What would you say to a 17-year-old who just became the sole heiress of a multi-billion dollar fast-food enterprise that would one day soon need her to run it? If you said, “God help you,” that isn’t much different than what Lynsi Snyder, president and CEO of In-N-Out Burger, said to herself at the time. And looking back now, Lynsi will tell you that’s exactly what He did.

How It All Started

Harry and Esther Snyder, Lynsi’s grandparents, started In-N-Out in 1948 in Baldwin Hills, California, as the state’s first drive-thru hamburger stand. Later that year, the stand was equipped with one of the first two-way speaker boxes to be used in the food service industry. They grew and expanded, known for their family atmosphere, cheerful service, and a no-nonsense menu that prioritized freshness and quality ingredients. Freezers, microwaves, and heat lamps were banned from all In-N-Out locations, and Esther Snyder continued to hand shape each and every patty for the chain’s 5 locations until 1963 when they opened a meat processing facility.

Harry Snyder passed away in 1976 at the age of 63, and leadership of the company passed to his sons, Rich and Guy, as President and Vice President, respectively. Esther, his widow, continued to lead the company as well. Rich was the first to begin placing Bible verses on the In-N-Out paper cups shortly after becoming a born-again Christian. He had the words “John 3:16” printed ever-so-subtly on the bottom of their cups for those who happened to look. He passed away in a tragic plane crash in 1993 after 17 years as president. His brother Guy (Lynsi’s father) took the reins until 1999 when he also met an untimely death.

Lynsi “had other plans” regarding what she was going to do with her life. But when her father passed away, she was the only surviving Snyder, aside from her aging grandmother, so she decided to rise to the occasion.

Core Principles: Faithfulness

Lynsi’s upbringing was not always easy. Yes, her family had some wealth, but her father struggled with chronic pain, which led to alcoholism and drug addiction. Her father had to spend time in rehab, and he eventually committed an affair, and Lynsi had to watch her parents go through a divorce. She would live to see her dad divorce again, which, coupled with the loss of her uncle and father, robbed her of the stability she needed to feel secure.

Lynsi has told her story in full in a wonderful mini-documentary that you can watch here, but to sum it up, she ran from one bad relationship to another, was first divorced in her early twenties, became involved in drugs and alcohol, and then went through two more divorces.

“After my dad died, there was no way I was going to be alone,” she says. “He’s gone, so I had even greater reason to fill the void.” There were a lot of years of personal struggle, but she eventually came to a place where she saw that God had better things for her than a string of broken relationships, self-loathing, and shame. “God took me to a place I’d never been before, and he showed me that in that time where I felt more alone than ever, more of a piece of trash than ever, more of a failure, that He was there, and He was ready to love me and fill that void.”

Her faith journey intersects in such a fascinating way with her career trajectory. When only 17 years old, she knew that more was going to be required of her than she could, at the time, fulfill. So she dutifully took a service job in the restaurant chain that she owned and scrubbed vegetables. Then, she went into the corporate office and studied the business, rotating among its various departments so that she could achieve real organizational fluency. She did this because she loved her grandparents, what they stood for, and what they had built. She saw herself as a “protector” and a “defender” of that legacy. Even though she hadn’t envisioned this life for herself, she walked the path the best way she knew how, and the results have been spectacular.

Likewise, in her personal journeying, she knew that there was a God who loved her. She wasn’t always close to Him, but she never forgot that He was there. Slowly, step by step, as her life progressed, she sought after Him, made changes in her life, and reveled in the idea of serving the kingdom of heaven. “The creator of the universe being able to use you is like… Whew!” She laughs then and smiles a winning smile.

Identity and Lessons Learned

In-N-Out is a delightful paradox of innovation and expansion tempered by rigid adherence to company tradition and conservative business practices. Lynsi Snyder is a thrice-divorced, former drug and alcohol abuser who has been happily married for the past ten years, a proud mother of 4, and was at one time America’s youngest female billionaire.

She and In-N-Out are similar in many ways. She knows what she stands for, and she doesn’t make a big fuss about it – but neither is she going to compromise on what got her to where she is today. In business and in food service, fads and new technology come and go, and Lynsi has been offered outrageous sums of money by investors, IPO proposals, and Saudi Princes to sell or restructure. But In-N-Out and Lynsi continue to move slowly, deliberately, and according to their core principles.

The resulting corporate culture is one that provides shockingly consistent product quality, customer experience, and a slow-but-steady, durable business model wherein the typical location outsells McDonald’s by nearly 2x. (A typical In-N-Out brings in $4.5M in revenue, compared to $2.6M for a McDonald’s.) The average manager of an In-N-Out Burger makes $180,000 per year, according to Snyder in her new book. All of their locations are owned by the company for the sake of guaranteeing quality and consistency (“Never sell and never franchise” being one of their key operating principles). They treat their people well, keep their prices low, keep their quality high, keep their offerings simple, and they expand slowly with extreme precision.

In-N-Out sells fewer than 15 things (McDonald’s, by comparison, offers well over 100). It has added an average of 5 locations for each year it has been open for business, for a total of 417 locations (compared with McDonald’s, which has over 40,000 locations currently operating, despite being seven years younger than In-N-Out). In-N-Out is debt-free, running a tremendous profit margin, and continuing to keep its head down and do consistently good business.

Lynsi is dedicated to keeping the company to its core principles, and she’s sticking to her core principles as well. She is dedicated to charity work and runs a foundation that works to end substance abuse and human trafficking. She isn’t shy when asked about her faith, but she doesn’t puff her chest out and trumpet it, either. Lynsi comes across as a humble, normal, down-to-earth person, and it’s no wonder that she consistently maintains one of the highest CEO ratings of any owner of a large company, and In-N-Out, according to GlassDoor data, is one of the best places to work.

There’s something to be said for strong core values in a business, faithfully walking out the necessary path even in times of apparent turmoil, and being humble. Business doesn’t need to be high-risk, flashy, or boastful. Slow and steady (and smart), often win the day.

It’s working for Lynsi Snyder, and it’s working for In-N-Out, too.

Quick Hits

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• Sarah Zylstra of The Gospel Coalition chronicles the dizzying speed at which Quebec secularized and how the few Christians that remain today are working to evangelize North America’s largest unreached people group: French Canadians.