Mill Valley, CA: Workers at In-N-Out location behind counter take orders. (Photo: David Tran Photo, Shutterstock)
Gov. Newsom and Democrats Send Another CA Business Packing: In-N-Out is Out
In-N-Out owner critical of California policies, moving to Tennessee
By Katy Grimes, July 21, 2025 2:56 am
California ranks dead last once again in Chief Executive Magazine’s Best & Worst States For Business 2025. Tennessee ranks #1 once again, and now “The Volunteer State” is getting another of California’s oldest and one of the best known businesses in the country: After 77 Years in California, In-N-Out Is Moving to Tennessee.
Lynsi Snyder, President of In-N-Out is moving her family to Tennessee, and plans to open Tennessee In-N-Out restaurants by 2026.
California Governor Gavin Newsom and the state’s Democrat Marxist class have sent yet-another successful California business packing, looking for greener pastures, lower taxes, fewer regulations and a family-friendly environment.
“There’s a lot of great things about California, but raising a family is not easy here,” Lynsi Snyder said during a recent appearance on the Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey podcast.
“Doing business is not easy here now,” Snyder said of California.
Snyder said that in addition to moving her family to Franklin, Tennessee, a significant portion of the company will move as well. Some corporate employees will move to Tennessee, and others will remain in Southern California.
Snyder said they are making a long-term moving plan to give employees time to make their plans, as well.
Snyder shared her frustrations with California policies including the crime issues the stores have had in San Francisco and Oakland. She also the shared frustrations with the impossible policies during Gov. Newsom’s Covid lockdowns – “so many pressures and hoops we were made to jump through,” Snyder said. Masks, plastic shields, and the state made restaurants check customers’ vaccine cards during the Covid flu era.
“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 you know. And I look back and I’m like, ‘Man, maybe we should have just pushed even harder on some of that stuff and dealt with all of the legal backlash.’”
“We’re not policing our customers,” Snyder said.
In-N-Out was shut down by the state briefly in San Francisco, as the Globe reported in October 2021:
In-N-Out told the city what they think of the vaccine mandate: “We refuse to become the vaccination police.”
San Francisco city government temporarily closed an In-N-Out fast food burger restaurant over the company’s refusal to force customers to prove they are vaccinated against the coronavirus.
The City by the Bay requires a vaccine ID to purchase a burger and fries, but no ID to vote. San Francisco allows open meth and heroin purchases and use on city streets, homeless vagrants to poop on the sidewalks, and thieves to rip off Walgreens daily, but if you want a Double-Double and a chocolate shake, you need to prove you’ve been vaccinated.
California’s governor, who has a strained relationship with the truth, denies that Californians and their businesses are fleeing to other states, despite mountains of evidence, well-documented news articles, and economists across the country chronicling the phenomenon.
California’s own Chevron Oil company announced in 2024 that it is moving its headquarters to Houston, Texas from San Ramon, California – another big business to flee the Golden State. Chevron joins X/Twitter, Space X, Oracle, Hewlett Packard, Charles Schwab, and Toyota Motor North America, to name a few of the mega-businesses that departed California because of the state’s leftist/Marxist politics and regulatory environment.
Economist Art Laffer and Chapman Economics Professor James Doti spelled out the numbers and rightly declared that Gov. “Newsom doesn’t appear to see is the deleterious long-term effects of a highly progressive tax system. Case in point: The ‘one-percenters’ who pay 50% of the tax are voting with their feet by leaving California in droves.”
They explained in 2023 that the ten states with the lowest income taxes including Florida and Texas, gained a cumulative net inflow from all Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) classes of $391 billion from California during the entire 2018 to 2021 period.
Most went to Texas with its business-friendly climate, no corporate or personal income tax, easy access to global markets, robust infrastructure and a reasonable regulatory environment.
California is losing more workers than it’s gaining, new report shows, the Globe reported Nov. 26th.
“Businesses are leaving because it is no longer economically feasible for them to stay within California,” the Hoover Institute says. “Businesses that remain in California are hiring much less, and California now has the country’s second highest unemployment rate,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Nov. 19, 2024.
Chief Executive reports California’s tech industry is even losing out, and AI isn’t a guarantee that California will dominate:
“As states compete for emerging industries like AI and automation, the calculus for relocation goes well beyond tax incentives. For CEOs like Jenny Zhan of Beyond International, who recently moved her alternative investment management firm from Irvine, California, to Houston, Texas, that decision is less about the perks and more about longterm strategy. She cautions other CEOs to carefully consider their reasons for relocation.
“It’s not an easy thing to do, so you really need to look at the complete picture and how it can improve your business,” she says. “For us, talent was a big factor. Talent is always seeking opportunities for long-term growth, and Houston is providing those opportunities for young talent, so we have to go wherever the talent is.”
