STEAK ‘N SHAKE CALLS ITSELF A BITCOIN COMPANY NOW — PAYS WORKERS 21 CENTS AN HOUR IN SATS WHILE PROFITS FELL 85% THIS YEAR

Steak ‘n Shake has taken Lightning payments since May 2025. That part is unremarkable — plenty of restaurants accept bitcoin now. What’s different is what parent company Biglari Holdings did next. In January, it added bitcoin to the treasury twice, $10 million and then $5 million. In March, it started paying every hourly employee an extra 21 cents for every hour worked — in bitcoin, vested after two years. That’s not a marketing stunt. That’s a company putting its own balance sheet and its own payroll behind the asset, not just its point-of-sale system. Here’s the number that makes it a real bet instead of a press release: first-half 2026 earnings dropped to $2.1 million from $13.7 million a year earlier. Same-store sales are up 13.8% and pretax operating earnings improved to $6.3 million in the quarter — so this isn’t a company in freefall, but it isn’t flush either. The bitcoin buying kept going anyway. Biglari’s own words: “We have never seen an allegiance as strong as Bitcoin holders.” Read that as a filing, not a slogan. A company is telling you which customers it trusts to keep showing up, and paying its own staff in the same asset it’s betting will keep them loyal.