In-N-Out Burger by Stacy Perman

to no one.
    While Harry’s desire to own the land underneath his restaurants certainly limited the pace of In-N-Out’s rollout, it also proved a remarkably shrewd financial move. In the 1960s, when Harry had expanded the successful chain to seven units, a former colleague congratulated him on his achievement and Harry responded by saying, “By God, they’re all bought and paid for, too.”
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    In-N-Out’s growth strategy—actually its entire strategic approach to business—offered an interesting counterpoint to the industry that was evolving around it. Over in San Bernardino, the McDonald brothers’ streamlined and automated drive-in at Fourteenth and E streets was generating a huge volume of customers and word spread quickly. After American Restaurant Magazine ran a cover story on McDonald’s phenomenal success in its July 1952 issue, the brothers were inundated with inquiries from restaurant owners asking to visit and eyeball the operation themselves. Almost immediately, offers poured in to copy or buy the McDonalds’ methods outright. Soon enough, the brothers began licensing their Speedee Service System.They took out a full-page ad in a trade magazine that declared: “This may be the most important 60 seconds of your life.”
    Would-be burger moguls descended upon San Bernardino from all over the country. Within two years the brothers had haphazardly sold fifteen franchises—the first to a gas station retailer in Phoenix. Unofficially, the McDonalds’ celebrated Speedee System was widely duplicated, and copycat versions began cropping up all over the country. The success of McDonald’s spurred another San Bernardino resident and former World War II marine named Glen W. Bell Jr. to turn his trio of Mexican food stands (called Taco Tia’s) into what eventually became Taco Bell. In 1952, duly impressed with McDonald’s operations after a visit, Matthew Burns insisted that his stepfather, Keith G. Cramer (the owner of Keith’s Drive-In Restaurant in Daytona Beach), fly out to see it for himself. The Insta Company’s automatic broiler and milkshake mixer cinched it for Cramer. The pair returned to Florida (with rights to both machines) and a year later opened up their own self-service drive-in called Insta-Burger-King in Jacksonville featuring flame-broiled burgers—and immediately began selling franchising rights. Five years later, the chain was renamed Burger King. It was the same year that David R. Edgerton Jr., a Dade County franchiser, and his partner James McLamore (who took Burger King national) introduced “The Whopper.”
    Then in 1954, a fifty-two-year-old former paper cup salesman from Oak Park, Illinois, named Ray Kroc decided to make a trip out to San Bernardino. Kroc, as the story goes, had been selling a five-spindled milkshake maker called the Multimixer to neighborhood drugstores. His curiosity was piqued when the McDonald brothers ordered eight Multimixers including replacement and spares. That meant the little burger shop was making something on the order of forty milkshakes at a time—this as Kroc’s bread-and-butter customers, the drugstores, were fast going out of business, having fallen victim to (among other factors) the growing success of the new fast-food drive-in. Upon Kroc’s visit to the Downey McDonald’s on the corner of Florence and Lakewood, he was transfixed. It was the third of the brothers’ newly franchised sites. There was no indoor dining area, and the restaurantwas fronted by a large walk-up service window, studded with shiny red and white tiles, topped with a jutting raked roof, and of course framed by a giant set of thirty-foot parabolic golden arches.
    During the lunchtime rush, 150 cars crowded into the parking lot. When Kroc saw the speed of the operation and the volume of customers he declared, “Son of a bitch, these guys have got something. How about if I open some