The Reason You Rarely See In-N-Out Advertisements

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Even if you've never set foot in California, you probably know about In-N-Out Burger through reputation. Locals swear by it, secret menu hacks go viral on the regular (even if you need to follow a rule of thumb to make sure the staff don't hate you for it), and a host of old-school celebrities sing its praises. With that in mind, it's curious how you rarely see ads for In-N-Out, isn't it? Of course, it makes sense that people who don't live near one don't see ads, but how come you don't even see ads in places where the fast food restaurant is located? It's pretty simple: In-N-Out doesn't run ads because it turns out it doesn't really need to.

In-N-Out president Lynsi Snyder mentioned in her book "The Ins-N-Outs of In-N-Out Burger" that the company model forgoes traditional advertising methods as well as non-traditional ones (like corporate tie-ins and product placement) in favor of word of mouth. By this point, In-N-Out is such an institution that it basically doesn't need to advertise. In a happy coincidence, Southern California is one of the cultural capitals of the United States and packed with celebrities and influencers who will happily show off their animal-style meals for free. The result is a burger chain that punches well above its weight in terms of a cultural cache that goes beyond its relatively limited reach. (It has 435 locations nationwide, which is fewer than the number of McDonald's locations in Pennsylvania alone.)

This is (to put it mildly) not the way companies are usually run these days, fast food companies included. Most fast food business models prioritize growth through aggressive expansion, ubiquitous marketing, and more than a few cut corners in order to turn a tidy profit. Why is In-N-Out such an outlier? Shouldn't we have seen a "Fortnite" collaboration by now? There's a good reason why you haven't, as unlike most of its competitors In-N-Out is a privately-owned company.

When you look at an international, publicly-traded conglomerate like McDonald's (or Amazon, Walmart, or ExxonMobil), providing quality goods and services to the consumer isn't necessarily the primary goal. What they aim to do, above all else, is generate value for shareholders. So long as a company's stock goes up, anything from cheaper ingredients to collaborating with Mr. Beast to mass layoffs can be justified. As a privately-owned company, In-N-Out doesn't have to worry about pleasing shareholders. When making business decisions, the Snyder family is beholden to nobody but themselves. This arrangement cuts both ways — shareholders may have already demanded a fix to In-N-Out's infamously soggy fries by now — but it means nobody is going to make In-N-Out waver from its commitment to fresh food and its word-of-mouth, ad-agnostic marketing strategy.