'In-N-Out Burger' by Stacy Perman: A Book Review

I had my first In-N-Out Burger around June 2015, just over six years ago, in the #115 store at Milpitas, in the Bay Area. It was a slow sunday evening at the store, and I dont think we had to wait very long. I had my beef burger with fries, animal style of course. I remember that after that meal, I went to meet Mr Samir Jain, the vegetarian owner of the Times of India Group, whose entourage I was part of on that trip. I don't think he would have enjoyed hearing that I had just tucked into a beef burger:)

I have always been fascinated by the In-N-Out brand, especially its slow and deliberate growth, with its focus on freshness. Its cult-y nature is part of its allure. For someone like me interested in how brands are built, In-N-Out has always been a big area of interest. And so I picked up Stacy Perman’s 2009 eponymous book on the company to find out more. Here is a look at what I found interesting.

It isn’t a bad read, but it did leave me a little unsatisfied in that I felt the actual business operations and how it runs the business were glossed over. In its place we had a deep dive into palace intrigue, resulting from a lawsuit between a top executive and the family. Still it did give you a sense of the company and its evolution, through the lens of the founding family and their successors.

What was particularly interesting to me was the origin story, and especially the context in which the company originated. The 1st store opened in 1948 in a suburb of Los Angeles. The chain expanded slowly, preferring to buy its own properties and operate stores themselves. The store locations were selected for the convenience of the driver, and the early stores all were designed in a drive-in format. Much like In-N-Out, its fellow fast food peers too originated to serve the motor driver, but they expanded furiously using the franchise route to expand beyond California and build a national presence.

I found it fascinating that 1950s saw the rise of all of the names that are prominent fast-food brands - McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Burger King, Carl’s Jr etc., benefiting from the rise of car culture, and designed to make it easy for the car driver to purchase and eat on the move. The 1950s was also the era of women’s workforce participation increasing - a key driver for the rise of convenience food. And interestingly it was also the period that saw the first wave of food tech innovations - including the TV dinner, the increasing invention and use of additives and chemicals, the rise of processed food etc.

I want to zoom in on these trends which I have aggregated under three themes - car commerce, food tech, and finally franchising, and highlight some interesting passages from the book.

First, car commerce was to 1920s-50s America what online commerce was to the 2000s-10s. And the drive-in restaurant (or store) was to car commerce, what the website was to online commerce. 

UI features of car commerce: 1) trays that could be attached to car windows 

UI features of car commerce: 2) drive-through windows

UX features of car-commerce: one-handed and drip free eating on the move

Electronic ordering devices as the apps of the car commerce era.

A parallel theme to ‘car commerce’, one that come into increasing prominence in the 1950s was technological advances to food processing and production. We can view this as the first food tech wave (we are seeing a second food tech wave including lab grown meat, meal replacements such as soylent, dark kitchens etc. presently)

Food tech in the 1950s: 1) ‘TV Dinner’

Food tech in the 1950s: 2) Processed food

FoodTech in the 1950s: 3) Clamshell grills, conveyor belt flame-broilers and cybernetic deep fryers!

The rise of Big Food suppliers and the standardization + consolidation of the supply chain

Every technological advance has an accompanying financial protocol / technique accompanying it. Franchising was the financial counterpart to the food tech revolution of the 1950s.

(The brothers here refers to the McDonald brothers, founder of the eponymous chain)

To summarize, there are three broad trends that emerged and rose to prominence in the 1950s - car commerce, foodtech / big food and finally franchising as the financial innovation. The book serves as a good introduction to these three trends or themes.