I once did a quick "anthropological" study with In-N-Out employees (read: fancyspeak for sitting down and talking to them about their job), I was quite surprised.
Most of them were very happy with their jobs, not just happy with pay and benefits and so on, but happy to work there. They found it a very welcoming and friendly work environment, where people were rewarded for initiative and trying to improve things.
Most of them didn't see themselves leaving the company any time soon, unless it was for a different job type (such as moving to an office job after finishing school).
It was a very good lesson on how job satisfaction doesn't need fancy cafés, ball pits and slides.
PS: Those were just my impressions from talking to a limited number of employees. Endless numbers of caveats apply.
I've never done that, but it was clear from observation that it was true. Here's what amazes me, that people like Bezos exist. I mean, treating people that work at Amazon (especially the warehouses!) like the employees of I-N-O, Amazon could be an even more valuable company. Instead of being an employer of last resort (I would take any job before I worked there), they could be the "it" place to work. Instead, Bezos allows people to be treated like complete shit.
Unfortunately it's a different ballgame with warehouse work like at AMZ. There is no customer facing service aspect, and very little quality difference between employees. What quality concerns there are can probably be traced back to an individual employee very easily; returns due to poor packaging or wrong item can easily be pinned on the culprit.
It's unfortunate, but not all manual/hard jobs are valued equally and often because they are simply not of equal value. Item pickers are going to eventually go the way of cotton pickers in developed countries. One of my best friends works for a startup developing AI controlled robotic pickers. There is a ways to go and it'll start with human augmented AI's but eventually AI's will be picking, sorting, and packing everything.
> There is no customer facing service aspect, and very little quality difference between employees. What quality concerns there are can probably be traced back to an individual employee very easily; returns due to poor packaging or wrong item can easily be pinned on the culprit.
I disagree; a counter argument would be Costco. Almost all of Costco has very little service interaction with their union employees. They have warehouses, distribution, and procurement that has little consumer interaction. It is difficult to find people to point what is what in aisle numbers and the lines in checkout can be very long. As far as I know all of the people who work in these facilities are union and they pay living wages and benefits.
The nice service workers who handle out free samples are contractors, not union employees the last time I checked.
Last time I heard that figure it had been asked why they weren’t and most replied they didn’t see a need - the company treats them well enough already.
I just finished reading The Everything Store a few weeks ago, an eye-opening book that deep dives into the history of both Amazon and Bezos. I don't think there's any chance that Bezos and crew haven't done the math on this part of their business. They have an extremely detailed understanding of what makes Amazon tick, and cutting costs is an absolutely crucial part of that equation.
Ethically, I agree with you. They shouldn't treat their employees like shit. Some things are worth more than money.
But financially, it's 100% untrue that Amazon would be more valuable if they focused on employee happiness over cutting costs. It's not an accident that Amazon generates more revenue than any other Internet company in existence.
"Amazon generates more revenue than any other Internet company in existence."
Isn't that because Amazon is (practically) the only one selling actual "stuff" that always has a value?
Everyone else is (big # of users) * (small profit/user by selling ads or whatever), Amazon is (big # of users) * (big profit/user and also selling data).
>But financially, it's 100% untrue that Amazon would be more valuable if they focused on employee happiness over cutting costs. It's not an accident that Amazon generates more revenue than any other Internet company in existence.
Or it very well could be (an accident). Survivorship bias and all...
That's a possibility, yes, but I think Amazon's success is too extreme a case for an accident to be the most likely explanation. If it was merely a "decent" success or a "pretty good" success, then yeah, but it's many orders of magnitude beyond that, in a very cutthroat industry. To get to this point, the company has had to consistently make aggressive, unintuitive, massively beneficial decisions, many dozens of times per year over several decades.
Imagine Lebron James — Could he just be lucky every play he goes out onto the court? It's possible. But I'd say the more likely explanation is he knows what he's doing. He's got a fundamental understanding, an underlying theory, and a set of skills that map well to reality and give him an edge that contributes to his success. So does Amazon.
How long-term is Amazon's vision for their warehouse employees? Feels like for them it's a temporary band-aid measure until Kiva Robotics and drone delivery tech are mature.
have you ever talked with people that works at Amazon, or its many other companies?
I've been a contractor for one of them for many years, and they take care of me with prompt payment, lots of communication and clear expectations up front.
Worse, it's that human employees are just cost-effective robotic manipulators. Amazon's fulfillment centers are literal physical implementations of their Mechanical Turk.
I've never been disappointed with the food at In&Out ever. Maybe with a lag in cleanliness of tables or bathrooms (but that's been rare). McDonald's the food is consistently bad that I'm surprised when it is good.m It's either been too cold, mushy, wrong or missing something. This is based on a cross country trip with small kids who optimize on happy meals. Also play centers and room are basically essential for small kids. Makes a world of difference. This and happy meals are the only reasons to go to McDonald's.
OP said they have a kid. A place to stop on long trips, where the kid will be happy to get a kid's meal and go play at the play center, and let the parent(s) have a break to eat in quiet isolation? Totally worth crappy food on occasion.
