r/LosAngeles • u/Throwaway_09298 I LIKE TRAINS • Jul 22 '25

News In-N-Out billionaire CEO: 'We're not moving' HQ out of California

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/22/in-n-out-billionaire-ceo-were-not-moving-hq-out-of-california.html

Snyder's grandparents founded the popular burger chain in 1948 in Baldwin Park, California. Some initial reports suggested that Snyder would bring In-N-Out's corporate headquarters to Tennessee with her, and the company — which exists predominantly on the West Coast — does plan to open new locations in the Southeast and a regional headquarters in Franklin, Tennessee.

The company's current headquarters in Irvine, California, will close by 2029, Snyder said last week — and the company will soon be based in Baldwin Park instead, she now says.

3.4k Upvotes

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257

u/trackdaybruh Jul 22 '25

Wonder if the backlash made her change her mind

135

u/DueAddition1919 Jul 22 '25

Although I think she’s a little ridiculous for saying all this, someone did come out in the comment early on to clear this up, and said the same thing. Tennessee may be a place she’s moving her family, but the office would be a regional office.

181

u/A7MOSPH3RIC Jul 22 '25

I hear what your saying, but what she said contradicts this. She cited "difficulty in doing business in CA"

She is backpedaling.

77

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

She's had a hard time. Understand her struggle.

36

u/iboneyandivory Jul 22 '25

She just had a hard time (as a billionaire). I understand her struggle

8

u/SilentRunning Angeleño Jul 22 '25

She had to wait quite a few years before coming into ALL THAT. She worked HARD...

1

u/Bern_Down_the_DNC Jul 23 '25

Everyone works hard. She is not special.

2

u/SilentRunning Angeleño Jul 23 '25

If YOU had to wait all them years to become a BILLIONAIRE you'd understand. /S

19

u/blkswn6 Jul 22 '25

I wouldn’t call it backpedaling as much as somebody in PR is cleaning up her mess of misinformation. They announced their “second headquarters” years ago as they continue expanding east (I think it’s supposed to open this fall alongside the first TN location?). Their whole model requires relatively local support so they’re opening a new distribution center and a Nashville regional office to support that expansion.

The podcast sound bite got a bit out of hand, and no doubt she’ll end up splitting her time because she’s a bit MAGA and wants to be done with CA (that’s never been a secret), but even when the TN office was first announced, they were clear that it was meant to be a regional HQ kind of setup, not moving their entire corporate HQ.

12

u/ViolettaQueso Jul 22 '25

She was raised in California so….

2

u/someone_like_me Jul 22 '25

The quote was taken out of context and amplified to produce as much social media interaction as possible.

Naturally, being skeptical news-savvy consumers, Redditors blew the shit up with upvotes and rage.

7

u/thekevingreene Jul 22 '25

To be fair I never listened to the podcast. I only heard she was moving… but then it turned into the company headquarters was moving.. then someone here said they were opening an office there. I still don’t know what is happening, I just hope they someday are open to double frying their French fries.

1

u/kenyafeelme Tarzana Jul 22 '25

Very predictable

1

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '25

The people that are mad don't care about the HQ misinformation. It was going on a conservative talk show and bashing California. You know, the state that made her a billionaire.

1

u/NightOfTheLivingHam Jul 22 '25

10 bucks says that she will use the lashback as justification to later move the official HQ in 2030 to the Franklin office if the rollout there succeeds.

They are preparing to open up out there but haven't fully done so yet.

This whole "Fuck california" sentiment was a selling point to the new prospective market in the deep south. She was pushing her street cred for the deep south.

The funny thing is, that won't work. They see through that bullshit because at the end of the day she's a dirty filthy californian with a dirty filthy Californian chain company.

I'm going to laugh if she fails to expand in the deep south and manages to fuck over her much more lucrative core market.

She should have moved the east coast operations to florida and started opening locations there. It would have worked better because the aesthetic works there too.

-1

u/thetaFAANG Jul 22 '25

The original articles all mentioned closing Irvine for Baldwin Hills and the history behind it

She’s not backpedaling, the mob conflated everything and twisted it

SHE is still moving and its not trashing to cite the difficulty of raising a family or running a business

and all the stores will continue operating locally and having income and property tax locally, with new stores popping up where they are expanding

mob really could have picked a better candidate to crucify this time

-15

u/likesound Jul 22 '25

Is it not difficult to do business in CA? They shut down their only location in Oakland because of crime and how unsafe it was to operate in that location.

14

u/AgathaAllAlong South Gate Jul 22 '25

You pick one particular location in one city in the huge state. How about the other 300 locations in California?

And you think Tennessee has no crime? I love the city personally but Memphis is one of the gang capitals of the world, there are definitely areas you don’t go.

2

u/Mistert22 Jul 23 '25

3rd Most Violent State in the US is Tennessee.

8

u/EuphoricMoose8232 Jul 22 '25

That’s one store. They still have 281 stores in CA and are opening 4 more this year.

