In-N-Out Burger (6 page)

At the very least, Snyder's stamp on the car and fast-food cultures certainly popularized the device and served as a prototype for all other fast-food establishments. And while In-N-Out modestly bills itself as “California's first drive-through,” in all probability it was the country's first as well. In-N-Out's “granddaddy” gave rise to an entire world of drive-through banks, liquor stores, pharmacies, restaurants, dry cleaners, and even drive-through wedding chapels. In fact, the drive-through became so pervasive that decades later, in the 1990s, car manufacturers began to outfit front seats with cup holders to facilitate dashboard dining. Fast-food restaurants created meals tailor-made for one-handed steering and one-handed eating free from spills and dripping. More than a half century after Harry Snyder premiered his invention, the fast-food industry spawned a host of high tech gadgets all founded on the same premise as that first two-way speakerphone. However, according to government records, Harry Snyder never took out a patent on his invention.

 

At the start of In-N-Out Burger, it was just Esther and Harry. The Snyders did everything themselves. They prepared the hamburger patties (using an ice cream scooper to mold them and then their own palms to flatten them), peeled the potatoes, sliced the onions and tomatoes, and stirred up the secret sauce (that Harry concocted and would spend years perfecting). Harry ran the gas grill; Esther was in charge of the books. She had a real talent for numbers and a mind like a steel trap. She used her home kitchen table as an office. The couple worked punishing hours, often logging fourteen-or fifteen-hour days. The long hours and hard work never daunted Esther, in large part because she never for an instant doubted her husband. “Anything he decided to do usually turned out well,” she once said, “because he would work quite hard. He was a person who, if you gave him a job and it was difficult, he would figure it out and not let go until he knew it well.”

On In-N-Out's first day of business, the couple sold a total of
forty-seven hamburgers. During their first month, they sold two thousand, bringing in an estimated $1,100. In recalling those early weeks, Esther Snyder once said “Many cold, smoggy nights were spent during the first few months of operation, but it was worthwhile.” During the early years, the Snyders made great personal sacrifices. They rarely spent money on themselves; in fact, it was some time before they bought a television. Instead, the couple funneled every cent they made back into the business.

From the start, Baldwin Park's locals lined up to eat at In-N-Out. Some of the Snyders' biggest fans lived just across the street at the trailer park on Garvey. A few of the Barnes Circus families still lived there and often a few could be seen rigging a high wire three feet off the ground to practice their act while others rode their unicycles around the park's perimeter. They'd have barbecues and picnics and run across the street to pick up bagfuls of In-N-Out burgers. In fact, a whole generation of kids who lived in Baldwin Park's trailer parks grew up on In-N-Out. “Our early support came from the kind people of Baldwin Park,” Esther proudly declared. “Those were the days we made our many friendships with the residents of Baldwin Park.”

Margaret Howard was sixteen years old when In-N-Out first opened up. Howard lived with her family on a chicken ranch in Baldwin Park. At seventy-five years old she still vividly recalled the first time she ate there. “I remember because I was in high school and they were real good hamburgers,” she explained. “My father didn't like us to eat out. He wanted my brother and I to eat our meals at home, so we conned our friends to take us there.” When that didn't work, Howard said that she purposefully missed the school bus from Covina High School and walked the ten miles home. “That way I could go to In-N-Out on the way back. I got chewed out for it when I got home,” she laughed. “But I got to eat at In-N-Out.” Soon enough, going to great lengths in order to eat one of their fresh and juicy burgers had become a common practice among In-N-Out's rabid fans.

At the same time, In-N-Out caught on with hungry motorists. During the evenings, In-N-Out benefited from the local produce growers who drove at night and stopped by the little Baldwin Park
stand on their way to the Los Angeles Wholesale Market. Russell Blewett, a longtime Snyder family friend who later became one of Baldwin Park's mayors, put it this way: “That place was a gold mine from day one.”