Given that good management can have such a dramatic effect on the efficiency of this style of burger joint, this may well be a good investment for the company. I remember once going into a McDonald's, and seeing an absolutely de-optimized crew. Basically, they seemed to be trying to all use the same station at the same time, trying to maximize the length of the queue formed and minimize throughput. It literally took me 10 minutes to get a burger.
Of course, this also applies to the workers under the manager as well. My wife drives me crazy in this way. There are some people who will interact in a group by modeling the future pathways, tasks, and schedule of everyone around them, then navigate those models to avoid conflict in time and space. Then there are some people who can't. As far as I can tell, my wife doesn't have a fine-grained enough internal sense of time to be able to do that. I almost stopped dating her early on, because she once kept me waiting 45 minutes in front of the locked door of her apartment, because she was having a conversation with her CEO. I also recall a recent instance cooking with her in the kitchen, and was rinsing 3 pieces of raw meat (1) -- she interrupted me between piece 2 and piece 3 and left me hanging there with contaminated hands while she washed/processed an entire leek. I also remember a band-mate of mine who couldn't "add time" in her head when travelling to gigs, so would always be late. (I know this is the specific case from conversations while planning to drive somewhere.)
It was a very good lesson on how job satisfaction doesn't need fancy cafés, ball pits and slides.
I think one of the best possible rewards is "good working." When people really mesh, there can even be a high.
(1 - Which you're not supposed to do in the US, but I do because my wife grew up in China, so she has a much greater distrust of commercial food processing.)
I would have left my wife standing on the porch if I was in a conversation with my CEO or other organizational top management. It’s a complete different paradigm for respecting authority that I picked up in the Military and your wife no doubt picked up from China’s strong nationality and authoritarian paradigm.
No single thing has been harder about the ‘normal’ world then getting used to people who seemingly don’t even CONSIDER the power structure of an engagement let alone actively alter their behavior in the moment based on who they are talking to.
When you'd made an arrangement to meet them at a certain time? Man, to me that's just cold.
your wife no doubt picked up from China’s strong nationality
One thing that I picked up from dating then marrying my wife, is that China is waaaay more diverse and varied within its borders than most people in the US imagine. The basic philosophy towards friendship between the north and south varies, and even that is an oversimplification. One province over, the dining habits are waaay different from where she grew up. She comes from a Mandarin speaking region in the south, where before I'd heard that the south speaks Cantonese, but even there it's more complex than I'd thought. Turns out the real traditional languages are two entirely different dialects I'd never even heard of.
China's not so much a nation-state, as a "civilization-state."
I used to work at top graded Mackers (Mcdonald's reviews their stores and grades them) with a really awesome store manager and some great (took their jobs and quality very seriously) managers. The experience was great and really enjoyable. Unfortunately, the pay was just above minimum wage and the long term prospects were terrible.
I can totally see how these guys/gals would be loyal and sticky if taken care of. Hard work you can leave at the door is very satisfying if you don't feel like you're going nowhere...
Incidentally the 3x average sounds almost spot on; I believe our store manager was making about 70k and he was highly valued as a store "fixer" by the chain owner in the Dallas area.
I'm guessing that the sentiment here is that the employee getting paid 70K at McD is adding much more value than 70K + other costs, especially if they're single-highhandedly responsible for saving entire locations.
A NYer here. I lived in Cal for a few months. In-n-Out, has been one of my favorite restaurants after just two visit. I mean it. The ingredients are fresh, and I could watch the workers make the burgers. ALL FRESH. Too bad, In-n-Out won't come to NY. It makes sense though.
I think a great part is you can watch someone take a REAL potato with real dirt on it, clean it, cut it up with a massive guillotine thing, insert it into boiling oil, and hand it to you. Beautiful.
I love me some in n out burgers but unfortunately their fries, while commendably fresh, aren’t very good. You have about 3 mins to eat them before they become cardboard. There are legitimate culinary reasons to freeze potatoes before frying, it bursts the cell walls which helps to achieve a better fry.
As far as west coast burger chains go, The Habit has way better fries.
In N Out’s burgers though are so good, double single animal style with peppers is heaven.
Top tip; ask for the fries without salt. You can taste them properly then. I wonder if you can ask for them thick cut too.. I might have to see if there's a secret menu option for that
> Frozen peas are just as good as fresh after all.
In what universe? Fresh peas are significantly better, and I'm not even sure that's an opinion as much as fact.
Edit: If HN had controversial markers, this comment would have one. I've watched the points on it go up and down, negative and positive, for the last hour.
I never realised it was controversial. In every conversation I've had with chefs, cookery programmes watched, experience with both fresh and frozen, never once have I come to the conclusion fresh was better.
Added to the fact they last much longer, I can't see any reason to buy fresh (we're talking petit pois style, rather than runner bean style).
In England peas are taken from field to frozen in less than 4 hours. It's a remarkable process, and it means people buying frozen peas are getting a very good product.
Fresh peas, on the other hand, cover a range from "I picked these myself just now" to "who knows when these came off the plant".
