Comments on: In-N-Out Burger: No Buns about Good Business

By: Suzanne Devlin

Suzanne Devlin — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:38:54 +0000

I’ve been going to In-N-Out since I was six years old. It hasn’t changed one bit.

In-N-Out is the classic example that in America, one can sell an excellent product for a fair if not extremely affordable price, treat the customer respectfully, run a spotless operation and pay an excellent wage with complete benefits and a pension and still make a very healthy profit.

I love In-N-out. My boys make fun of me because they think I’m obsessed with it. It’s the first place I stop going down on I-5 from Oregon to California in Redding and my last stop coming back up.

If I lived close to one, it’s quite possible my ass would by now be the size of Nebraska because surely, I would be eating there often.

I love everything about In-N-Out. It’s an outstanding meal every single time I visit there. I even have their bumper sticker on my car.

By: Moe Rubenzahl

Moe Rubenzahl — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 19:18:14 +0000

> Would the experience have been even more pleasant if you’d been able to be
> up to the cashier in 1 minute? Same amount of customers, but better staffed?

Interesting question and as it happens, I went there yesterday. I find that I don’t mind the wait because I have the beliefs that the quality is worth it and I know they make each order from scratch as it’s received; they are efficient so I know the wait won’t be that long; the prices are so low, that I expect some wait. It’s like the lines at Costco. My expectations there are different.

The lesson is that customer satisfaction is a function of -two- things: the actual performance, and the customer’s expectations.

By: Jack Bailey

Jack Bailey — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:07:59 +0000

The staff at In-N-Out is one of the company’s strengths. The caliber of the people working there is astronomically higher than what you typically find at places like McDonald’s and BK. And the way they function as a team wows me every time I go there. When I stand in line to order and then wait for my food, I’m awed by the cooperation and coordination going on behind the counter. They function like a finely tuned machine. No slackers. And to top it all off, the eats are delicious! Love that place! If staffing up to operate faster means lowering the standards for hiring, no thanks. I’ll happily wait.

By: Ashley McKee

Ashley McKee — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 04:15:19 +0000

As long as I get my burger, I’m content with any wait time. I guess you can loosely compare it to the idea that a user’s perception of how fast a site is depends on whether or not the user accomplishes the task they set out to do on that site.

I think there’s also something to be said for In-N-Out’s fewer highly-trained associates that feel like they are important to their organization and care about providing quality customer service.

By: Zephyr

Zephyr — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 00:13:23 +0000

Would the experience have been even more pleasant if you’d been able to be up to the cashier in 1 minute? Same amount of customers, but better staffed?

By: David Scott Lewis

David Scott Lewis — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 21:24:29 +0000

In-N-Out Burger has always played off the wholesomeness of their dining experience, even going so far as to publish quotations from the New Testament on their packaging. Today, the quotations are limited, simply noting John 3:16 on the bottom of their drinking cups.

Their initial marketing campaign was 100% in relatively religious areas, mostly in suburbs. And they’ve expanded from the suburbs to urban metro areas. It was (and continues to be) a brilliant strategy. Their “early adopters” and “lead users” were almost always devout Christians (albeit mostly Protestants, but also across the Left-Right spectrum from mainline denominations and historical peace churches to charismatics and evangelicals to Fundamentalists): They’ve spent very little on advertising and have relied on word-of-mouth, even from their earliest days.

Another great example of where marketing-meets-usability, although perhaps not quite as obvious as with something like the forthcoming Apple iPhone.