Burger-lovers drooling over Shake Shack’s anticipated IPO

A West Coast gourmet burger chain that just flipped its shares onto the public market — and saw them spike 120 percent on their first day of trading — could be a perfect template for Shake Shack, sources said.

Habit Restaurants, with 119 locations, almost all on the West Coast, went public on Nov. 20 at $18 and closed the first day of trading at $39.54. Its shares closed Tuesday at $33.62, down 4.9 percent.

The company has an $869 million market cap.

Like Shack, Habit sells largely premium burgers and shakes and its locations are almost all on one US coast — in its case the West Coast.

The Shack and Habit Restaurants are trying to expand into each other’s territories.

Of Shake Shack’s 36 locations in the United States, 15 are in New York and none are in California.

Habit this summer opened its first local store in Fair Lawn, NJ and is coming to River Edge, NJ.

Both are growing fast.

Habit has expanded from 26 locations at the beginning of 2010 to 119 today; while Shack has grown from seven in 2010 to its current 63 stores.

The two chains have comparable earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, a common measure of profits: $17.4 million for Habit and $14.5 million for Shack.

Both have a private equity firm pushing fast growth: KarpReilly Capital Partners (formed by former Apax & Co. partners) own 39 percent of Habit, and Leonard Green & Partners 40 percent of Shack.

Habit has a lower price point — $2.95 for a burger — but reviewers sometimes complain about the thin meat.