Modern blast chillers make amazing frozen products. It's a pretty impressive thing: a significant amount of the quality of the product is stored in the frozen product. It depends tremendously on how fast you chill, how thoroughly, etc.
I think the difference here isn't fresh vs frozen, but rather unprocessed vs processed.
Heston freezes solid whole pieces of potato, In-n-Out likely uses whole pieces of potato, seasoned. McDonald's likely mashes everything up, blends it all with preservatives and flavour enhancers and forms it into fry-shaped pieces.
Also depends on the location, over here apparently they're a lot more pure than in the US [0] to the extent that they're really not bad. They also claim they're also actually cut rather than shaped.
I think we generally get a better quality product from McD's, I did enjoy my In-n-Out experience when in Cali, but I can imagine it's a world different if the baseline fast food is poorer.
In case anyone is wondering why that doesn't help the OP's issue... In order for the potatoes to be soft on the inside, you have to gelatinize the starch. That means bringing the temperature up to about 60C. However, this results in a gelatin-like block -- no matter how crunchy the outside is. If you want the inside to be fluffy you need to subsequently crystalize the gelatinized starch. You do that by cooling it down. If you've ever eaten cold potatoes or rice, you know how dry it seems -- that's the starch crystals. If you then heat it up again, these crystals re-gelatinize, providing a fluffy interior.
It's often good to go through the cycle more than once, which is why you see recipes for "triple fried" french fries. I tend to like to blanch in salted water, freeze, blanch in oil, freeze and then fry. This also dissolves some of the starch on the outside and provides more surface area for the oil to create crunchy bits. Yeah, it takes all day...
Never been to In-N-Out, so can't comment on what they do.
I worked the fryer at 5 guys and their method is to double fry them. I would drop the fries in for 3 minutes and take them out for 1 then drop them back in again for another minute. Crisps the outside and leaves inside fluffy.
We also soaked the potatoes for several hours to de starch them before frying
Huh interesting to know (as someone who thinks Five Guys makes the 2nd best fries I've ever had, first being a place local to Denver + Colorado Springs)
Other interesting thing about the five guys which you might already know is that their only proprietary ingredient is the buns. The “seasoned” fry seasoning we threw on there was straight up Kroger brand.
Didn't know that actually. Interesting. I knew the flavoring on the base fries was some sort of peanut oil (which is genius, not to mention delicious).
Yes, then they are just stiffer and hotter. Well done is better but not great.
A fry should be crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside which is not gonna happen with taking a fresh potato and frying it. Freezing and blanching before hand make for better fries.
Part of the problem is that they cut them into shoestring. But another is that they only fry once -- if they did a second fry they'd be far better. I believe McDonalds and other chains pre-cook their fries before they arrive at the restaurant.
I love their burgers. But their fries. I had to give up. And I love fries! It was like cardboard, which felt so weird after being able to see the process...
Can't remember where, but IIRC they only operate at locations which can be reached from their distribution centers by a truck in the same day. I also recall that they recently opened another distribution center in Texas (which is why they are now opening locations there). So they are indeed expanding eastward, but it will probably be a while before they establish a presence on the east coast.
If I remember the article I read correctly, all restaurants must be within either 350 or 500 miles of a INO distribution center, and they only serve something like 50 per center (this from an article talking about them finally coming to Colorado with a distribution center and the first location down in the Springs, though Denver/Boulder have to be soon to follow).
I live in the Midwest and have been told this is the main reason this will most likely remain a West Coast chain.
I've also been told it's a case of freshness. If they have to ship all the ingredients from California to Iowa, it's not as fresh as they want it to be. Keeping the supply chain close and using local suppliers for specific ingredients allows them to have a consistent product no matter where you get it.
At the end of the day, as an owner, that's what you want. No matter where the customer goes, they always get same fresh, great tasting product.
That they can pay hourlies (as well as the highlighted managers) well above industry average and still manage to make a profit undercuts the argument that companies in the service industry need _cheap_ labor to survive.
It's the companies who want to milk dry the American worker who cry wolf at the thought of having to pay Americans a decent wage. There are millions of people who have left the labor force because their wages have been undercut.
I think there is a significant pool of willing workers willing to work for the right wages --they may need some assistance in getting back to being productive workers, but I think industry owes them that after decades of neoliberal policies outsourcing and shipping jobs overseas.
I wonder if franchising vs corporate ownership makes a difference.
In-n-Out does not do franchises, which allows some long-term focus. They can take more risk, they can cross-subsidize underperforming locations, they can take a long-term view of their employees and see them as value creators, not expense generators. Things like careers and promotions are possible, where successful In-n-Out managers are moved up the chain or trusted with new location launches.
A new McDonalds'/Burger King/Taco Bell/Carl's Jr would usually be owned by some local dentist or a retired couple that poured their life's savings into the franchise, and need immediate cashflow. Any increase in expenses forces them to readjust the business model and drives down the ROI. There's also zero potential for promotion - that same dentist or retired couple are unlikely to be in the business of owning 100 franchises of the same kind and have a long-term view for growing their expansive empire.
