Free In-N-Out Burger by Stacy Perman

burgers weren’t done properly, the customers wouldn’t come back. From the start, In-N-Out ran a customer-driven shop.
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    While the Snyders were experimenting with selling burgers over a two-way speaker and drive-through lane in Baldwin Park, another couple—a pair of brothers, Richard and Maurice (Dick and Mac) McDonald—were testing out a new kind of eating place over in San Bernardino, forty-five miles east of Baldwin Park. Originally from New Hampshire, the brothers had moved to Southern California in 1930, and they worked various odd jobs before trying their hands as movie producers. Unsuccessful in Hollywood, they opened a small movie theater that quickly went under. In 1937, they opened a hot dog stand near the Santa Anita racetrack. Three years later, they opened their first drive-in restaurant with a $5,000 loan from the Bank of America. It was a typical drive-in with indoor seating, carhops outside, and a twenty-five-item menu. “Sometimes I like to play a hunch,” said S. P. Bagley, the bank’s manager. “And I have a hunch that McDonald’s is going to make it big.”
    Their drive-in was in fact not a huge success until 1948, when the McDonald brothers noticed that postwar customers were growing disenchanted with carhops. They devised a new streamlined approach to fast food and called it McDonald’s Famous Hamburgers. The McDonalds turned their kitchen into a mechanized assembly line; they got rid of their carhops and the indoor seating. The two service windows where those carhops once filled their orders were turned into service windows where customers placed their orders directly. The three-foot cast-iron grill was replaced with two stainless-steel six-footers that were both easier to clean and more efficient at retaining heat. Instead of plates and silverware (costly to replace and clean), they used paper bags, wrappers, and cups. And they trimmedthe menu to nine items, featuring hamburgers and cheeseburgers, three soft drinks, milk, coffee, potato chips, and pie.
    While the Snyders remained focused on their burgers and keeping their customers happy, the McDonald brothers concentrated on keeping costs down and volume high. They introduced a slew of innovations intended to simplify and speed up the process of preparing and churning out burgers. For instance, they built a machine that could make their hamburger patties based on a device originally designed to produce peppermint patties. “Our whole concept was based on speed, lower prices, and volume,” Dick McDonald once explained. “We were going after big, big volumes by lowering prices and by having the customer serve himself.”
    Inspired by the cost-effectiveness and success of McDonald’s, other fast-food places began springing up. Soon a number of entrepreneurs launched their own fast-food restaurants based on the self-service style of McDonald’s. This new way of eating quickly spread to the rest of the country—the era of the fast-food restaurant began in earnest. Family-owned and -run burger shacks were springing up everywhere, planted like trees along the growing off-ramps of California’s equally expansive highway system.
    Soon establishments with names like Wendy’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, and Kentucky Fried Chicken were in business, blanketing the country, moving east from the undisputed fast-food capital of Los Angeles. As they flourished, they were transformed from homey, family-run establishments to regional, national, and eventually international chains dedicated to coming up with ever more efficient ways of cooking and serving massive quantities of food.
    Everywhere, that is, except at the little In-N-Out Burger stand on Garvey Avenue where Harry Snyder had made a promise to himself that he had no intention of breaking: “Keep it real simple,” he always said. “Do one thing and do it the best you can.”

CHAPTER 4
    In 1951, Allen Teagle was a