It was during those first, early days of operation that Harry created the formula that emerged as the standard for running In-N-Out. It informed the company's identity and was rigidly adhered to over the coming decades. It was not based on some fancy management methodology—rather, it grew out of Harry's own instincts and exacting personality. The system was based on three simple words: “Quality, Cleanliness, and Service.”

Harry was a micromanager before the term existed. A rigorous taskmaster, he was not inclined to leave even the smallest details to others. From the start, he kept scrupulous records, tracking how many burgers were sold daily and noting how many paper cups were dispensed.

Harry was known to be fanatical about quality. He insisted on inspecting everything, and everything had to be done to his specifications. When it came to In-N-Out's beef purchases, Harry constantly visited his meat supplier where he'd watch the butchers cut up the beef and make sure he got exactly what he paid for. He treated his suppliers well and never tried to exploit his relationships. Deals were struck on a handshake and lasted decades, often ending only if the supplier went out of business—or failed to meet Harry's exacting standards. It was a policy that lasted for years. When it was discovered that a vendor had hidden a batch of substandard onions within a truckload of good ones, the supplier was unceremoniously dumped. Esther (who handled the invoices) always paid their purveyors on time. If a business partner came to her to collect his money personally, she wrote him a check on the spot.

A savvy businessman, Harry established Snyder Distributing, a small paper goods wholesaler that sold such items as paper plates and napkins. At the time, In-N-Out Burger was too small to benefit from economies of scale by buying such items in bulk like many of its larger competitors. Snyder Distributing gave In-N-Out a way to buy supplies at a discount while turning a profit as a wholesaler selling to other businesses.

A frugal and practical man in most respects, Harry was profligate when it came to purchasing the freshest, highest grade of meat, potatoes, and produce; he refused to sacrifice quality for the sake of profits. From the start, he was adamant about using only four to five slices of the thick, middle part of big, plump beefsteak tomatoes and onions. He demonstrated the same resolve when it came to using only the crisp inner leaves of the head of lettuce, throwing the rest away. It was a practice that never changed. “Mr. Snyder stressed quality from the first day he opened for business,” his wife once observed. “No matter what the price, he believed that the customer deserved the best product he could produce.”

When it came to cleanliness, Harry's zealousness perhaps only matched his fervor regarding quality. He didn't feel that it was beneath him to scrub the floor or pick up trash. He even insisted that the gravel drive-through lane be swept between busy times. In fact, one of the Snyders' innovations was the open kitchen. Behind a large glass window, In-N-Out's customers could see how the burgers and fries were prepared and cooked and kept scrupulously clean. Harry made sure that his workers frequently washed their hands, especially after each time they took out the trash. “That place was immaculate,” remembered Lorraine O'Brien, who along with her husband later owned and lived at the Baldy View trailer park on Garvey. “I'd walk past that kitchen and never see a spot. And I never saw a dirty-necked boy working there in my life.”

Harry didn't like sloppy burgers, either. There was a system for building the burgers; the secret sauce was spread generously on the bottom slice of the bun to prevent it from running off at the ends. That way it wouldn't drip through the paper wrapping when customers went to eat it. When it came to grilling the burgers, it was one minute on the first side and two minutes on the other so as not to lose the juices. When cooking the fries, the fryer was kept clean and floating pieces removed quickly. Salt was to be shaken while holding the container at shoulder length to ensure evenness. Buns were lightly toasted before the meat and onion were added, and each burger received two slices of tomato. Only those tomatoes that
fit five wide in a specially designed box were deemed the right size for In-N-Out.

Not surprisingly, Harry did not believe in cutting corners. It was his belief that the main reason people came to In-N-Out was for the burgers—if the burgers weren't done properly, the customers wouldn't come back. From the start, In-N-Out ran a customer-driven shop.

