In-N-Out’s Billionaire Boss Is Moving the Business Out of California — Here’s Why originally appeared on Parade.
Lynsi Snyder, the granddaughter of In-N-Out founders Harry and Esther Snyder, announced that she — and the company’s headquarters — are leaving California for Tennessee.
“We’re building an office in Franklin, so I’m actually moving out there,” Snyder said on Friday’s episode of the Relatable podcast with Allie Beth Stuckey. It marked the first time Snyder publicly confirmed her decision to relocate to Tennessee with her family.
“There’s a lot of great things about California, but raising a family is not easy here,” she explained. “Doing business is not easy here.”
Snyder, 43, has served as president of In-N-Out since 2010, guiding the company’s steady expansion across the Southwest and now into the South. The next chapter begins in Franklin, just outside Nashville, where the company broke ground on a 100,000-square-foot office in 2024. The first restaurants in the state are slated to open in 2026.
Still, for a company so deeply associated with California’s palm trees and car culture, the president’s departure from the state isn’t going unnoticed.
“It will be wonderful having an office out there, growing out there and being able to have the family and other people’s families out there,” Snyder said.
In recent years, the company faced heightened regulatory scrutiny during the pandemic, including temporary shutdowns in San Francisco over its refusal to check customers’ vaccine cards.
“There were so many pressures and just hoops we were having to jump through,” Snyder said on the podcast. “You’ve got to do this, you have to wear a mask, you gotta put this plastic thing up between us and our customers and it was really terrible.”
She continued: “I look back and I’m like, ‘Man, maybe we should have just pushed [back] even harder on some of that stuff and dealt with all of the legal backlash.’”
Despite the move, Snyder made clear that In-N-Out isn’t abandoning its roots. Earlier this year, the company announced it would shift its official corporate headquarters back to Baldwin Park, where the chain was born in 1948.
“My uncle opened the office in Irvine … in the ‘90s,” Snyder said. When her dad came, “He was just like, ‘This is not us. This is not our roots, this is not my dad,’ and he wanted to move everyone back to Baldwin Park.”
Snyder, who has four children with husband Sean Ellingson, said that California will continue to hold the bulk of their stores. Tennessee, however, is positioned for growth, as she noted that the company’s supply chain from its Texas warehouse will support the expansion.
