Written by Caleb Chunn // Graphic by Cooper Turman
The Tacker’s Shake Shack location in the Student Center announced Jan. 9 the addition of several new items to their menu for the spring semester, and students across campus are excited to get a bite.
Expanding on their already diverse selection, bone-in wings, chicken tenders, chicken fries, pizza sticks, onion rings and several other new items have made their way to the menu.
“We wanted to give students a better option that’s more cost effective,” lead chef Mark Tacker said.
Tacker has been working at the main branch of the restaurant in Marion, Arkansas, since he was 16 years old, and he now helps run the restaurant with his father. Tacker himself is responsible for some of the recent menu changes.
“It took me like two weeks to perfect the wing recipe,” Tacker said. “I smoked some wings, I baked some wings, fried and grilled them all these different ways.”
Several Harding students have begun working at Tacker’s Shake Shack and have adapted to these new changes. Sophomore Caden Grubb is a student worker who came back to work after a semester abroad with Harding University in Australasia.
“All the new menu items, I think, are going to be really exciting and innovative for the students to try,” Grubb said. “There are a lot of low-budget options too that we’ve added that makes it a little bit more accessible for some students if they run out of dining dollars,” Grubb said.
With so many more options, the students on campus are beginning to notice the big changes, as well. Freshman Avery Neal said she is excited about all the new menu items.
“I think it’s awesome,” Neal said. “The variety is good. I’m excited to try the chicken wings and the pizza sticks.”
The new additions not only bring a fresh new menu to Tacker’s Shake Shack, but they’re the only ones like it at either location.
“This is the only location serving these items at the moment,” Tacker said. “This was kind of a test to see the system work at a small capacity so that we can perfect it and then go bigger.”
There may be a few more items to come to the menu in the future.
“We do have other items on the ‘maybe’ list,” Tacker said. “Once the year progresses and we see if everybody’s liking the new items, we have a few others that we’re thinking of bringing in. We’ll make it a suspenseful surprise.”
