Shake, baby, shake

Milkshakes may be an American invention, but British company Shakeaway has taken this most nostalgic of beverages and brought it into the 21st century with creativity, fun, and the sort of irreverent humor that brought us Monty Python’s Flying Circus and The Office.

Want to try the world’s most expensive milkshake? Shakeaway’s Millionaire’s Milkshake puts Pulp Fiction’s five-dollar milkshake to shame with its 23-karat edible gold and P900 price tag. (Don’t worry: their regular shakes only cost P190.)

Conversely, Shakeaway also offers the “world’s worst milkshake”: called the Wicked Wendy, it’s a blend of pickled onions, frozen peas, and whipped cream that has been the object of many a teenage boy’s YouTube dare.

Despite the whimsy, Shakeaway takes its milkshakes very seriously. Their menu lists around 180 ingredients that can be combined in an infinite variety of ways to get the milkshake of your dreams — from fruits to candy, cakes to chocolate bars.

“Customers create their own menu,” notes Peter Dickson, CEO of Shakeaway Worldwide. “Some of our confectionery brands are over a hundred years old with billions of dollars in advertising behind them, so we’re taking someone else’s product, which is really well-known and often well-loved, and making a milkshake taste exactly of the ingredient you chose.”

The CEO, whose personal favorite ingredient is banana, has drunk about three million milkshakes in the last five years. Tough job, but that’s what it takes to come up with the perfect recipe for each ingredient. “I was three stone (42 lbs.) lighter than I am now,” he sheepishly admits. “Each ingredient has its own individual recipe, and no one knows every recipe except me. Our website gets hacked two or three times every week for recipes, but we keep it secure.”

Dickson bought Shakeaway about six years ago and converted it from a local UK business that catered to 10- to 13-year-old kids to a global, millennially hip concept that now draws in regular customers aged 25 to 35 years old.

“We have a lot of healthy offerings like yogurt, which is very good with fruit, and the shaved ice, which is more popular with guys,” he notes. “A lot of gym users buy that.”

Shakeaway’s runaway bestseller, though, is Dave, a chocoholic’s fantasy combo of Ferrero Rocher and Kinder Bueno with crumbled Cadbury Flake on top. “The best milkshake on the planet is Dave,” Dickson claims. “It was invented by someone called Dave a long time ago, who occasionally pops up and asks for royalties, but no.”

In the span of 18 years Shakeaway has grown to become the biggest milkshake bar company in the world.

“In ’98 the owners had one store,” Dickson relates. “One of them was a real mad Mars bar fan; the other one really liked milkshakes. But at that time you could only buy Nesquick powder, flavored milk, or the American version, which doesn’t have anything in it at all, and comes out of a machine, so you don’t really have much choice. So they decided to make their own milkshake with milk, ice cream, and a Mars bar. And they thought their blender would blow up. So they did it from behind a wall with a broom handle to switch it on, and it didn’t blow up. In fact, they made the first Mars bar milkshake. They tried seven or eight different flavors and put it on their menu, and then sold that business because it was just a big café, and then started to open real milkshake bars called Shakeaway. So really, that’s where it came from.”

To bring Shakeaway’s master franchise to the Philippines, Dickson chose sisters Zerline Chan Ortiz-Luis, Kim Chan-Tanganco and Jenilee Chan.

“We had so many applications from the whole of Southeast Asia but they were the best — three brilliant sisters who really understood the brand and our slogan: ‘We don’t sell milkshakes; we sell a brand experience that serves milkshakes,’” Dickson says.

For their part, the Chan sisters were looking for a good food concept to bring in. “We concentrated on milkshakes because we think it’s not a product that’s done well here yet,” says Ortiz-Luis. “It’s like a side product for ice cream brands, or burger diners, or food shops, or done as a trend with over-the-top shakes that look nicer than they taste.”

They wanted a product they could grow and a segment they could own in the Philippines, and discovered Shakeaway. “We flew to Bournemouth two years ago, toured a lot of shops, and really learned what the brand and product was all about.”

Upon opening the sisters already launched a “Traditional Taste of the Philippines” menu, which features 10 local ingredients ranging from Choc-Nut to polvoron to jackfruit. “We brought jackfruit over to the UK to test it out,” Ortiz-Luis says. “We had a Philippine weekend and customers who sampled it liked it, said it’s like mango-apple. We also have an exclusive named shake for the Philippines, Jose, which is ube-macapuno with pinipig on top.”

Other must-tries are the soda shakes and hot shakes — yes, you read that right: you can have your milkshake hot. “Try the Dave hot, because it increases the intensity of flavor by 50 percent,” Dickson urges. “Some of our stores make 25 to 30 percent of their sales on hot shakes. Our bestselling hot-shake story is in Riyadh, where it’s 50 degrees most of the time.”

They also change ingredients seasonally on the big menu, like for Christmas, six limited-edition shakes will be offered, while in January, Shakeaway Philippines will follow Shakeaway Worldwide by offering winter shakes.

“We pick up all the major holidays like Christmas and Easter, so our menus are changing all the time,” Dickson says.

Knowing Filipinos’ penchant for always wanting food to accompany their drinks, it’s good that Shakeaway counts more as a dessert than a beverage, since they’ve mastered the science of having pieces of your chosen ingredients come up the straw for you to chew on as you drink your milkshake.

And if that’s not enough, there are French fries on the menu, which are oven-baked and not deep-fried (the Chans had to import a special machine from the UK just to cook them), so they’re low-fat. “They’re the best fries you’ve ever tasted,” Dickson states.

I’ll have to go back just to see if he’s right.

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The first branch of Shakeaway is located on the ground floor of Phase 2, UP Town Center in Diliman, Quezon City.