This is exactly the answer. It has to do with how many people want to take a cut and how big that cut is. Public companies are required to focus on shareholders. We need more companies to become B Corps so that can be tempered with sustainability, the environment, workers, etc.
Usually you hear the “we need to pay our workers low wages” from companies that have very low margin unit economics. McDonald’s for example has a high number of cheap products. Same with Wal-Mart. They need a lot of people to service all the offerings they have. In-n-out has like 5 things on the menu, so they probably need far fewer employees overall. Costco is another example: they carry very few products compared to Walmart and thus need far fewer employees. Guess which companies offer their employees lots of benefits?
McDonald's is actually a very bad example; they're famous in the industry for their ridiculously high margins, on the order of 15-20% rather than the medium single digits for most fast food chains.
Most McD franchises would kill for 15-20% "margins" depending on how you measure that. At the end of the day, a franchisee usually sees a 10% margin after controllable expenses, and before any taxes.
Which is still pretty good :) . From what I know, stores in popular areas have surprisingly big revenues, I'd love 10% of that (my brother used to work at a store with a million dollars in monthly revenue).
Nothing's keeping McD's or KFC from whittling down their menus. Let's see all our companies pay our workers a decent wage rather than what they have done for the last 30 years, race to the bottom in terms of wages, and ingredients.
It's good until you've had Shake Shack or Steak n Shake. Both have much tastier burgers IMO. In-N-Out is fine, and I don't have a problem with them, but I'm also not over the moon about it and truly don't understand the 30-minute drive-through lines at their locations. More power to 'em, I suppose, but it's really just a super-basic burger done fairly well for a good price.
I've enjoyed burgers at the Habit, and at Five Guys, and I still love In-N-Out. It's even possible that 5 Guys or the Habit have tastier burgers. However, In-n-out burgers are almost half the price, and the drive through service makes me genuinely pleased every time I go. Best drive through process I've ever seen -- people taking your order before you get to the speakers, a window to take your money, a window to give you food, and every post staffed by cheerful, helpful people.
I've even taken the time to find their website and say, "wow, I'm impressed by the good service I've seen here, there, everywhere", which is something I can't usually be bothered to do for any other restaurant.
I'm not sure how much of my enjoyment of them is due to nostalgia, consistently excellent service, or maybe a pareto optimal price-vs-taste point? ;)
We frequently stop at the Culver's in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on the way from here to somewhere else. There are restaurants in Tennessee which are closer, but we never seem to pass them near meal times.
As Culver's is a Wisconsin thing, I'm not at all surprised that they showed up in Arizona.
I recently visited the first Five Guys franchise in germany and got really disappointed. The meat itself is better than the burgers at McDonalds or Burger King, but the rest of the burger is equally bad.
There are at least two local burger chains around the serve way better burgers for an equal or even slightly lower price.
So unless Five Guys really messed up in their first german location, I just don't understand why it is so famous in the US.
Maybe he's just really elderly? Every time I've been in one of those (not just at 4 PM) it has been like activities time at the old folks' home. There must be something about that food that really appeals to 80yo's... do they just like patties that have been smashed too thin?
Perhaps it's just fond memories? Steak n Shake was a lot better for many years. But their service and quality tanked after the new (current) CEO came in, back around 2008 or so.
Shake Shack is pretty much tops, Texas’s Whataburger is the only other one close. In and Out is essentially the West Coast Whataburger.
A friend of mine is opening a new burger chain in Houston called Burger Libre — essentially a Shake Shack with a Hispanic twist.
Regardless of everyone’s preferences, it’s a good time to be a burger fan in the US. I live in France and just paid €15 for cheeseburger and fries at a local cafe in the south. Insane how expensive hamburgers are in France. $18.30 for a bistro cheeseburger! Pre-tax that is $14.66. Then take away the “service charge” and that’s $12 for a burger that is functionally equivalent to In and Out et al.
I get Shake Shack has a nice anti-chain image. And the ingredients might be more in line with the customers values.
But do people really enjoy the taste of Shake Shack burger more than In-N-Out?
I don't understand it. The aesthetic is cool, milkshakes are great, and maybe you like crinkle fries more.... but the secret menu has a Peanut Butter burger! That's kinda gross.
Maybe its just my location (Las Vegas) but I don't get the hype at all. Plain cheesburger to cheeseburger Shake Shacks burgers just don't appeal to me.
If someone with a more mature palate can explain the appeal of the burgers it would be appreciated.
> I live in France and just paid €15 for cheeseburger and fries at a local cafe in the south.
Tell me about it. I live in the UK and it's a similar story. People rave about Byron burger for some reason, but it's pretty bad in my opinion (soggy onions, mediocre patty) and also costs well over 10 quid. My favorite in the UK is probably GBK, but it's easily 15 quid for burger and chips. I really miss In-N-Out. Epic Burger in Chicago is also really excellent, but hitting $10 territory.
What do you think of HopDoddy? I travel to Dallas fairly often, I've always thought they were really good. But the prices are quite "European" once you add the tip (don't get me started on that debate...)
I personally believe this has much to do with with two things.
