Steak ’n Shake is betting that beef tallow and grass-fed beef will draw diners and lift sales; revamping menu adds costs SCHERERVILLE, Ind.—An American flag big enough to cover two school buses flaps over a Steak ’n Shake location southeast of Chicago. Payment systems take bitcoin, and for customers who pull up in Teslas, there are free supersize fry upgrades served in gold boxes. French fries are cooked in beef tallow instead of vegetable oil.

The bottled Coca-Cola is sweetened with cane sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup, and the beef in the Steakburgers comes from cattle raised on pasture grass. Since 2025, the Indianapolis-based chain has mounted an audacious turnaround strategy that embraces President Trump’s brand of patriotism, and the Make America Healthy Again movement championed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Michael Boes, Steak ’n Shake’s “chief MAHA officer,” said the chain is responding to people looking for fast food they can feel good about. “This political movement didn’t come out of nowhere, right?” he said in an interview.

Steak ’n Shake’s revamp is led by Sardar Biglari, an activist investor and conservative figure who also owns Maxim magazine, insurance providers and oil companies. In April he hired Boes, a former Trump administration Health and Human Services staffer, to spearhead the chain’s new MAHA push. It is helping business, with same-store sales up 14% in the three months ended June 30 compared with the same period last year, according to filings by parent Biglari Holdings.

Average restaurant visits per location at the roughly 400-unit chain grew 5.8% in the first half of this year, reversing a decline in 2024, according to location data firm Placer.ai. The effort is attracting customers like Lexi Carman, who recently drove 30 minutes from Beecher, Ill., to bring her two kids and two nieces to the Schererville location. “We were actually just here on Saturday,” she said, as the kids munched Steakburgers and sipped milkshakes. Steak ’n Shake’s food costs have grown this year as a result of its investments in quality, the company said.

Its overall profit has improved since 2024 but hasn’t returned to 2023 levels, and some locations have continued to close. Boes said prices have moderately increased to offset the quality improvements. For decades, Steak ’n Shake subsisted in the middle of the U.S. fast-food pack.

The ingredient revamp helps it stand out without relying solely on discounts, executives said, and the chain is leveraging the effort to go after rivals, including in an X post targeting Five Guys in August. “We don’t claim to be a salad chain,” said Boes, who said ground beef makes up about 75% of his diet and that he keeps in touch with Trump administration officials about Steak ’n Shake’s efforts. “But I do think these foods in their pure form do have a health benefit.” Some nutrition experts have been skeptical about whether many of the MAHA movement’s food priorities do much to help human health. Cooking with beef tallow versus soybean oil is one example, said Alison Steiber, chief impact officer for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. “Regardless of how you fry your french fries, they are still fried,” she said. Steak ’n Shake doesn’t make health claims about grass-fed beef or tallow, but the company believes its customers feel better about the chain’s food. “We just tell them you can taste the difference,” Boes said while surveying the fry oil in the Indiana Steak ’n Shake.

Steak ’n Shake traces its roots to the 1930s, when Augustus “Gus” Belt bought a number of gas stations, including one with a restaurant in Normal, Ill. The town voted to go dry, so Belt switched to burgers and milkshakes from chicken and beer, grinding meat right in front of customers, sometimes sourced from his own cattle. Steak ’n Shake over the decades expanded across the Midwest.

But after changing ownership multiple times and with competition intensifying, by the 2000s the chain was struggling and ru...