by Stacy Perman
Rich’s support was indicative of the brothers’ complicated relationship. As one of Guy’s friends put it, “They loved each other, they fought a lot, and they hurt, but they both had big hearts and cared about the underdog. I think Rich really wanted Guy to be happy, and Guy loved racing, and Rich wanted to help him.”
One of the people whom Guy liked to bring along on the road to his races was his friend Tom Wright. Wright, the nephew of Guy’s wife, Lynda, reportedly worked for the FBI in the late 1970s and later in security for large Southern California–based aerospace companies. In 1987, Guy brought him to work at In-N-Out as an asset protection investigator. The asset protection department was concerned with protecting In-N-Out against theft and robberies at the chain. According to Tom’s wife, Dale, the two had become quite close. Dale worked as Lynda’s personal assistant, picking up Lynsi from school and doing errands. Frequently, Guy insisted that Tom drop everything and accompany him to his races. It was a situation that irritated Rich and In-N-Out top brass because it meant that Wright would be absent for stretches of time, neglecting his responsibilities. Once, while Guy was on the road to Arizona (where he planned to test some of his racers), Phil West, In-N-Out’s number two executive, called at Rich’s behest to complain that Tom was needed to deal with some unfinished security-related matters. According to an individual familiar with the episode, “Guy barked back, ‘tough shit.’ It really pissed off Rich.” Guy remained unconcerned; he took a myopic view of the situation and seemed to shrug off any problems he might cause for the executives in Baldwin Park. In his mind, racing came first, and whatever In-N-Out–related work Tom could fit in around that was just fine with him.
Back in Baldwin Park, it had become obvious that Rich was the Snyder brother truly running In-N-Out Burger. Rich tried to give Guy small tasks, but more often than not, Guy let his brother down, and Rich did not trust him with larger duties. When the chain received press attention, it was Rich who was quoted and photographed; Guy remained deep in the background. While Rich carried the considerable burden of running In-N-Out, his older brother was off following his own sense of priorities.
Guy came to resent his brother and the position that left him dependent on Rich for access to funds and under his authority at In-N-Out. The dynamic of their relationship left Rich both angry and sad. Underneath the acrimony, Rich did want Guy to succeed and be happy. He felt particularly helpless when it came to Guy’s struggles with drugs. At times, Rich was brought to tears over the situation.
Still, the Snyder brothers came together on numerous family and business occasions. They attended the annual company fishing trip for In-N-Out executive managers at Madison River in Ennis, Montana. Although it was an opportunity for the men to have a few days to be boys, according to one account, during the weeklong trip the pair regarded each other cordially but warily, sticking pretty much to their own entourages. As one friend described the scene, “We all stayed in the same place, but it was like two teams. Richie had his guys close to him, and Guy would take those guys close to him.”
Helping to maintain a buffer between the two brothers was a man named Rick Plate. Plate had known and worked for the Snyders for years. Something of a jack-of-all-trades, he served as a right hand to Rich and Guy as well as acting as their go-between. Given a personal services account, Plate was dispatched to purchase items the brothers needed—including houses. Often he was tasked with handling details surrounding Guy’s racing or Rich’s hot air balloon hobby. Usually he was asked to be at two places at once, babysitting Guy and handling the Snyders’ needs, often just keeping them out of each other’s way.
Rich wanted to take his business to the next level. When it came to In-N-Out Burger, Guy was rather conservative-minded; like Harry and Esther, he wanted to keep things much as they always had been. He was concerned that In-N-Out might lose its intimate feeling as it got bigger. Once, when Guy had heard that Rich was considering the possibility of introducing a chicken sandwich, he became incensed. “He went ballistic,” recalled a friend. “He was not going to go for that at all.”
The two fought often, their rows sometimes erupting into shouting matches that reverberated throughout the Baldwin Park headquarters from the executive suite on the second floor. “They fought over just about anything,” recalled the friend. “It didn’t have to be something big, other than the fact that they pretty much didn’t agree on anything.”
Their head-butting reached numerous climaxes—perhaps a standoff was inevitable. Guy continued to struggle with drugs and he could be volatile. It was something Guy’s friends on the racing circuit could hardly ignore. There would be periods when Guy was at the track and long stretches when he would simply disappear. Increasingly, Guy and his private troubles were becoming a company liability. He was said to deploy some of his assistants to help him get prescription painkillers from a series of doctors. To a large degree, Rich felt like his hand was forced. While he viewed his older brother as radioactive, privately, the whole situation tore him up.