1) In-n-out is not public. At all. So they don’t have to answer to the pressure of Wall Street and it’s sharks or get a huge stake taken by a hedge fund or Any of those other external pressures of that nature.
2) they’re still majority family owned and the guy who founded it reallly believed in taking great care of his workers
I have a slight quibble with the first point, though I generally agree. There are public companies out there that simply don't care about Wall St, and are run like they're private. It requires an admittedly rare combination of founder controlled/involved, no need to raise capital, strong business model, and unique culture. Think about Amazon, who have given the capital markets the biggest middle finger of all time, refusing to show a single dollar of profit because they believe the reinvestment opportunities are too great (I would strongly agree).
There's an agricultural company called Seaboard Corp that's public. Its's a $5 billion market cap company controlled by the founding family. There are no analysts covering it, they've never once held a conference call, they don't give guidance, etc. The stock is near its all-time high and has returned a staggering 22% annually since 2000. Sure, these are rare, but the market is pretty efficient about this stuff over time.
So it's possible, and I bet it would be possible for In-N-Out as well. But it would probably still be viewed as a hassle, and if no one in the family needs liquidity to buy a super-yacht, or pay a massive divorce settlement, or buy an NBA team, there's no point.
Amazon is an interesting example. Yes, they grossly reinvest rather than pay dividends, but they don't invest in employee pay/compensation directly ('wastes' as per common view of what wall street wants)
> The stock is near its all-time high and has returned a staggering 22% annually since 2000.
I was interested by this, so I checked.
It's indeed near it's all-time high. Though this is not surprising, it's the case for many companies that aren't dwindling currently, and that didn't have huge peaks around 2000.
But to say it's had a 22% annual return since 2000 is a bit of a misrepresentation. The overall return between 2000 and 2018, divided over the 18 years, might be 22% YoY (not sure, I didn't check -- could well be that it's not). But it's had a number of years with negative returns (e.g. 2015), certainly not 22% returns.
Edit: I checked. A yearly 22% growth from 2000 to today would put it quite a bit higher than its current stock price. So it's not a 22% YoY growth.
If you don't need to raise capital, why go public at all?
I also think that Amazon is a really bad example. Not only are they growing at a phenomenal rate, but they have been profitable for a few years. The markets would not have tolerated their unprofitability if there wasn't also a pretty clear direction for becoming a profitable business.
Of course, the financial press does a terrible job of explaining these things.
Companies go public for all sorts of reasons. Facebook went public because it was almost being forced to by the SEC because of its size. Microsoft went public simply because other employees who were mega-rich like Gates wanted to cash out...stock is up 132,000% since the IPO. Hermes went public because of family in-fighting...stock is up 11,430% since its IPO in 1993.
Amazon is a good example because they aren't hostage to the capital markets...they are not consumers of capital, though their reported profits are pathetic in comparison to their market cap. Bezos hasn't gone on an earnings call in...I don't know, maybe forever.
When your business doesn't need to raise money, you have a license to run it like a private company. The vast majority don't, but there are reasons for that, too.
Yes there are examples of the the fact that public companies don’t all suffer from this of course. I think however in broad strokes non public companies have much more leeway here than public ones do
Chik Fil A owner operators also comfortably in this realm of income. Both companies get a lot of the same things right for customer and employees.
P.S. If you get put down as a reference for a potential hire at Chik Fil A corporate, don't be surprised to find yourself in a 45+ minute discussion about the hire. They take vetting seriously.
I don't think comparing franchise ownership with managers is a particularly fair place yeah? You have to put like a million in capital down at a minimum to open something like a chick fil a.
Chick-fil-a famously requires $10,000 to become a franchise "operator", but they require a heavy investment in time and energy and can be revoked at will. I think it's more appropriate to compare a chick-fil-a operator with an in-and-out manager, than it is to compare them to a mcd franchise owner.
About a decade ago a friend applied to become an owner-operator at Chik Fil A. He had years of experience managing multiple car washes, and a letter of recommendation from someone at corporate.
He made it from the initial multiple thousands of applicants to the second round of 500. Corporate told him to go work for 12+ months behind the counter in a Chik Fil A and then re-apply.
They had you rank your store location choices, and you moved where they told you to, if you were selected. I forget how many stores they were going to open a year, but I want to say it was around 100 back then.
Here is the key: 'In-N-Out has no public shareholders'. Stay away from Wall Street sharks and the urge to give increasingly bigger profits every year vanishes.
The salary comparisons are also hurt by the fact that "architect" and "lawyer" are titles you have your entire career, while "restaurant manager" is a title only one person in the restaurant has.
If you compared the salary of an in-n-out manager to the engineer running the team, or to law firm partners, you'd get a different conclusion.
The fact that someone who's worked for a good chunk of their life at an In-N-Out makes more than a young professional fresh out of school seems pretty reasonable, when you think about it. (Although it still makes In-N-Out an exception, which is too bad.)
>The fact that someone who's worked for a good chunk of their life at an In-N-Out makes more than a young professional fresh out of school seems pretty reasonable, when you think about it. (Although it still makes In-N-Out an exception, which is too bad.)
