The company said the ingredient switch was a long time coming and grounded in consumer preferences, but it’s hard to miss the sudden MAGA embrace.
Steak ’n Shake was looking for change. The Indianapolis-based fast food chain for burgers and milkshakes replaced its leadership after a lackluster 2024. In mid-January, it announced that all of its restaurants would switch to cooking their french fries with beef tallow.
Executives said the move would make for tastier fries. It also aligned Steak ’n Shake with President Donald Trump’s top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has made replacing seed oils a key plank of his plans to overhaul America’s food industry. Conservatives hailed Steak ’n Shake’s decision as a win for Trump’s controversial Cabinet pick.
A Florida Steak ’n Shake was the backdrop of a Fox News interview between Kennedy and host Sean Hannity that aired Monday, where the Health and Human Services secretary gushed: “People are raving about these French fries.”
Marketing researchers said Steak ’n Shake is the latest example of brands targeting increasingly polarized consumers across the country. Some questioned the suddenness of Steak ’n Shake’s pivot and whether, in a time where other brands seen affiliating with Trump or his policies have faced boycotts and violence, the publicity would beget sales or backlash.
“This really feels like a Hail Mary,” said Marcus Collins, a former marketing professional and a clinical assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan.
Steak ’n Shake CEO Sardar Biglari and HHS did not respond to requests for comment. But in interviews and earnings reports, Steak ’n Shake has framed the ingredient change as a long time coming and grounded in consumer preferences.
Steak ’n Shake, which was founded in Illinois in 1934, has suffered a rocky two decades. Biglari acquired the company in 2008 when it sagged amid the global financial crisis and returned it to profitability. In 2020, after another period of sustained losses, the restaurant simplified its menu and replaced servers with self-service kiosks.
As of last year, the company had shed 200 locations from a peak of 626 in 2018, according to an annual report by Biglari Holdings, Steak ’n Shake’s parent company, which also owns the Western Sizzlin chain of restaurants, Maxim magazine and several insurance, oil and gas businesses.
Steak ’n Shake’s pretax earnings barely topped $20 million last year, 20 percent short of the company’s goal, according to the quarterly report. It overhauled its leadership and installed a new “fast and focused” team for the new year, according to the report.
That team’s decision to move to beef tallow was years in the making, COO Edwards told Fox News in February. Steak ’n Shake hadn’t been able to find a supplier for beef tallow without additives or preservatives until recently, he said. Some other fast food restaurants, including Buffalo Wild Wings and Popeyes, also fry their foods in beef tallow, according to their websites.
In its annual report, Biglari Holdings made no reference to politics and wrote that the addition of beef tallow was one of many product decisions intended to raise the quality of its product, including increasing the size of beef patties and the amount of whipped cream in its milkshakes.
“Any one of our actions may go unnoticed by our customers but cumulatively they should strengthen our competitive position,” the report said.
Steak ’n Shake’s move coincided with Kennedy’s ascension to Trump’s Cabinet. Kennedy has assailed plant-based vegetable oils, or seed oils, as toxic ingredients, though researchers have pushed back on some of his claims. Kennedy called for fast food restaurants to resume using beef tallow on social media last year and, in a Thanksgiving post, fried a turkey in tallow.
Steak ’n Shake is far from the first food or beverage brand to wade into the political fray or align itself with a movement. Collins, the professor of marketing, cited ice-cream company Ben & Jerry’s progressive stance on social issues, including its support of racial justice and LGBTQ+ rights. However, entering the political arena hasn’t always worked out.
Mark Lang, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Tampa, pointed to the recent boycotts of Goya and Bud Light after both companies waded into hot-button political issues. Those serve as warnings to companies about how polarized American consumption has become, Lang said.
“Because food is so embedded in our lifestyles and our identities and our groups and our expressions and all of that, it gets sucked into this [political environment] and becomes fodder,” Lang said.
But researchers said they were surprised by how quickly and overtly Steak ’n Shake pivoted to embrace the plaudits it received from conservatives.
“They’re going full tilt,” Collins said. “It’s a great departure from their marketing communication in the past.”
“Single weirdest campaign of any sort in my lifetime and that’s saying quite a bit,” Jonathan Maze, the editor in chief of Restaurant Business Magazine, said on X.
Steak ’n Shake’s social media accounts, which had until January sparingly served a very brand-safe series of advertisements and photos of burgers and milkshakes, began to tout Kennedy’s slogan to “Make America Healthy Again” soon after announcing the beef tallow move. Some posts took on a combative, antiestablishment tone.
“Zealots cannot stop us!” Steak ’n Shake wrote on X on March 1. “Some suppliers have even tried to stop us from implementing beef tallow. Nothing will stop our crusade to lead in the MAHA movement!”
The company also appeared to forge alliances with Tesla, the car company headed by Trump ally Elon Musk. Tesla claimed on X that it had signed deals to build charging stations at Steak ’n Shake locations. Steak ’n Shake shared an illustration of a futuristic-looking diner on Mars — which Musk’s SpaceX hopes to one day colonize — with both Steak ’n Shake and Tesla motifs. Another Steak ’n Shake post teased Musk about buying the company.
Steak ’n Shake’s overtures have been noticed. Prominent conservative figures like Musk, Charlie Kirk and Kari Lake posted on X praising the company. And during Kennedy’s interview Monday on Fox News, a Steak ’n Shake restaurant took center stage: a server delivered Hannity and Kennedy trays of burgers and fries before the two heaped praise on the company.
“We are very thankful to them for RFK’ing their french fries,” Kennedy said. “They’ve turned my name into a verb.”
Lang said there could be merit to Steak ’n Shake’s decision to double down on an appeal to conservatives, a demographic that has championed red meat and fast food — Trump has made serving McDonalds a recurring image of his political career. Red states including Florida, Ohio and Indiana have some of the most Steak ’n Shake locations in the country.
But positioning Steak ’n Shake so closely to Kennedy and Musk, who have courted some of the most controversy out of those in Trump’s administration, runs the risk of staking the brand too far on the fringe of political opinion, Lang said.
“I’m surprised that in order to gain some new customers and sales, you would alienate an equal number of customers on the other side,” he said. (Popular vote totals from last year’s presidential election showed a near-even partisan split: 49.8 percent for Trump, and 48.3 percent for Democrat Kamala Harris.)
Collins said a successful rebrand hinges on a company’s authenticity, and that he’d wait to see if Steak ’n Shake sticks to its guns if it faces backlash.
“In my gut, I feel like this feels like an act of convenience,” Collins said.
On Thursday, Steak ’n Shake’s X account posted a photo of Kennedy visiting the restaurant and praised him for “seeking to improve the health of Americans.” It also posted an image of a spaceship with “Steak ’n Shake” and a bitcoin logo on its side.
“Future freighter delivering beef tallow on mars!” the burger chain wrote.