In one bitter incident, their rocky relationship blew up over a T-shirt.
For years, the company’s signature T-shirts had been extremely popular. In fact, by the summer of 1989, the chain was selling twelve thousand T-shirts per month, spurring Rich to launch a mail order catalog of In-N-Out merchandise that later grew into a retail shop. Called the Company Store and initially located at the headquarters complex in Baldwin Park, its inventory grew to include such logo items as mugs, key chains, magnets, and beach towels. In-N-Out’s T-shirts had come to be considered a souvenir of “real” California. They could be found all over the country and even on the streets of foreign cities. The shirts were designed with airbrushed images intended to evoke memories of a simpler period, when the chain first began, and before fast food took over every street corner. Most of the T-shirts featured cars from the Snyder brothers’ own collection of classics and other telltale symbols that signified both In-N-Out and Southern California: palm trees, hamburgers, the beach, and the famous yellow In-N-Out boomerang arrow.
Then Guy came up with his own design for a shirt. His featured a sexy girl straddling a hamburger, and he had a couple hundred of them manufactured. “I think he knew when he made them that they weren’t going to sell them at the store level,” recalled a friend. In all likelihood, it was his way of taunting the straightlaced Rich. If that was the intention, it worked; Rich was infuriated. An unpleasant conversation followed—the fallout was swift. The T-shirts remained packed in their cardboard boxes.
It wasn’t long before Rich had reached the end of his tether; he wanted to run the company without any interference.
The formal titles given to the brothers reflected not just Harry Snyder’s last wishes, but the roles that they had been assigned while growing up: Rich was the reserved and responsible natural-born entrepreneur; Guy was the liberal, partying, wild-child older brother. They were the unequal heirs of a family business, and their positions reflected that. As the younger brother who had worked at In-N-Out Burger continuously since he was sixteen years old, Rich held the title of president. He ran the show and he was Guy’s boss. In a move that would have long-ranging repercussions before the decade was out, the family moved to legally formalize what was already a fait accompli.
On January 31, 1989, the Snyders established an irrevocable family trust: the Esther L. Snyder Trust. The trust was set up to ensure that a majority ownership of the company remained in the hands of direct lineal heirs of Harry and Esther Snyder. At the time, Rich was still single and Guy, who had been married for about eight years, had a seven-year-old daughter. A separate trust, the Lynsi L. Snyder Trust, was set up for her.
Esther, who held a controlling interest in the company, transferred to the trust a majority of the shares of capital stock of In-N-Out for the benefit of her sons. Esther declared her two main purposes in establishing the legal instrument: first, “to make provision for my two sons and other lineal descendants, including my granddaughter Lynsi,”
and second, “to enable the stock ownership of my closely held corporation to be transferred from one generation to the next such that the business of the corporation could continue to grow and prosper.”
According to court documents later filed, the Esther L. Snyder Trust was made up of 44,147 shares constituting 65.85 percent of the issued and outstanding shares of capital stock, a controlling interest in the company. The Lynsi Snyder Trust held 4,370 shares of In-N-Out stock, 6.52 percent of the total issued and outstanding shares of capital stock of the company.* The instrument was typical for a closely held family company that intended that shares would be gifted or willed to the next generation.
However, the Snyder trusts also made several specific points perfectly clear. It was the Snyders’ expressed intention to keep the company closely held within the Snyder family, following a direct line of blood descendants. Underscoring this intention was a provision specifically addressed to exclude Guy’s stepchildren. “For purposes of this instrument, Traci Lynette Taylor and Terri Louise Perkins shall not be considered issue of Esther or Guy,” proclaimed the trust in no uncertain terms.
A second, perhaps more significant provision of the trusts concerned the distribution of their assets. While Esther created her trust for the benefit of both her sons, it was not set up for them to inherit equally. The assets of the Esther L. Snyder Trust were divided into two disproportionate parts. Rich was to receive 89.8224 percent while Guy was to receive 10.1776 percent to be distributed in 1996, seven years after the trust was set up, or in the event that Esther died prior to 1996. As the trust itself controlled the majority of company stock, Rich would maintain majority ownership of In-N-Out and his brother Guy would not. Although Guy didn’t grouse about the situation publicly, one of his friends put it this way: “He was the oldest son. It had to rub him the wrong way.”
At the time, the trust was structured to reflect the reality of the business and the family, the wishes of Esther Snyder, and her expectations for the future. That reality, however, was about to change—and nobody saw it coming.