With almost certainly far more hours worked to make that salary, as well. Most fast food managers are spending 60+ hours/week in the store, opening early and closing late at night. All to make a decent living wage in California. I would not envy that life one bit.
Architechts, except Landscape and Naval (which also excludes Software Architects, which are in a completely different high-level category) make a median salary of $95,070 in California (about halfway between your Glassdoor info and what the article has from Indeed), per the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has much more complete data than either Indeed or Glassdoor.
Agreed. They are my least favorite burgers and fries but the service is absolutely incredible. Every single person I have EVER dealt with is very professional and polite. I have never seen another restaurant with employees like that.
It's often compared to Five Guys but the vast majority of Five Guys I've been in have employees that don't really seem to care.
Five Guys isn't fast food in the traditional sense - a basic cheeseburger/fries/drink is over $15 out here in southern California, whereas the same at In-N-Out is $6.
But in that market we do have Burger Lounge which goes well beyond In-N-Out's service level. We also have Luna Grill for Mediterranean, similar excellence in service and quality of food.
Right. That's why I said Five Guys isn't, to highlight that they aren't really competitors despite people choosing to compare them.
And more to the point, that In-N-Out is so exceptional in both food and service it can begin to draw comparisons to operations in a higher market segment.
I’ve never had a fast trip to an In-N-Out. Lines are always really long. Quality of their food has gone down hill over the years as they’ve tried to keep up. While it’s not even close to my fave I’d still shove an animal double double down my face so fast...
In the Bay Area, at least, the quality is always the thing I've been most impressed with. The burgers are picture-perfect (like, could be in an advertising photo) every time, and the food is good.
I haven't had such consistent high quality of anything at any other chain.
They are immensely popular. But drive-thrus are still at the core of their service ever since the first location which was drive-thru only. That's one of many things that can't be said of any of their upscale competitors, hence the fast food vs fast casual.
Maybe the secret is paying _everyone_ enough the make that happen. There's also a lot to be said for providing clean paths to climb the ladder by hiring internally (but that's made viable by paying well to provide good stability and mentoring at all levels...). Then you end up with inherently informed and connected management.
It's amazing how different a franchised versus company owned restaurant can be. When I worked at a franchised McDonald's as a teenager we were all jealous of the corporate McDonald's a few miles down the road as they had better pay, benefits, uniforms and everything just looked way cleaner there. At my franchised McDonald's we were told to do the bare minimum for _every single thing_ we did.
I'm curious if there is any data on franchised versus non franchised restaurants and if there is a way to objectively compare them.
I had a slightly different experience. In high school my first job was corporate Mackers in a Walmart. At 15 I was somehow the second most responsible person working there.. After high school I did another stint at a franchise location. The owner had an ace manager in there to "turn around" the store. Everything was ship shape and above board; top rating on store review was the expectation.
As committed as everyone was the one thing I would have seriously cracked down on was... Wait for it... Pulling the fries out early. A couple of the managers didn't have the stomach for waiting the full time when cars were stacked up. They were mistakenly prioritizing the service time (which is usually sacred TBH!) over the quality of the french fries. This is a huge mistake and Mcdonalds has very tight lifetime limits on fries for a reason; aint nobody wants undercooked or stale fries.
I always dropped my own fries for my free meal, and would often invite people in to purchase fries while I was there so they could be done right. A 1/2, or ideally 1/4, basket cooks the best and most evenly at the McDonalds prescribed cooking times IMHO. Full baskets without a cooking time adjustment would result in fries that are not quite so cooked properly.
Spelling was never my strong suite ;) Nor was avoiding picking up slang in NZ that was later pointed out to me to be racial slurs :| Nobody ever told me about ol' uncle Rangi!
The timing for the drive through made our life very difficult at the McDonald's I worked at. Managers would frequently clear orders not yet finished off of the screen just so the system registered a faster time completed. We would then have to carry around the receipt to try and figure out what the person ordered. In the worst of cases we'd have to pass the receipt to the grill area to get food made.
All of our drive through times were complete bullshit because of this. Even during slow times where we'd have just a car every few minutes managers would IMMEDIATELY clear them off as they just need to "remember" the order. Which, as you can guess, increased wrong order complaints but those are also not sent to corporate so they never cared.
For one thing, it enables careers instead of just jobs - In'n'Out employees are promoted all the way up the corporate chain, moved to launch new locations, and generally signals to employees that if they want to spend next 40 years working for the company, they will not be seen as failures by their peers, parents, significant others, children and people at high school reunion.
With franchised restaurants the promotion ladder looks like employee -> manager -> dead-end.
Is there a way to check whether a given McD is corporate or franchise?
The McD by our house growing up was amazing. Even as a teen I remember it being well run. As an adult I moved to a different city and the local McD was the worst I’ve ever seen. That includes highway service area stores. Be curious to confirm my suspicions as to which is corporate.
YMMV, but when the franchise I worked at was extremely well run, and compared to a corporate store, far better. I used to be able to walk into a McDs and tell within a minute or two if they were franchise or McOpCo. The McOpCo stores were always dirty, understaffed, and had really demoralized employees.
