“I’ll take a double-double, animal fries, round-the-world shake, and two pup patties, please.” If you don’t know this is an In-N-Out Burger order, then you can be forgiven for not being in the SoCal cool kids club back in the day. But things are changing at the Irvine, Calif.-based company, which is just a short drive to the best surfing beaches in the world.
In-N-Out’s HQ is leaving California. Who can blame a company for getting out when the suits know that the math ain’t mathin’ anymore?
The chain of quality fresh-food burger stores is the latest company to flee from the mismanaged, overtaxed, and coercive diktats of California regulators by moving its headquarters from the Golden State to Tennessee.
Great job, Democrats! Another iconic company–one synonymous with Southern California cool, no less—has basically tapped out of California and taken most of its properties off corporate tax rolls there.
The wildly successful, clean restaurants, which are run with military precision, are tourist destinations up there with Disneyland—with one exception. The company recently closed its Oakland store when it was overrun with criminals, homeless campers, and thieves because the local prosecutors wouldn’t put them in jail. Excellent work, wokesters.
In-N-Out will keep a profile in California, but will close the Irvine-based office and split the staff of 500 between its West Coast beach head in Baldwin Park and the new headquarters in Tennessee. The full move will be completed by 2029. In the meantime, the burger chain breaks ground soon on a new headquarters near Nashville, where the average salary of its office employees will be $91,700.00, or $44.00 an hour. The company will get a $288,000 tax break to move there.
The company suits will get an automatic 13.5% increase in pay if they move from the highest-taxed state in the union to one with no income tax. California’s corporate tax rate of 8.84% is the sixth-highest in the country, while Tennessee’s is the 21st-highest at 6.65%, according to the Tax Foundation.
“According to the Hoover Institution, over 350 businesses moved their headquarters out of California from 2018 to 2021. Eleven of those were Fortune 1000 companies. In-N-Out Burger has been a staple of the West Coast fast food as Chick-Fil-A has been to the Southeast United States,” writes Chuck Jenkin of Exit Stage Left Advisors and a partner at Exit Wealth.
While Democrats in Sacramento and Gavinomics continue to push big-government policies, over-regulation and sky-high taxes, companies are voting with their feet and heading for more business-friendly environments. What was once the epicenter of entrepreneurship is now a state suffocating under its own policies, driving out job creators and economic growth. It’s no wonder the Golden State isn’t so golden anymore.
Rearranging the tax chairs on California’s Titanic won’t change customers’ experiences at In-N-Out. They’ll still be buying burgers in the Central Valley of California, Huntington Beach, Idaho, and Colorado, but, of course, the move will make a huge difference to the bottom line of the family-owned company. By moving its headquarters to Franklin, Tenn., 20 miles south of Nashville, and consolidating its California operations to Baldwin Park, the company can continue its slow but tactical expansion. An In-N-Out will grace the Las Vegas Strip by 2026, a welcome break from expensive buffets and high-end restaurants run by celebrity chefs. The company plans to build multiple stores in Tennessee, including NashVegas.
Related: West Coast, Messed Coast™ When California Needed Help, Gavin Newsom Gave Them a Podcast
In her pitch to see what kind of deal she could get for moving, In-N-Out, President Lynsi Snyder-Ellingson told Tennessee officials that, “I’ve fallen in love with really the whole state.” And out of love with California.
In-N-Out joins many other companies that have made tracks to somewhere else. Since 2020 alone, Elon Musk’s Tesla, SpaceX, the X social media platform, Oracle, Chevron, Silicon Valley-founding Hewlitt Packard, Charles Schwab, and intelligence contractor Palantir Technologies have moved their headquarters or entire companies out of Gavin Newsom’s Democrat-run ideological apartheid state.
MOOD pic.twitter.com/66GExEn56c
— In-N-Out Burger ᶠᵃⁿ (@innoutburger_) February 19, 2025
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