‘Raising A Family Is Not Easy Here’: In-N-Out Owner Fleeing California, Moving East

The owner of the famed In-N-Out Burger chain, billionaire Lynsi Snyder, a devout Christian, has announced she is leaving California, where her family spent three generations building its fast-food empire, and moving to Tennessee.

In-N-Out has 400 locations in California, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, and Utah, but has deliberately not expanded its chain nationwide.

“While McDonald’s and Burger King serve well over 80 different items, In-N-Out famously serves fewer than 15: burgers, cheeseburgers, fries, soda, milk shakes and the signature two-patty Double-Double,” Forbes noted in 2018, adding, “Snyder is popular with her 26,000 employees. She has a 99% approval rating on Glassdoor.com, the job-reviews site. … The average In-N-Out manager has been with the company for 17 years and makes $163,000, more than the typical California dentist, accountant or financial advisor. Managers get profit-sharing, too. … Bible verse numbers have appeared on burger wrappers and cups since 1985.”

In-N-Out is building an office in Tennessee to serve as a hub for expansion in the southeastern United States. Snyder cited rising crime in California as one of the motivations for her move, saying the company was forced to close its Oakland location last year because it had become too “dangerous” for employees.

“We’re building an office in Franklin, I’m actually moving out there,” Snyder told conservative podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey. “Raising a family is not easy here. Doing business is not easy here. … It will be wonderful having an office out there, growing out there. … We’ve kind of given it a longer runway so that it’s smoother for everybody, so they can plan. … a lot of notice because we love them and want to make it as easy as possible, but by 2030, we’ll close the Irvine office.”

When the Irvine, California, office closes, operations are expected to be consolidated in Baldwin Park, where In-N-Out was founded more than 77 years ago. The Baldwin Park headquarters will oversee operations on the West Coast.

During the COVID pandemic, the restaurant refused to check the vaccine status of customers in San Francisco’s only In-N-Out, flouting the city’s regulations. “There were so many pressures and hoops we had to jump through. … It was really terrible … that was definitely where we held the line and were like ‘We’re not policing our customers.’ … We were shut down for a brief moment but it was worth it,” Snyder recalled.

“Number one priority is really keeping the company the same company that my grandparents started,” she stated. “I want the legacy to continue. We’re doing that but we’re growing and we’re so much bigger than when they started it. So growth is healthy and we have to have that growth and so it’s really having that balance of okay, we have all of these amazing people coming up through management; they want to have a store one day. So we have to have some growth, but we don’t want to be on every corner; we don’t want to be in every state; we don’t want to ever compromise our values and standards; the cornerstones that my grandparents laid down.”