Steak 'n Shake to Pay 'Bitcoin Bonus' to Hourly Employees—Here's How Much

In brief

• Steak 'n Shake is giving hourly employees a “Bitcoin bonus” that will vest over the course of two years.
• The initiative is powered by infrastructure from publicly traded Bitcoin services firm, Fold.
• Some commenters applauded the move, while others scoffed at the size of the Bitcoin payment.

Restaurant franchise Steak ‘n Shake is deepening its embrace of Bitcoin, teaming with publicly traded Bitcoin services firm Fold to offer a BTC bonus to hourly employees. Using Fold’s infrastructure, the restaurant will pay employees a bonus of $0.21 per hour, paid in BTC, which will vest in full after two years.  “Starting March 1, Steak n Shake will give all hourly employees at its company-operated restaurants a Bitcoin bonus of $0.21 for every hour worked,” the restaurant brand posted on X. “Employees will be able to collect their Bitcoin pay after a two-year vesting period.”

Based on a 40-hour work week, an hourly employee at the restaurant could stand to gain $436.80 in Bitcoin per year—about 0.005 BTC at today’s prices.  While some commenters (mostly crypto-natives) lauded the onboarding move, others criticized the firm’s bonus, including comments encouraging the restaurant chain to “give people a raise” instead.

So a $873 bonus for 2 years work at a wage that’s barely livable(or possibly not livable at all). And even then it might not be that much depending on the state of Bitcoin. But let’s say bitcoin doubles in that 2 years. That means roughly a $1700 bonus for 2 years working a shit…

— The Dread duck Pirate Mark Brooks (@MarkBrooksArt) January 21, 2026

Representatives for Fold and Steak ‘n Shake did not immediately respond to _Decrypt’s _request for comment.

The hourly Bitcoin bonus is the latest in a string of Bitcoin-related actions from the restaurant chain in the last eight months. After teasing the acceptance of BTC payments as early as last March, it rolled out the functionality to its Amercian franchises in May last year. Since that time, it’s fully entrenched itself in the Bitcoin camp, going so far as to scrap the addition of Ethereum payments after pushback from Bitcoiners, while attributing some of its improved sales metrics to the Bitcoin community.  To commemorate the acceptance of BTC payments, It launched a Bitcoin steakburger complete with an emblazoned BTC logo on the top bun, later partnering with Fold to offer a $5 BTC reward when it was purchased.  Then, at the end of October, the firm announced it would stash all payments made in BTC in a newly created strategic Bitcoin reserve.  That reserve got a boost last week when it announced that it had bolstered its Bitcoin exposure with a $10 million notional value increase. However, notional value refers to the value of a financial instrument, and does not indicate that the firm purchased $10 million worth of BTC.  The top crypto asset by market cap is up 0.7% in the last 24 hours, but down around 7% in the last week, recently changing hands at $90,062. It now sits more than 28% off its October all-time high of $126,080.