 

While the Snyders were experimenting with selling burgers over a two-way speaker and drive-through lane in Baldwin Park, another couple—a pair of brothers, Richard and Maurice (Dick and Mac) McDonald—were testing out a new kind of eating place over in San Bernardino, forty-five miles east of Baldwin Park. Originally from New Hampshire, the brothers had moved to Southern California in 1930, and they worked various odd jobs before trying their hands as movie producers. Unsuccessful in Hollywood, they opened a small movie theater that quickly went under. In 1937, they opened a hot dog stand near the Santa Anita racetrack. Three years later, they opened their first drive-in restaurant with a $5,000 loan from the Bank of America. It was a typical drive-in with indoor seating, carhops outside, and a twenty-five-item menu. “Sometimes I like to play a hunch,” said S. P. Bagley, the bank's manager. “And I have a hunch that McDonald's is going to make it big.”

Their drive-in was in fact not a huge success until 1948, when the McDonald brothers noticed that postwar customers were growing disenchanted with carhops. They devised a new streamlined approach to fast food and called it McDonald's Famous Hamburgers. The McDonalds turned their kitchen into a mechanized assembly line; they got rid of their carhops and the indoor seating. The two service windows where those carhops once filled their orders were turned into service windows where customers placed their orders directly. The three-foot cast-iron grill was replaced with two stainless-steel six-footers that were both easier to clean and more efficient at retaining heat. Instead of plates and silverware (costly to replace and clean), they used paper bags, wrappers, and cups. And they trimmed
the menu to nine items, featuring hamburgers and cheeseburgers, three soft drinks, milk, coffee, potato chips, and pie.

While the Snyders remained focused on their burgers and keeping their customers happy, the McDonald brothers concentrated on keeping costs down and volume high. They introduced a slew of innovations intended to simplify and speed up the process of preparing and churning out burgers. For instance, they built a machine that could make their hamburger patties based on a device originally designed to produce peppermint patties. “Our whole concept was based on speed, lower prices, and volume,” Dick McDonald once explained. “We were going after big, big volumes by lowering prices and by having the customer serve himself.”

Inspired by the cost-effectiveness and success of McDonald's, other fast-food places began springing up. Soon a number of entrepreneurs launched their own fast-food restaurants based on the self-service style of McDonald's. This new way of eating quickly spread to the rest of the country—the era of the fast-food restaurant began in earnest. Family-owned and -run burger shacks were springing up everywhere, planted like trees along the growing off-ramps of California's equally expansive highway system.

Soon establishments with names like Wendy's, Burger King, Taco Bell, and Kentucky Fried Chicken were in business, blanketing the country, moving east from the undisputed fast-food capital of Los Angeles. As they flourished, they were transformed from homey, family-run establishments to regional, national, and eventually international chains dedicated to coming up with ever more efficient ways of cooking and serving massive quantities of food.

Everywhere, that is, except at the little In-N-Out Burger stand on Garvey Avenue where Harry Snyder had made a promise to himself that he had no intention of breaking: “Keep it real simple,” he always said. “Do one thing and do it the best you can.”

In 1951, Allen Teagle was a teenager itching to join the navy when Harry Snyder hired the restless young man to work part-time for him at the Baldwin Park In-N-Out Burger. By then the Korean War was in full swing, but Teagle, who was just sixteen years old at the time, had to wait several months until his seventeenth birthday had passed before he could formally enlist. “Harry offered me a regular job,” he explained. “But I told him that I was going in the navy and that I was just waiting until I was old enough. He was all right with that. He said, ‘We can use you for a while.'” Snyder's casual reaction was something of an understatement.

In just three years, In-N-Out Burger had become an unqualified success. Long lines of cars snaked along the gravel drive-through lane at all hours, frequently causing “burger jams.” It was a hometown hit that attracted customers from neighboring suburbs. Motorists on their way from one point to another often ended up at the little burger joint and not only made a point of returning the next time around but also began telling friends and associates about the tasty hamburgers being cooked up in Baldwin Park.

