Orange County is about to lose one of its largest companies and most recognizable brands, as the fast-food institution In-N-Out Burger Inc. plans to leave its Irvine headquarters by returning to its corporate roots in Baldwin Park. The corporate reorganization will occur by 2029.
Corporate employees also will be given the option to relocate to Franklin, Tennessee, where In-N-Out plans to open a satellite office to support expansion in the state.
A company spokesperson said In-N-Out would no longer maintain two Southern California headquarters and plans to close the Irvine location, where it has been for 31 years.
“Some of our associates will be relocating to Tennessee, which makes it even more important to centralize our western headquarters in one location, and our company’s deepest roots are in Baldwin Park,” Lynsi Snyder, chain owner and president, said in a statement. “Our West Coast family will be together in one place, where In-N-Out Burger began.”
The privately-run fast-food chain famous for its affordable, fresh beef burgers is building its “Eastern Territory” office in Franklin, a suburb of Nashville.
Restaurant analyst Mark Kalinowski of Kalinowski Equity Research said refocusing a higher percentage of the company’s resources in Tennessee makes sense for In-N-Out.
“I expect this company to make a big push out east,” Kalinowski told the Business Journal.
Mike Abbate, In-N-Out’s vice president of store development, told the Business Journal that the chain’s first Tennessee restaurants will open in 2026. Stores in Lebanon, Franklin, Nashville (Antioch) and Murfreesboro are under construction, he added.
The Nashville Business Journal said the chain plans to open about 35 restaurants in the state. The company declined to confirm that number.
“While we continue to develop our plans for growth within the state, it’s still too early to anticipate where specifically and the eventual total number of restaurants that we’ll operate,” Abbate told the Business Journal. “We do know that growth will be deliberate and controlled because that is always part of our strategy here at In-N-Out Burger.”
Will Moving from OC Cost the Chain Talent?
By moving away from Orange County, In-N-Out is taking the opposite approach of Chipotle Mexican Grill, which famously relocated from its long-time home base in Denver, Colorado to Newport Beach in 2018.
At the time, then-CEO Brian Niccol, who lives in Newport Beach, said the move was made, in part, to recruit top talent in Orange County.
Niccol left Chipotle last year to become the CEO of Starbucks. However, he’s running the Seattle-based coffee house giant from Newport Beach.
Restaurant consultant Tim Powell told the Business Journal that Chipotle’s move to Newport Beach made sense, but In-N-Out’s relocation of 500 employees to the suburbs of Los Angeles and Nashville is a head-scratcher.
“I think it will be a tough sell to get people to Nashville,” Powell, managing principal at Foodservice IP in Chicago, said.
Brian Schwartz, managing director at New York-based restaurant recruiting firm The Elliot Group, told the Business Journal that there is “natural attrition” when any organization moves its headquarters.
“There is no question it is disruptive for employees,” Schwartz said. “Companies will lose talent that can’t or won’t relocate, and that can cause short-term challenges to all areas of the business.”
Powell, whose firm previously did consulting work for In-N-Out, agreed that In-N-Out’s exit from Orange County will result in the resignation of some corporate employees. Still, he said the losses will be minimal because the brand has a history of treating its employees well.
“They will take care of those employees that leave Orange County,” he said. “They will work something out, maybe offer a stipend, or more remote hybrid work.”
In-N-Out’s departure from Orange County could present an unexpected opportunity for locally-based chains – Chipotle, Irvine-based Taco Bell, Lake Forest-based Del Taco, Huntington Beach-based BJ’s Restaurants Inc. – who might want to poach talent reluctant to relocate to the burger chains’s new headquarters.
In-N-Out’s corporate headquarters is currently at 4199 Campus Drive, Suite 900 in Irvine; the fast-food company also has an office in Baldwin Park, the Los Angeles County suburb where the restaurant was founded nearly 77 years ago by Harry and Esther Snyder.
In-N-Out is the third largest restaurant chain headquartered in Orange County, with $2.1 billion in companywide sales in 2023, according to Business Journal data.
Leaving a Void in Irvine
In-N-Out owns the building where its Irvine headquarters is based, located in the University Center across the street from University of California, Irvine. The burger chain bought the 10-floor building on Campus Drive for $15.2 million in August 1993, per CoStar data.
Rich Snyder – the youngest son of In-N-Out founders Harry and Esther and uncle to current president Lynsi Snyder – spearheaded the company’s move to Irvine as its second corporate location. As president, he grew the chain from 18 restaurants to over 90. He and another In-N-Out executive died in a Santa Ana plane crash in 1993 while traveling back from the chain’s 93rd restaurant opening.
