Steak ’n Shake Only Argues Single-Transaction Cost Advantage, Lacks Overall Data
Steak ’n Shake rolled out Bitcoin payments across all its US stores in May 2025, and later announced that Bitcoin received by stores would be allocated to strategic reserve assets. These two moves have made Bitcoin both a brand label and an optional payment method at the checkout counter.
Even if very few consumers actually pay with Bitcoin, supporting Bitcoin payments itself can attract crypto enthusiasts to the stores; meanwhile, the processing cost for each Bitcoin order is indeed lower than traditional credit cards. However, the brand has consistently not revealed exactly how much transaction volume actually flows through the Bitcoin channel.
As of July 16th, Steak ’n Shake still had not disclosed the number of Bitcoin orders, total transaction value, total actual fee savings, nor provided store-level data to substantiate Bitcoin user repurchase rates or the impact of promotional activities on payment penetration. The lack of data makes it impossible to quantify the real operational gains from Bitcoin payments.
At the 2026 Bitcoin Conference, Steak ’n Shake executive Michael Boes stated that the processing cost per Bitcoin transaction is about 50% lower than traditional credit cards; if all credit card customers switched entirely to Bitcoin payments, stores could save approximately $6 million in fees annually.
He also mentioned that following the launch of Bitcoin payments, the brand saw an increase of about 2 million customer visits annually. However, this presentation did not prove that the increased traffic was brought by Bitcoin payments, nor did it provide statistical basis for the traffic attribution.
The Bitcoin payment details disclosed by Steak ’n Shake are informative: menu prices are still quoted in US dollars, the checkout process integrates with a third-party Bitcoin payment service provider, and stores do not charge customers additional payment processing fees; however, users may still bear wallet fees, on-chain network fees, exchange spreads, and currency fluctuation costs.
The available information can only prove that Bitcoin orders have a per-transaction fee advantage, but cannot prove that the volume of orders using this channel is substantial enough to generate meaningful cost savings.
Revenue Growth Already Existed
Financial reports from Steak ’n Shake's parent company, Biglari Holdings, had already shown that a sales recovery trend was in place well before this July revenue announcement. The quarterly report for the period ending March 31st showed same-store sales growth of 10% for company-owned stores and about 13% for franchise partner stores.
First-quarter marketing expenses increased from $3.232 million in the same period last year to $5.427 million, a rise of 67.9%; the cost of ingredients as a percentage of revenue for company-owned stores increased from 30% to 31.4%, primarily due to a complete switch to cooking with pure beef tallow.
The store structure also changed significantly. As of March 31st, the number of company-owned stores decreased from 146 to 128; franchise partner stores increased from 172 to 182, while traditional franchise stores decreased from 104 to 96.
Biglari's 2025 letter to shareholders disclosed full-year same-store sales growth of 10.2%, attributing the growth at that time to product quality upgrades, renovation of checkout equipment and self-ordering kiosks, improved operational efficiency, and optimization of the owner-operator model—Bitcoin was not mentioned throughout the letter.
During the July revenue reporting period, Steak ’n Shake simultaneously launched multiple promotional activities. For the entire month, two signature combo meals were priced at $17.76, with free Tesla Tallow Fries; hours before announcing the positive revenue news on July 10th, they had just announced free fries with no minimum purchase required for that day. Steak ’n Shake also did not specify the exact cut-off time for the revenue statistics.
The superposition of multiple variables makes it difficult to isolate Bitcoin's contribution to the growth. Marketing campaigns, brand pricing, menu exposure, promotional activities, operational reforms, and franchise structural adjustments would all, along with the Bitcoin payment label, jointly influence store traffic and revenue.
A user in the Reddit Bitcoin community commented that it was the store's support for Bitcoin payments that prompted their first visit. However, users in both the Bitcoin subreddit and the cryptocurrency-skeptical Buttcoin subreddit also pointed out that the traffic increase might stem from the brand's value positioning, menu appeal, or consumer diversion due to store closures, and that the actual usage rate of Bitcoin might be extremely low. Such user comments are merely anecdotal; they can only indicate that Bitcoin can attract traffic and shape brand image, but cannot prove the actual scale of its use for payments.
For Offline Merchants to Replicate This Model, Complete Data Disclosure is Essential
If Steak ’n Shake hopes that offline physical merchants will view this Bitcoin business strategy as a replicable growth model, it must subsequently disclose data linking payment implementation to business outcomes.
Key disclosure metrics should include the total number of Bitcoin orders and their transaction share, total sales volume through the Bitcoin channel, and the total actual fee savings. Store-level data and user segmentation data could intuitively show whether there are differences in business performance at stores with higher Bitcoin penetration. Repurchase data could distinguish between one-time novelty visits and long-term, stable usage. Promotional activity data could isolate the interference of sales campaigns on payment penetration.
This data should be able to reveal whether Bitcoin brought customer traffic, reduced payment costs, or both. Only by cross-referencing with data on marketing investment, product pricing, customer traffic, profits, menu updates, and franchise store operations can the true proportional contribution of Bitcoin to revenue growth be calculated.
At this stage, Steak ’n Shake has only announced the impressive same-store sales growth while explaining the per-transaction cost advantage of Bitcoin. The brand itself is firmly bullish on Bitcoin. If Bitcoin transactions did indeed play a substantive role in driving July's revenue growth, then disclosing complete transaction data would be the logical next step.