Very interesting that she had to leave California for better talent.
“Tech firms have been migrating away from traditional tech strongholds for some time, but the biggest recent driver has been the rapid rise of AI, which has required companies to seek locations that provide affordable, reliable sources of energy and a workforce skilled in AI-driven applications. One of the states doing ‘a phenomenal job’ of getting ahead of the trend is North Carolina, which landed big data centers from Google, Microsoft and Apple, and in 2024 added American Tower and PowerHouse Data Centers. ‘They’ve been leveraging that into life sciences and healthcare R&D and manufacturing.’”
As the Globe reported in June, “New data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics was released, revealing a staggering 36,565 fast food jobs have been lost since September 2023 when the $20 per hour fast-food minimum wage law, AB 1228, was signed into law.”
And now In-N-Out is moving its headquarters.
Governor Gavin Newsom and the Democrat supermajority Legislature are doing nothing to change the reasons businesses and residents are fleeing the state.
A California native and Navy mom, Katy lives in Sacramento, CA.
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Why the ongoing rants regarding California’s hospitality toward business? There’s a deliberate plan in play to destroy California’s private sector and take property and assets from any and all holdouts.
The greater the number of individuals dependant on the governnent the greater control the comrades secure over the minions.
As goes California so goes America.
This is about more than just another business HQ leaving California; a blow that could very well hit Newsom & Co’s reputation harder in the rest of the country than any of our other —- even more serious and devastating — troubles.
How many times have we, here in California, heard of people who visit from other parts of the country making a required stop to In-N-Out before hitting the airport to head home because of the mythology of the place? It’s about more than the food, that’s for sure. It’s part of the California Dream culture, unlike any other restaurant. Visitors to California have been hearing about the place for years. They want to experience it for themselves and tell their friends back home about it.
A friend of mine, who had lived in SoCal for many many years, had to move back to her home town of Pittsburgh in the 90s. When I visited her, she and her husband were excited that a Taco Bell had come to town. I’m not kidding. My in-laws in the mid-west jumped for joy when a Trader Joe’s opened in their city. They had been hearing about the place for YEARS. (By the way, in the mid-west “3 Buck Chuck” is “2 Buck Chuck.” Or at least it WAS, last time I checked.)
This news of In-N-Out HQ’s exit is about more than money, and it will be a huge blow to lying Gavin & Co. The Gov is going to have to do a lot of boring and word-salad-y podcasts to overcome it, and he still won’t be able to, no matter how much he protests and bends the truth as he usually does. At least the people of Tennessee and its reluctant transplants from California will soon be getting their own In-N-Out.
Exactly right.
In-N-Out-N-OUT!!! Priceless! If you have school age children attending California public schools get out as fast as you can. If you can’t leave at least get your kids in a private school or homeschool them if possible. California is the modern Sodom and Gomorrah.
After driving out a successful California institution like In-N-Out, maybe “Hair-gel Hitler” Newsom and the state’s Democrat Marxist political class will try to open state operated fast food outlets staffed with surly state workers making $50 an hour selling fake meat patties made with embryonic cells cultures from aborted fetuses?
The reality of state managed supply chains closer than we know.
When Walmart commenced the administration of the poison vax all should have realized fascism was before them: Walmart carrying out the corrupt governments evil deeds.
Brutal but spot-on sarcasm. Thanks TJ
With you, TJ, and as you know stranger things have happened, or at least AS strange, under the chaotic leadership of Gavin & Co.
But one day he and his Pod People will be a very distant memory. God willing.
Good one “Hair Gel Hitler” Made my day! How true those words are.
I get it, sad to see such a fine California institution go to Tennessee. They held strong for decades, but like many residents you can only take so much of this dystopian society. I really do not see why a business would stay in this hostile state. Fees , mandates and high taxes are guaranteed to chase more businesses out. This is managed decline and you thank, Newsom and his supermajority.
How many of us readers, are ready to go? How many of us looking for greener pastures on Zillow? I personally get close but then decide to stay and fight. But this ship is sinking fast! Once things really go south,, property values will take a hit. It is quite amazing how much we will put up with to have nice weather.
Amen… Fed Up.
It gets harder with each passing year to stay in California and especially in Democrat controlled cities like Sacramento where I live. If we didn’t have family ties and commitments here we would have left long ago. The Nextdoor app for Sacramento has now added a “local news” feed that has a blatantly liberal leftist slant. The propaganda for the last few days has focused on the ICE raids and how innocent “immigrants” (no mention of them being illegal aliens with criminal histories) are being unfairly rounded up, being treated poorly and then being deported. There has been no mention of In-N-Out’s headquarters moving out of state.