The volume, the traffic, and the business generated by the boxy stand on Garvey Avenue was too much for Harry and Esther to handle by themselves, and the Snyders began hiring help. Harry seemed to be a shrewd judge of a person's character, and he employed a hand
ful of local young men to work in four-hour shifts. He insisted that they be well-groomed and wear a uniform of clean white shirts and aprons, capped off with paper cadet hats. Harry had high standards, and while he was bighearted he also expected his hires to toe the line—his line. “He wouldn't put up with any foolishness or clowning around,” Teagle recalled. “And Harry always made sure that everyone was polite to the customers.”

When it came to hiring female employees, however, Harry put his foot down. His objection came down to two words: “monkey business.” There was too much opportunity for grab ass and messing around, he believed. “No ‘foolishness,' he called it,” said Teagle. “Things were different back then.” Clearly, Harry's theory predated workplace guidelines on sexual harassment. Aside from Esther Snyder, females did not work in In-N-Out stores for another thirty years.

Harry put Teagle to work right away, during the early evening shift from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. “On a big night we'd sell two hundred burgers!” he recalled. “My first chore was to clean up the mess. The first thing I did when I arrived and the last thing before I left work was to pick up the trash and rake the gravel. The kids would come in their hot rods and there would be dirt gravel everywhere and ruts in the driveway. Harry wanted it smooth so that it would look clean and neat.” When he wasn't out raking the gravel drive, Teagle could be found in a small room in the back where all new hires were trained. There he sliced tomatoes, peeled potatoes, and washed utensils and pans. “I did anything Harry needed done,” he said.

In the early 1950s, when television ownership was still something of a luxury and programming limited to a mere few hours a day, Baldwin Park itself offered little in the way of hometown amusements. There was the Vias Turkey Ranch off of Frazier Avenue, famous for its huge commercial ranch and outdoor aviary, as well as the horse stables located across the bridge of the San Gabriel River that offered pony rides for a dollar an hour. But for the most part, the young people of Baldwin Park were left with long stretches of time on their hands; the tiny burger stand on Garvey quickly established itself as a local hangout.

Open until 1:00 a.m., In-N-Out Burger became ground zero for Baldwin Park's restive teens. There the kids parked, played their radios, sang, and danced. But Harry had no patience for teenage angst in his parking lot. “If the kids got rowdy, Harry would make them behave or ask them to leave,” recalled Teagle. “If they got out of line or had too much to drink he ran them off. He was all law and order.” To prove his point, once, after the kids had gotten out of hand, Harry kicked everybody out and put a chain around the property and locked it up. The teens were allowed to return only after they promised Harry they would behave, which they did.

As it happened, In-N-Out Burger came of age just as the new youth and car culture emerged. In Baldwin Park, the two met at the little stand on Garvey Avenue. During those prosperous postwar years, Detroit had produced a whole new generation of vehicles. With a glut of new model automobiles traveling down America's roads, there was a huge surplus of the older cars just lying around. These abandoned autos offered the perfect occupation for the legions of Southern California's car-obsessed youths who enthusiastically took their parents' beat-up and outmoded Model T Fords, Chevrolets, Hudsons, and other vintage-tin bodies and recycled them. Inventive and daring, they removed flathead engines, stripped door handles, eliminated transmission casings, appropriated spare fenders, and repainted the vehicles in bold colors and designs, giving birth to the American hot rod. Once built, the only thing left for the kids to do was to show off their four-wheeled metal peacocks.

All across Los Angeles, hot-rodders and car enthusiasts converged on the plentiful neon drive-in burger palaces with their brightly lit interiors, wild angles, and giant V-shaped car canopies. During its ten-year heyday until 1968, the famous Harvey's Broiler (later renamed Johnie's Broiler) in Downey regularly attracted a parade of five thousand cars on weekend nights. “It would take thirty minutes to get to Firestone Boulevard and another twenty minutes just to get through the parking lot,” remembered Analisa Hungerford, a Long Beach community college teacher who in 2007 helped spearhead a movement to save what remained of the site from demolition. “That
place was wow. It was the first place that people snuck out of their houses to go to; there were so many first dates that happened there. It was just the jewel of Downey.”

