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For those not in the know, new yorkers have been relaying shake shack line lengths using Twitter through a shake shack account a.k.a Shake Shack Flash Mob.  I decided to take the data created over the last four months and try to answer the question:  When should we try to grab lunch at Shake Shack? After all, no one wants to be in a 60-minute or “third tree” line behind 50 tourists.

As a quick disclaimer:  While the mob is active, the sample size is too small to time it down to the minute, but the data does seem to point towards the following conclusions:

• Pre-noon lunch:  Hit-or-miss.  You’d think by scrambling down there before noon you’d be okay, but there’s no guarantee.  Make sure to check the shake shack webcam
• Post-noon lunch:  Not much data collected but not surprising.  The flash mob knows better than to insult the Shake Shack gods by irreverently trying to grab lunch during lunch-hour
• Post-3 pm lunch:  This is the ticket. Either starve yourself till then or get a job that allows you to wake up at 11 am
• General tip:  If it’s raining, cold or really hot, the line will be shorter than usual but don’t be surprised to still find people braving the elements
• Funniest shake shack tweet goes to ceonyc:  “line very short….swarm! Swarm!”

Who’s graciously tweeting away line lengths?

• whitneymcn – Whitney McNamara, wrote the perl code that makes the Shake Shack twitter account work
• innonate – Nate Westheimer, entrepreneur in residence at Rose Tech Ventures
• fredwilson – Fred Wilson, a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures who came up with the Shake Shack twitter bot idea.
• ceonyc – Charlie O’Donnell, CEO of Path101
• reecepacheco – Reece Pacheco, CEO of Overtime Media

Here’s the full list of shake shack tweeters:

Update: Eater reblogged this post and pitched the shake shack flash mob.  Nice.

Update2: Thrillist reblogged the post referencing the shake shack flash mob as “vigilante nerds”