Back in the day the corporate McDonald's had a different uniform that was almost sorta suit like. Today they might be all the same, not sure, but you can probably contact them and ask.
There are a number of good chains in that category. Shake Shack, Five Guys. But In-N-Out is pretty good. I suspect it's a category that rewards quality/consistency and isn't just a race to the bottom like the truly mass market fast food chains are.
It's hard to separate causality here. Maybe they can afford to pay people a lot because they make a lot of money, and maybe they make a lot of money because people like their menus and ingredients.
Another business that had well paid store managers is Trader Joe’s - I believe they also make something towards $160K in total comp. Also a place filled with happy, helpful people.
Almost like there is a connection between a good package and happy employees.
This is accurate, my old childhood buddy worked through In-N-Out for something like 7 or 8 years before and through college told me several years ago that managers make great cash and the whole In-N-Out ecosystem is really top notch in their employee dynamics.
> If other fast food establishments have been reluctant to raise wages, Jayaraman added, it’s because pressure from investors has elevated quarterly gains above the potential long-term benefits of happy workers. In-N-Out has no public shareholders.
Well, that's a reason why I think lots of startups these days opt for a much later public offering. Public investors are just very short-sighted on making a smart financial investment decision. Can't blame them, we are all been told using number (or some measurable metrics) to evaluate any businesses without even understanding what does the business do.
> using number (or some measurable metrics) to evaluate any businesses without even understanding what does the business do.
if those metrics are any good, why won't those metrics be higher for those companies that put long term gains (e.g., happy workforce) a priority? Those metrics that show good numbers for short term gains are bad metrics, and the shareholders who like them are likely to want to cash out before the 'long term' hits, and therefore, use those metrics to justify their decisions.
Unless there's an agreed methodology on how to measure that "happiness" in the workforce with good science backing it, then sure. But for so many years, I think human never reach that consensus.
Doesn't seem to add up. Google, Amazon, and Facebook are just 3 examples of companies that give no shits about what public investors think and will spend money on the business.
Are you talking about how much employees made on GAF (Google, Amazon, Facebook) or how happy are their employees?
I think Amazon is bit special as Jeff Bezos was one-of-a-kind that can continue letting Amazon losing money until recently and public investors were OK to keep putting money on them.
As for Google, Facebook, I don't think they are relevant because they were already dominating the market. Most businesses out there aren't in that position, and certainly not In-N-Out.
I think the interesting point here is that the company is private and doesn't have to maximize short term profits for shareholder gains.
From my own experience I've seen that a private/bootstrapped company has much more flexibility to think long term (and that usually means keeping employees happy) than a public company.
On the other hand the stock market drives a lot of important things like pension funds, mutual funds, etc. Maybe we can strike a balance and trade shares based on their long term dividend potential.
What I found interesting in Japan, was it seems like employees working in the larger fast food chains had a pretty much guaranteed track to the corporate office if they were willing to put in the time working at the store and had credentials to match. Usually the employees are part time with no desire to climb up, but I met few people who worked at McDs or KFC during college and had a job offer or atleast an interview waiting at the end of it in the corporate office.
One guy I talked to was told that he had to put in a full year to be considered for interviews in the next graduating class, so he worked at McDs after college so he could interview the next year.
Do the chains in the US offer similar tracks? Does experience at the chain translate well to getting hired in the corporate offices? Seems like an easy way incentivize college students and graduates to work at a chain and actually take it seriously. I worked at a McDs as my first job, years ago and I still see a lot of the same faces when I go back home. Even when I was there one of the managers was complaining that after 10 years she was told she couldn't get her normal yearly raise because she was "making too much money already" according to the owner. Corporate could and should pay for/partially pay for college for managers without an education as a perk for high performers.
I realize this is the exception and not the rule, but it's great to see that fast food chains can make incredible profits while paying their employees significantly more than the competition. There are so many restaurateurs and investors claiming it's impossible for the fast food industry to survive the $15 minimum wage hike, but I suspect it will just make this already cut-throat space even more prone to failure.
In-N-Out truly seems to be in a league of its own. The one I frequented in Mountain View would consistently have a line through off hours. I would show up midnight and still have to wait.
Meanwhile, the Jack in the Box just down the street usually had about 3 cars in the lot, one for each employee.
It's very possible that $15/hr could kill a lot of less popular fast food restaurants, particularly in more isolated areas.
The market at work! Make a shit product and get driven out of the market or be forced to up to game.
Ultimately that means better pay and better products. (Since the two go hand in hand when it comes to service-driven businesses — In and Out is a case in point.)
> Make a shit product and get driven out of the market or be forced to up to game.
The problem is when you have a fastfood restaurant in a run down part of the town where people may have money for a $1 cheeseburger but not for a $2 cheeseburger.
I've thought this as well - location might play into all of this as well.
I live in a relatively small county in southeast Georgia and all of the fast food joints here start great but end up abysmal simply due to the caliber of people that are working there. Pay? Location? Manager? Over all framework with all of the above applied as cause? Not sure.