Showcasing hot rods on a Saturday night soon gave way to drag racing. Much to the chagrin of the authorities, teens and young men in their inventively modified and souped-up dragsters hit the boulevards on the clear, dry evenings and weekends with but a single purpose: to own a quarter-mile of asphalt in the shortest time possible. In-N-Out Burger became a crucial stop on the colorful but illegal street racing circuit that materialized after the war. It didn't take much for a race to begin. Usually two drivers met up and one popped the question to the other: “Do you want to drag?” That was it. Often, the losers lost more than just the race—many lost their cars, too.

Building high-powered, mean machines that were chopped, flamed, and louvered evolved rapidly. It was a world that author Tom Wolfe brought to mainstream attention in his 1964 article for
Esquire
magazine titled “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.” By then, of course, hot-rodding had caught on in the rest of the country. In Southern California, there seemed to be no shortage of cars or parts or for that matter young men with the desire to create their own hot rods.

One of them, the legendary hot rod builder Pete Chapouris, got his start cruising the boulevards of the San Gabriel Valley with his friends. Chapouris, who would go on to establish the celebrated custom garage Pete & Jake's Hot Rod Parts in Temple City (where he customized a 1934 Ford three-window coupe into the iconic cruiser featured in the movie
The California Kid
), once recalled those early intoxicating days by mapping them out in a single sentence. “We'd start at the In-N-Out on Valley, go straight west to Farmer Boys, out on Colorado to Bob's in Glendale before turning around and going east to Henry's in Arcadia.”

Around the same time that dragsters were meeting up at In-N-Out Burger and spreading the word, the Baldwin Park burger joint began catering to another quintessentially Southern California phenomenon: surfers. Growing rapidly in popularity during the 1950s, surfing had
by the 1960s exploded into a full-blown cult with a language, clothing, music, and a lifestyle all its own. In an almost religious ritual, surfers woke before dawn, strapped their waxed boards onto their cars and vans, and headed toward such fabled haunts as Malibu, Redondo, and Huntington beaches where they rode the swells of the Pacific Ocean. Many lived inland in the Valleys, and so commuting an hour to catch a wave before the sun was up was fairly common. Afterward, a group of hungry surfers packed up their cars and headed for In-N-Out. Soon enough, word spread among the hang-ten crowd, and ending up at an In-N-Out Burger stand became part of the surfing experience.

In those early days, In-N-Out Burger also earned a following among Hollywood glitterati who happened to discover the stand with the red and white awning while traveling between Los Angeles and Palm Springs. During the 1950s, well-heeled and big-name celebrities like Frank Sinatra, Kirk Douglas, Lucille Ball, and Liberace liked to frolic at the desert resort that became known as the “Playground of the Stars.” Many had second homes in Palm Springs. On their way to the desert or back to the city, stopping at In-N-Out to grab a burger became part of the routine.

During their brief marriage (presumably before Elizabeth Taylor entered the picture), Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds were known to visit often on their way to the desert. Once, Esther Snyder recalled the time when the singer Dinah Shore and her husband, George Montgomery, a stuntman and actor in Westerns, dropped in on their little In-N-Out joint. “They were having car problems, so Dinah came over to the house to watch her own TV show,” she said.

After a friend introduced Bob Hope to In-N-Out, the legendary comedian became a lifelong fan. “More than anything, my dad loved an In-N-Out Burger,” his daughter Linda Hope recalled. “He called them ‘in and outers,' and he had to have his fix several times a week. He always got the cheeseburger and french fries. He used to say, ‘They're just so fresh.'” In fact, Hope became such a devotee that at one point his daughter claimed he tried unsuccessfully to buy stock in the company. “He was really interested. He felt he was personally responsible for a number of their sales, and he just felt it was a great product.”

