Shake Shack supports Sultana Museum efforts

Are you up for the Sultana Burger challenge?

By WYLY BIGGER

Director of Special Projects

Tacker’s Shake Shack is one of the most well-known restaurants in the region and is one of biggest attractions in the City of Marion. However, they don’t keep all the attention for themselves – they have consistently used their business to help promote another major tourist attraction for Marion: the Sultana Disaster Museum. For several years now, the Shake Shack has supported the museum by advertising for them in their restaurant, with photos of the Sultana on the wall and brochures for the museum by the front entrance. They even have a food challenge named for the museum: the mighty Sultana Burger – a two-pound burger with chili, hashbrowns, bacon, eggs, and layers of cheese. In return, Sultana Disaster Museum employees have been recommending the Shake Shack to just about every visitor who walks through the museum doors.

Both institutions have had major impacts on Marion and the surrounding area. The Shake Shack routinely brings in customers from all over the globe, while the Sultana Museum has had visitors from all fifty states and fourteen foreign countries. Furthermore, a 2016 study from Owen Economics, which was updated in 2021 by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, estimated that the new Sultana Disaster Museum will attract an estimated 50,000 visitors a year and is anticipated to create 88 new jobs that will generate an estimated $2.2 million in wages. The museum is also expected to create approximately $3 million in revenue for Marion and Crittenden County. It is also believed that tourism to Marion

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will likely encourage travelers to visit other notable sites in Northeast Arkansas.

In December of 2021, Shake Shack made their biggest show of support yet by pledging $25,000 to the efforts to construct a new museum housed within the historic 1939 Marion High School Gymnasium & Auditorium. Continuing to foster the partnership, the Sultana Historical Preservation Society recently provided the Shake Shack with a banner to display in the restaurant with details about the current and future museum. Thursday, former director Tracy Brick visited the Shake Shack to deliver the banner along with her successors, Wyly Bigger (Director of Special Projects) and Melody Walker (Director of Planning & Operations). Norman Vickers, a long-time support of the Sultana project and a former docent at the museum, was also present.

To learn more about the museum or to donate to their capital campaign, visit sultan adisastermuseum.com.

Submitted photos

Left to Right: Loretta Tacker (Owner, Shake Shack), Norman Vickers, Tracy Brick, and Wyly Bigger.

The massive two-pound Sultana Burger in all its glory.

The Sultana Disaster Museum banner stands next to the Shake Shack’s map of visitors, showing the international reach that the City of Marion has had through the restaurant.