Recently several places here (Waffle House and Burger King) are super short staffed because they simply cannot find anyone to fill the positions with the pay advertised. That kind of thing here is becoming more of a problem.
1. in-n-out is amazing. It is my favorite mcdonalds-type burger. It's simple (only one burger on the menu, with or without cheese), it's fresh and it's cheap. In addition, employees are always nice to you. I wish it was in Europe.
2. I worked at McDonald in France, got minimum wage. I got out quickly but some friends stayed for quite a long time (3 years). The main reason is because they promote you quickly. Everybody hates the job (unless you're staying for a few months only, then it's fun) but everybody gets trapped by the constant promotion system. The trick is that promotions don't necessarily increase your salary, or if they do then it's peanuts. Even the director of my restaurant (not a franchise) was paid peanuts.
3. Working in a fast food can be fun! people don't expect that, but I always recommend people to try it. There is definitely a pleasure in manual labor, an instant gratification that you don't necessarily get in intellectual-type jobs.
Welcome to the world where we talk about the company giving their employees a proper salary and benefits, because every other company of it's kind is unlikely to do so. Let's hope more companies follow eventually.
I heard good things of In-N-Out and ill likely visit one one day when I'm ever back in the states.
Also, the very reason this is news is because it's 3x the average. If all of the restaurants paid the same it would just be the average and not worth an article.
A proper salary is one where the workers can live their lives without worries about money or having to work multiple jobs to make ends meet.
And 3 times the average for this kind of work in a place where 2 times the amount is the normal average is kind of crazy. And this should indeed not be an article to begin with but it is.
>A proper salary is one where the workers can live their lives without worries about money or having to work multiple jobs to make ends meet.
That's lacking enough concrete details to be meaningful. It seems to be 'more than they'll ever need' to meet the criteria of not needing to worry about money.
Do you think one of these managers could live in San Francisco without worrying about money?
20k/annum is enough for someone who owns a house and lives in a low COL area to not worry about money. (one of my friends lives like that and appears to be happier than I)
300k/annum is not enough for a family of 4 living next to Central Park in NYC.
There is no way to decide that people are making a living wage without a centralized definition of living, which most people will disagree with.
Though the In-N-Out where I live has seemed at times understaffed, most of the employees who work there have been there at least as long as I've lived here (over five years now), which has to be anomalous in fast food.
I've been eating at In N Out since the '70s (store #3 is a block from my high school, the same alma mater as the founders) and the consistency is amazing. It's been pretty much the same great recipe, as far as I can tell, the whole time. The fries changed some time in the '90s; they used to be more limp and greasy than they are now.
I had friends who worked there and they made a great hourly wage (at the time I think I remember 200% minimum for a non-manager) and they really liked it. It was a tough and coveted job for a high schooler or someone in jr college.
Hmmm. Is this true? Seems like the ideal way to get a disgruntled front line... You're in a service industry, making 30k a year - 15/hour as a cashier (regardless if you're getting any extra benefits) and your direct superior makes 160k?
I don't know, but I can't imagine a scenario where people don't get pissed-off with such a massive difference for two jobs that are performed on the same location, imply interactions with the same people and are only one command-chain level apart.
Store managers most likely aren’t the front line’s direct supervisor. And the gap between roles as far as responsibility would be high. I would expect very high standards and tough to reach goals would make being a store manager a challenging role to succeed at.
McDonald's has been investing in labor saving (including automation). A robot pours the drinks for the drive thru, they've got the combo ketchup and mustard things; and a lot of the food is prepped off-site. In-N-Out tends to be higher volume than the MacDonald's around me; but they also are cutting potatoes just in time, and hand assembling burgers.
I wouldn’t exactly call what McDonald’s has a robot. It’s just a button that turns off the street after so long. Been using them for at least 10 years now too.
But I get what you’re saying. They just updated the McDonald’s near me to be primarily touch screen ordering yet somehow they still take forever to essentially assemble pre cooked food. I don’t get it...
They've got new robots since last year ish; it pulls a cup, puts in ice, and fills with soda. Here's a video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=akv4vSXa5a4
In this video, a human is waiting around for it, but what I've seen as a customer is the machine usually runs unsupervised while the drive thru person chases after the food orders.
I can't say for sure, but I would strongly imagine that they would want any managers they hire to be intimately familiar with the culture.
So I could see that even if they did hire externally, the applicant would need to train through one or a few different jobs and become acclimated with their way of doing things.
But I'm seriously only guessing from what I've seen of companies with really strong company cultures.
My understanding from folks who work there is that it's basically impossible to get a job there unless you know someone who already works there and can vouch for you.
As in, they won't even interview you without a recommendation from a current employee.
Most of them were very happy with their jobs, not just happy with pay and benefits and so on, but happy to work there. They found it a very welcoming and friendly work environment, where people were rewarded for initiative and trying to improve things.
Most of them didn't see themselves leaving the company any time soon, unless it was for a different job type (such as moving to an office job after finishing school).
It was a very good lesson on how job satisfaction doesn't need fancy cafés, ball pits and slides.
PS: Those were just my impressions from talking to a limited number of employees. Endless numbers of caveats apply.