The company originally occupied the building’s ninth and 10th floors when it initially moved into the Campus Drive building but eventually expanded to more than 500 employees across nine floors.
The fate of those employees has not been confirmed, other than In-N-Out saying they would relocate to either Baldwin Park or middle Tennessee.
In-N-Out did not confirm whether it would sell the Campus Drive building or lease the space it occupies to other tenants, once the company leaves in 2029. The fast-food company also did not respond to whether it would keep any office space in Irvine or Orange County.
CoStar data shows the monthly market asking rate for office space at 4199 Campus Drive is about $4 per square foot.
Irvine’s office market, which could look vastly different in 2029 than it does today, had two high-rises change hands in recent months. The 11-floor Von Karman Towers at 18201 Von Karman Ave. sold for $37 million, or $158 per square foot, on Dec. 23, 2024.
The 16-floor high-rise at 2600 Michelson Drive, located two blocks away from Von Karman Towers, sold for $42 million, or $135 per square foot, on Dec. 24, 2024.
Monthly lease rates at these buildings range between $2.10 and $2.60 per square foot.
The Tennessee Two-Step
In-N-Out is ditching the dual corporate office structure it maintained in Southern California for more than 30 years and will instead have a two-location corporate operation in Baldwin Park and Middle Tennessee.
The Franklin office – and the subsequent restaurant openings – would be the furthest east In-N-Out operates.
Lynsi Snyder declined to comment on this story but spoke about In-N-Out’s expansion to Tennessee at the Nashville Business Breakfast at Lipscomb University on Feb. 4. The event, co-hosted by the Nashville Business Journal, revealed some of In-N-Out’s plans for its Tennessee expansion, including the burger chain’s first restaurant in Franklin and the “Eastern territory” office in the Volunteer State.
“I’ve fallen in love with really the whole state,” Lynsi Synder said during the breakfast event, per Nashville Business Journal.
The Eastern territory office in Franklin would open in 2026 with more than 200 employees. In-N-Out is spending $126 million to build the approximately 100,000-square-foot office building, according to Tennessee’s Office of the Governor.
In-N-Out also received a $2.75 million jobs grant from the state of Tennessee and nearly $2 million in property tax breaks to bring the fast-food company to Franklin, according to news reports.
Lynsi Snyder said In-N-Out would be hiring several positions for the Franklin office, but details are still being ironed out.
“There’s some that will have more western and eastern territory headquarters. There’s some that will be split. There’s some that will be solely Tennessee, some that will be completely in California and some that we will want to grow here,” Lynsi Snyder said at the Feb. 4 breakfast event. “We are still figuring out who goes where.”
Returning to its Roots
Esther and Harry Snyder, the son of Dutch immigrants, opened the first In-N-Out Burger – a 10-foot-by-10-foot drive-thru stand – across the street from their Baldwin Park house in 1948. The couple served hand-pressed burgers in a clean and friendly environment. Esther managed the books, while Harry ran operations.
He was known for being meticulous – driving to Los Angeles to watch butchers bone and grind beef.
Years later, In-N-Out butchers would process whole chucks at the company’s own Baldwin Park beef factory, where In-N-Out established its corporate office less than one mile from the original burger stand.
Harry kept a training journal at his home that detailed how to perform every task – everything from grilling a burger to spin-drying potatoes. Keeping high standards was and remains an In-N-Out priority.
After their two sons, Rich and Guy Snyder, died, their only grandchild, Lynsi Snyder, became the company’s sole heiress. She was named president in 2010 and soon began expanding the chain to other states including Texas, Oregon, Idaho and Colorado.
The privately-run company, according to Business Journal data, generated annual sales of roughly $2.1 billion in 2023, making it Orange County’s third largest restaurant chain. That’s up from $558 million when it opened its 300th store in 2015 in Anaheim. Now the company has 418 stores in seven states – California, Nevada, Utah, Texas Arizona, Oregon and Idaho.
In January 2023, the chain announced plans to expand to Tennessee, marking a significant milestone for the iconic brand as it would be the closest region to the East Coast – where legions of curious fast-food lovers and California expatriates have pined for easier access to the chain’s famed Double-Double and Animal-style burgers.
About 35 locations are slated to open across Tennessee, according to the Nashville Business Journal.
Deliveries for all Tennessee restaurants, once open, would come from Texas, according to comments Lynsi Snyder made in Nashville earlier this month.
Lynsi Synder, in an official statement, said the permanent closure of the Irvine office means the In-N-Out corporate team is “back together” under one roof in Baldwin Park.
— Nancy Luna and Parimal M. Rohit