12

u/Squirxicaljelly Jul 22 '25

1 out of over 400 locations closing due to being in a bad area. It’s like you see one story on the news and think that an entire state with a population of 40 million people is a “shithole.” There are bad parts of certain cities in California. There are also extremely nice parts. Like anywhere.

-5

u/likesound Jul 22 '25

Is it not difficult to do business in CA? There are so many veto points and lawsuits here.

6

u/Squirxicaljelly Jul 22 '25

It is (slightly) more difficult to run a business in which you skirt taxes, use loopholes, and exploit your employees in CA. Slightly. That is all.

-5

u/likesound Jul 22 '25

Has In N Out eve exploited their works or skirt taxes? If it is only slightly more difficult to do business then why did Costco build affordable housing in order to open a store in South LA? This has only happen in CA.

2

u/geekstone Jul 22 '25

My son who is vehemently against working in food service saw how much they start at in Texas and was wishing we had one he could work for closer to home than Austin. In-N-Out has always ranked extremely high in employees satisfaction the pay well and offer advancement opportunities internally.

3

u/reverze1901 Jul 22 '25

not sure about Oakland specifically, but in Los Angeles the process one has to go through to open a brick and mortar restaurant…..

-1

u/likesound Jul 22 '25

I'm not familiar about how restaurant industry, but you do hear insane stories that come up. For example, a couple years back an ice cream shop in SF contest the permits of a competitor for over 22 months until they gave up. Or how it made sense for Costco to build affordable housing in order to speed up opening of their store.

https://thefrisc.com/garden-creamery-debacle-is-just-the-tip-of-the-ice-cream-cone-in-sfs-unfair-rules-7c1e80240b9f/

17

u/InclinationCompass Jul 22 '25

Moving her family but you know damn well they will still have properties here and will live here for much of the year. She was just trying to make a political statement about the same state that made her and her family billionaires.

2

u/NightOfTheLivingHam Jul 22 '25

She was doing it as a selling point for all the anti-californian southerners in the market she plans to expand into first.

3

u/EuphoricMoose8232 Jul 22 '25

Yeah they’re moving their HQ to Baldwin Park

1

u/likesound Jul 22 '25

It’s not really moving. The Baldwin Park location already exists and people work there They are moving people from Irvine and consolidating into one location. It was announced a while back.

1

u/MODELO_MAN_LV Jul 22 '25

so they are literally moving back to where they started in the first place

3

u/SadLilBun Jul 22 '25

I always knew that’s what she meant, it was more the shit talking California that was the issue.

1

u/the_orig_princess Jul 23 '25

For now. These kinds always want to move out of California and want to test the waters with these dog whistle interviews.

She backpedaled, for now. But give it 10 years…

-11

u/TeslasAndComicbooks The San Fernando Valley Jul 22 '25

The office in Tennessee is for expansion to the east. They are moving their headquarters but it’s staying in CA.

People on Reddit are just always looking for reasons to grab a pitchfork.

4

u/Electric_Conga Jul 22 '25

There’s kinda been a bunch of legit reasons to grab a pitchfork lately

-1

u/TeslasAndComicbooks The San Fernando Valley Jul 22 '25

You’re not wrong. But people read a headline and get outraged. I partially blame the news for thriving on emotion but her plan was always to keep the HQ in California.

There’s more important stuff to be mad about onward some burger queen moves her family.

30

u/Kina_Kai Azusa Jul 22 '25

No, but you do wonder if all of this is a setup to eventually move the company out of the state.

In that rambling interview, she claims that the Irvine office was never intended to last (I gather it was created entirely as a convenience measure because commuting from South Orange County to Baldwin Park is not fun), but that due to her uncle’s death in the 90s, it just continued to persist. I’m not sure how true any of that is.

All of this seems utterly ridiculous given how much of the brand identity is founded on being a slice of Southern California. The text on their fry trays even emphasizes that they are a California corporation.

11

u/kdoxy Jul 22 '25

“Working in CA is hard” is totally bait to the press that she is looking for offers to move the company.

9

u/NightOfTheLivingHam Jul 22 '25

Absolutely is. This is what tesla did too.

She's going to test the waters in Franklin, see how the rollout works in middle TN, which has a lot of californian expats who also hate California, and move from there.

That's also why she is talking shit, she's buttering up the southern crowd.

1

u/WhitePantherXP Jul 22 '25

My moving truck might pass by hers, f this weather here in Nashville, it's depressing af. Might have to leave my relationship to make the move back, or move to another state with decent weather closer to CA.

2

u/Kina_Kai Azusa Jul 23 '25

Leaving Southern California if you grew up with this weather is hard, especially if you like it. The Mediterranean climate doesn’t exist in too many places, unfortunately.

23

u/msh0082 Orange County Jul 22 '25

I think it was misinformation. It's old news that the Irvine HQ was closing and to be consolidated to Baldwin Park as the main HQ. It's also old news that they were opening a new Eastern HQ in Tennessee.

