Toronto’s appetite for burgers has never really had a ceiling — the city supports everything from scrappy local smash-patty shops to full-scale international chains without much sign of saturation. Still, even by Toronto standards, having two heavyweight burger giants set up shop within metres of each other is a fairly rare event.
McDonald’s has operated in the city for the better part of 60 years, a fixture so embedded in the urban landscape it barely registers as news anymore. Shake Shack, by contrast, is the newer disruptor — in less than 24 months, the chain has expanded to eight locations across the GTA, an aggressive pace that shows no signs of slowing. Now, the two are preparing to open locations at the same major intersection, one that also happens to sit on a key TTC line.
The setup naturally raises the question of whether both can coexist so close together, or whether one is destined to pull customers away from the other. Given Toronto’s demonstrated appetite for burgers in basically every form and price point, there’s a reasonable case that the neighbourhood has enough hungry commuters and transit riders to support both without much of a fight. It also says something about how much confidence both chains have in the location itself — a high-traffic corner is a high-traffic corner, competitor or not.
Team McDonald’s or Team Shake Shack? Either way, this corner of the city is about to get a lot more crowded with burger options.