When Hope turned ninety-two in 1995, his family hired an In-N-Out cookout trailer to cater his birthday party. “Dad continued to drive to one well into his mid-nineties,” Linda admitted. And when Hope could no longer drive himself, she said, “I know he used to send people out there to pick it up for him and the staff.” In fact, according to his daughter, Hope ate In-N-Out burgers regularly until he died on July 29, 2003, at the age of one hundred.

 

In-N-Out Burger was busy, popular, and cool. Despite the extra help, Harry's fastidious nature did not allow him to sit back and relax. Harry Snyder was the first person at the shop in the morning opening the store, inspecting the sacks of potatoes for the fries, ensuring that everything ran smoothly and to his exacting specifications. It wasn't unusual to see Harry picking up trash by the side of the road or leafing lettuce. And he was the last person there at night. When he took a break, he'd go in the tiny room in the back of the store and play checkers with friends.

Since the Snyders' house was directly across the street from In-N-Out, he rarely seemed to be able to relax and call it a night. In the evenings, Harry regularly kept an eye on the restaurant through his living room window. Frequently, he'd be sitting on the sofa watching TV when all of sudden he would stand up and sprint over to the shop and pitch in. As Allen Teagle tells it, “He was just a really hardworking guy. And he was always there when I was there.”

From the very beginning, Harry offered his young hires more than just a job. For starters, he paid them well. When In-N-Out first started, California's minimum wage was sixty-five cents an hour, but Harry paid a dollar an hour, plus one free hamburger per shift. He believed in paying for quality, and that included wages. As Esther later explained, “They take your orders and make your food. They're so important, so you want to have happy, shining faces working there.”

Early on, Harry offered his workers the opportunity to build a career. If he sensed promise, he did what he could to help the young men develop. He always tried to give his workers reasonable goals to
strive for, promoting them when the goals were met. While everyone had to start at the bottom—cleaning up trash and peeling potatoes—everyone was also given the opportunity to advance. A number of teens who came to work part-time for the Snyders ended up making their careers at In-N-Out.

One of them was Chuck Papez. He got his start in the Baldwin Park kitchen as a teenager in 1954 and worked his way up to store manager. By 2000, he was one of the company's corporate managers. So satisfied was he with his life at In-N-Out that Papez later encouraged his brother, his two children, and a nephew to join the company as well. “It was special right from the beginning,” he explained forty-six years after he first began peeling potatoes at In-N-Out. “It was family.”

Harry was a man of his word; hard work was always rewarded. The meritocracy that he established in those early days hardened into standard operating procedure in the years to come. While his wife, Esther, hewed closely to a strong, unwavering faith in God, it might be said that Harry's faith was in hard work.

Harry had little interest in or patience for trends or fads, and he instituted a series of management practices that would not only contribute greatly to In-N-Out's future success but that were, in many respects, ahead of their time. Years before business schools discussed managerial terms like customer-relations management, worker empowerment, or profit sharing, Harry Snyder put these and other concepts into practice. He gave his associates a measure of ownership in the enterprise and he remunerated them handsomely for their ability to meet their targets and surpass them. Harry put a huge emphasis on customer satisfaction. In-N-Out workers were instructed to always smile, look their customers in the eye, and maintain a level of professional courtesy with every guest. Long before Starbucks, the Snyders called their customers “guests.” Harry rationalized that if your customers don't come in or come back, there is no business, period. Harry drilled into his workers the singular importance of quality and simplicity. His maxim, “Do one thing and do it well,” was not only repeated with some frequency—it was strictly adhered
to. Harry kept the menu simple and streamlined. He didn't see much advantage in introducing new items or tinkering with the ones they already offered. Harry Snyder had picked up the rhythm of human interaction, and his business philosophy was based on it. If you treated people fairly and rewarded them accordingly, he held, they would do likewise.