In-n-out will not embrace mobile ordering anytime soon, Lynsi Snyder-Ellingson said this week, arguing that the chain’s appeal depends on the direct contact between customers and employees. Speaking at an event at Pepperdine University and answering questions from the audience, Snyder-Ellingson said the app-based approach would take away from the smile, greeting and warmth that define the company’s service.
“What makes In-N-Out and the experience so special is the interaction and the customer service that we’re able to give, the smile, the greeting. Just that warmth and feeling, the culture,” she said, adding that “the mobile ordering will definitely take a piece of that away.” The remarks were posted on YouTube this week.
The comments matter because they came from the woman who has led the family-run chain since 2010 and signaled that even as the company grows, its digital strategy will stay limited. Snyder-Ellingson said her goal is to keep operations as close as possible to the way they were when her grandparents ran the business, and she said, “My passion in leading is making sure that I’m preserving the legacy of my grandparents and my family. I want to make them proud. I want to champion everything that they would want, especially in today’s world.”
That posture fits the company’s long record of resisting the kind of automation common across fast food. In-n-out was founded in 1948, when Harry and Esther Snyder opened a small food stand in Baldwin Park, and the chain still describes its promise as “Quality, Cleanliness and Service.” It has expanded mostly through nearby states, now operating in 10 states and reaching as far east as Tennessee.
The company has also kept pushing beyond its California base even as it trims back at home. In recent months, it announced five new locations set to open outside California and said it plans to open a second headquarters in Tennessee, while also scaling back corporate operations in California and consolidating them in Baldwin Park. That expansion sits alongside a question Snyder-Ellingson did not try to soften: how far the chain can spread without losing the in-n-out experience that built it in the first place. Her answer, for now, is that mobile ordering is not part of that future.