@Samantha, Nextdoor is run by the far left, and has been censoring conservative posts since it was introduced. Unfortunately, most people are force fed leftist news, and are completely ignorant of what is really going on in their communities or the state.
I couldn’t agree more –
I think that the immediate effect beyond symbolic is that some, not all, of In and Out’s corporate tax will be going to another state. They previously closed a location in Oakland due to crime, a San Francisco was temporarily closed by the city for refusing to enforce the city’s facist covid rules. It will be when the chain starts closing restaurants that we will truly know I&E has had enough. And, the communists in Sacramento won’t pay the slightest heed to any of it.
Tennessee is the place to be apparently. I have been checking out Franklin myself. I just hope they manage to keep their iconic burger joints operating in Cali.
There is one I go to that usually has a 1/4 mile line night and day and a half hour or longer wait. Literally hundreds of customers at any given time. Immediately across the street is a Burger King that never has any customers inside an at most 2 cars in line. In-N-Out is amazing but their simple menu and fresh ingredients literally cannot be beat.
In&Out is good, I like it. However, I ironically don’t patronize them much because the place is always packed, takes quite a while to get through the line.
“No one goes there anymore — it’s too crowded,” as Yogi Berra apparently once said? 🙂
One of Yogi Berra’s sayings I treasure, “you have to go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t go to yours.” That’s something to tell the kids along with the dad and grandpa jokes.
Ha ha – that’s a good one.
I live a couple miles away from 17th St. and Tustin Ave in Santa Ana. We have a choice of In-N-Out, Chick-fil-A, and Raising Canes at the same intersection. It doesn’t get any better than this. BTW, no one has chicken nuggets that come even close to Raising Canes.
I haven’t been to a chick-fil-a but once, years ago when I was working away from home (we don’t have a local), but I wasn’t impressed at all. I have thought of going to one within 20 miles of me just to poke a finger in the alphabet people’s eye, but I haven’t made it. The Raising Cain shop way closer to me is in a big box shopping zone I don’t like going to because of traffic congestion and other overcrowding issues, but I made it once. But seriously, while I liked it, 11 bucks for a deep fried a la carte Raising Cain chicken sandwich? Nah, I can buy an eight piece box of fried chicken for 8 or 9 bucks from my local supermarket and make several sandwiches from that – not as good, but much more affordable. Jack in the Box and Wendy’s make spicy chicken sandwiches that are much more affordable and, in my view, just as good or almost as good, but I don’t patronize them much for several reasons not to do with price.
It really looks quite lovely, CW. We had friends that left for Frankliin in 1997. They had no regrets and their children thrived.
I am a born and bred Californian, with slight optimism it can be turned around but that optimism is dwindling day by day. I live in the SF Bay Area and it has become a place that is crowded, dirty, and full of aloof, dead eyed people. I guess our representatives have that same distant stare.
Most of us find our happiness within our neighborhoods and churches, but in most spaces everyone is out for themselves. In one week I have seen two near misses on our streets where drivers at extreme speed almost mowed down pedestrians in crosswalks. By the grace of God they escaped being hit.
Even though I would miss it, I sometimes wish that In n Out would close all their restaurants in CA, to send a clear and unmistakable message to the idiots in Sacto. I know it won’t happen but it would be glorious to see when all their constituents start complaining they can’t even get a decent burger here. Kudos to Lynsi Snyder for staying true to her roots and sticking it to the dirty dems here. BTW, I saw the plane crash that killed Rich Snyder and four others in Dec of 1993, I was on my way home from work in Costa Mesa heading north on the 55 just south of the 5, when I saw the fire, smoke and debris coming from from the crash, just off the west side of the freeway. I heard about it on the news a few minutes later, although I didn’t know it was the president of In n Out until later that evening.
To those thinking of leaving CA —- CW, Cali Girl, maybe Samantha too? —- obviously I can’t tell you what to do, but if you should move elsewhere please know that you would be missed.
Obviously it would be better if those who SHOULD leave would leave. You know, the Gov and the Corrupt Class, et al. Why should we leave our home when we are NOT trying to wreck the place as certain other people are doing but only trying to let others know about it? But I know —- it’s become like waiting for the overstaying ill-mannered politicians, uh, I mean, house guests to depart. And we’ve been waiting for them to pack up for a LONG, L-O-N-G time now. Maybe getting away from the crazy cities and counties is the answer, but stay in CA. I’d like to be here when CA comes back.
All the company HQ’s that are moving out of CA should close down and take their retail companies too…
Or, if they got together and started putting money into political campaigns of politucians that would help business and fund ballot initiatives that fight back against sacramento bolsheviks… I heard that it takes over $800k to get a ballot iniative off the ground…
Will the last person to leave CA, p[ease turn out the lights?
Maybe I should say the last non politician citizen.