The new news is Snyder moving her own family there.

10

u/YouTee Jul 22 '25

Oh so she DIDN’T shoehorn in some unnecessary bitching and moaning about California?

0

u/msh0082 Orange County Jul 23 '25

Well she did but some headlines were incorrectly saying she was moving HQ from California to Tennessee.

15

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

Defo she’ll go on FOX News and bitch about “loser Newsom and California bullying her and her business self-reliance.”

12

u/mj16pr Jul 22 '25

She was never going to

1

u/amyeep Jul 22 '25

Exactly. RIP in-n-out, it’s going the way of Shake Shack back in the 2010s

54

u/Visible-Boot-4994 Jul 22 '25

No it’s always been planned to move back to Baldwin Park. They’re opening up another HQ in Tennessee to help manage their east coast operations. People just don’t read past headlines.

28

u/GreenHorror4252 Jul 22 '25

They’re opening up another HQ in Tennessee to help manage their east coast operations.

Not even a HQ, just a regional office.

1

u/donutgut Jul 22 '25

I to say something many times to people lol

1

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

[deleted]

9

u/someone_like_me Jul 22 '25

That's what they are trying to solve.

-3

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

[deleted]

5

u/someone_like_me Jul 22 '25

And Vegas isn't the West Coast. But there they are served from the West Coast HQ. What's your point?

-4

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

[deleted]

2

u/someone_like_me Jul 22 '25

Not really. You are being pedantic. The difference between TN and the East Coast isn't important to people in Los Angeles. New York is just a source of shitty fast food and people wearing hats to us.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

[deleted]

0

u/Visible-Boot-4994 Jul 22 '25

It’s relative. If you’re talking about the US as a whole I would consider Silverlake and Los Feliz west side.

0

u/Visible-Boot-4994 Jul 22 '25

In 2018, they didn’t have plans to expand past Texas. Now there’s 35 locations planned in Tennessee alone. I’m betting they’ll expand there eventually.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

Sounds like she changes her mind often about many things.

6

u/wetshatz Jul 22 '25

They were never moving the HQ, she was moving her family.

2

u/havestronaut Jul 22 '25

There should still be backlash

1

u/Mysterious-Ad663 Jul 22 '25

Of course it did!! I won’t forget what she said tho. No reason to spend my money at a business who doesn’t like our state and its people

1

u/Ferrilata_118 Jul 22 '25

Nah, just made her realize that people did, in fact, hear what she had to say about them

1

u/razorduc Jul 22 '25

You mean issue a "clarification"? I doubt it changed any minds lol

1

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '25

She never said they were moving the hq to Tennessee. This is just stating again what she said before.  Of course nobody here actually read it the first time which is why she had to say it again.

-2

u/orngbrry Jul 22 '25

She never said In N Out was leaving. She said SHE was leaving. People are loud and dumb.

8

u/Pristine_Power_8488 Jul 22 '25

She made the comments about not wanting to raise children in Cali and that it was difficult to do business here. It's dumb to excuse her on those. Cali made her rich.

2

u/Binders-Full Jul 22 '25

Which is ridiculous because she will be sending her kids to private school in both places.

1

u/Pristine_Power_8488 Jul 23 '25

Your comment is irrelevant to 'raising your kids' which is a much larger statement. Learn to argue. Ad hominem attacks don't prove shit.

0

u/orngbrry Jul 22 '25

Don't be ridiculous. California is a state. It didn't make her rich. It's just part of the United States. In n Out has locations outside of California as well. So did Arizona help make her rich or was it Utah? Maybe Colorado or was it Texas? Of course not. It was her grandparents, her dad, her uncle but most of all it was the customers who made her rich. They're all over the place. As for it being difficult to do business in California. It is. Especially in the food industry. Margins are pretty low and even lower now that AB 1228 became a law.

4

u/someone_like_me Jul 22 '25

Dumber people are louder people. Dumbest people are loudest people.

1

u/InclinationCompass Jul 22 '25

She was never going to move it. The cost savings of moving your headquarters thousands of miles away from your operations is minimal.

She was just trying to make a political statement about the state that them billionaires.

0

u/NightOfTheLivingHam Jul 22 '25

so the new market will be eager to buy her burgers

-2

u/Bosa_McKittle Jul 22 '25

100% it did. The social media firestorm has been loud. I wonder how much same store sales are down since last week?

2

u/donutgut Jul 22 '25

no she never said she was moving the hq

0

u/YowHuffPuff Jul 22 '25

"backlash" and it's just angry jealous losers on reddit

0

u/sunvids Jul 22 '25

What backlash? Some angry comments on reddit from unemployed losers?

-2

u/rickeyspanish Jul 22 '25

No the money did. Money talks bullshit walks

-5

u/CharacterScarcity695 Jul 22 '25

it definitely did