In-N-Out Burger

Is it lunchtime yet? Whatever time it is when I pass an In-N-Out Burger on the freeway, I stop to have a #1 "animal style" with extra grilled and raw onions and "animal style" fries to boot(sometimes). It's the best five bucks I ever spend all week regardless of the meteroic spike of the LDLs. My response to seeing that In-N-Out red and yellow logo is Pavlovian...no thinking needed. I see. I want. I stop. I eat. I happy.

Translation for those east of Utah: In-N-Out Burger is a fast food hamburger nirvana that serves the best burgers in the CA/AZ/NV/UT. Fast, good and cheap. Trifecta of sorts. There is nothing like it when your hunger bell rings.

I swear when I say this, after 17 years of patronage I have never had a bad meal at one of these hamburger joints and there are over 200 of them dotted strategically along the Western freeways.

So how do they do it day in and day out at In-N-Out Burger? Harry Snyder, co-founder of In-N-Out Burger now deceased, said it all: "We keep it simple. Do one thing and do it the best you can." In-N-Out's three simple words for success are: Quality, Cleanliness and Service. They deliver the goods everyday by the hands of another critical ingredient for success, their "associates" known in most businesses as employees. These simple concepts started at the first store in 1948 in Baldwin Park, California and has spawned great success across the western landscape. Because of this simple non-Harvard non-fancy management business style, In-N-Out Burger has become a California icon along the roads of the west.

Noted foodie and chef of great repute, Thomas Keller, said, "If you think about cooking, you'll find at In-N-Out Burger or French Laundry, it's about product and execution that's consistent. The quality of a restaurant goes back to the quality of the product and its execution." In-N-Out and the French Laundry in the same sentence...that is indeed tall cotton.

When Keller celebrated the 12th anniversary of his famed Napa Valley French Laundry restaurant, what did he do to celebrate the day with his staff and employees? He had 300 In-N-Out burgers and a small mountain of fries delivered to his restaurant.

To this day, In-N-Out Burger remains a privately held company which is highly unusual in the land of Wendy, Big Mac, Jack and Whopper. With sales somewhere north of $400M per annum, peanuts compared to the big fellas, it is regularly targeted by the IPO private equity folks. The sole heir, Lynsi Synder Martinez, to this point, has rebuffed all overtures.

So next time you're in the neighborhood, stop at an In-N-Out Burger, order your #1 or #2 and observe the manager of the store behind the cash register. He's the one cooking the burgers. Simple indeed but Brilliant!

I'm getting hungry...c ya.