CHAPTER 16
Rich Snyder liked to think that success could be achieved through honest dealings. Even during troubled times, he believed in fair play. For him, a man’s word was his bond. It was more than just an aphorism. Rich lived that philosophy, and he expected the people he surrounded himself with, including business partners, to act similarly. As In-N-Out Burger was marching toward opening one hundred stores, its reputation growing with each new drive-through, Rich found himself in a situation that tested those beliefs.
If anything, the Snyder family had been unfailingly loyal. Many of In-N-Out’s vendor and supplier relationships stretched back decades, to the time of Harry’s first two-way speaker box. Begun with a handshake and held together through goodwill, they represented the importance of personal relationships to the Snyders’ business philosophy. One of In-N-Out’s longtime vendors was PepsiCo. Over the years, the family had been approached by the Coca-Cola Company, but they politely refused to make the switch—in large part out of loyalty to PepsiCo and their relationship with that company.
Then, in 1990, PepsiCo purchased a six-year-old, Michigan-based double drive-through hamburger chain called Hot ‘n Now. PepsiCo was in an acquisitive mood, having already purchased Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and California Pizza Kitchen, folding them into its growing restaurant subsidiary. The majority of Hot ‘n Now outlets were drive-through only—the buildings had slanted roofs and a yellow lightning bolt logo. The chain featured a simple menu of hamburgers, french fries, and soft drinks. Rich was concerned about the chain’s similarity to In-N-Out Burger and possible encroachment on his territory, and he shared his concerns with PepsiCo. The discussions reportedly went high up the management ladder. Rich was assured that the company would not expand Hot ‘n Now to the West Coast. However, a year later, as he was scouting locations in Fresno and Las Vegas, Rich found himself competing for prime spots with none other than PepsiCo’s Hot ‘n Now.
Rich felt betrayed. In-N-Out Burger had ties to PepsiCo going back to his parents’ first days in the business. The way Rich saw it, In-N-Out Burger had a longtime bond with PepsiCo; by going back on their word, the company had broken that bond. Rich proceeded cautiously. He did a kind of quiet beta testing, replacing Pepsi-Cola with Coca-Cola in ten stores to see how the customers would react. The response was positive, and in 1992 Rich made the switch a permanent one, substituting Coke for Pepsi chain-wide.*
As Rich dissolved In-N-Out’s partnership with PepsiCo, for the first time, the chain stepped outside of California. In 1992, he opened store number eighty in Las Vegas on Sahara Avenue just west of the Interstate 15. To mark the burger chain’s move, the first of its kind in the company’s entire history, Rich had an In-N-Out semitruck parked on the state line between California and Nevada near Whiskey Pete’s Hotel and Casino. Once there, a thousand-foot rope was tied to the semi. When Rich gave the signal, a group of managers tugged the rope and pulled the truck across the state line into Nevada. Rich, who always liked to make a big splash, also hired an Elvis Presley impersonator for the occasion. “Elvis” flew into the parking lot, carried aloft by a hang glider bearing the In-N-Out logo. Store number eighty was the flagship of the eight shops eventually established in Sin City. In-N-Out’s second Las Vegas drive-through opened less than a year after the first; located on Dean Martin Boulevard, store number eighty-six had what was reportedly the world’s largest neon fast-food restaurant sign. Las Vegas was more than 250 miles from Baldwin Park, and before long, the chain established a Vegas-based distribution center. A satellite of the Baldwin Park Commissary, it allowed In-N-Out to maintain its quality standards by delivering fresh ingredients to its stores daily. Although the chain maintained its typical silence, In-N-Out fans, industry watchers, and other hopefuls saw the chain’s entry into Las Vegas as a sign that In-N-Out Burger finally intended to expand its geography.
That hope became something of a mantra among In-N-Out’s far-flung and extremely loyal fan base. By the early 1990s, the host and staffers at Late Night with David Letterman were known to frequent In-N-Out whenever they were in California. In fact, the group usually made an In-N-Out run part of their annual trek to the Emmy Awards, stopping at the burger joint sometimes still dressed in their tuxedos and gowns on the way to the airport. As one staffer described the annual celebration, “For those of us who don’t always go to the awards show, the Monday morning water cooler conversation usually goes something like this: ‘How were the Emmy Awards?’ ‘Great! We stopped at In-N-Out Burger on the way back.’”
The new decade was off to a splendid start. For Rich, it appeared that his business success was now matched by success in his personal life. Two months before his fortieth birthday, the timid bachelor married for the first time on May 2, 1992. A friend had introduced Rich to his new bride, a twenty-six-year-old sales associate at a Newport Beach equipment leasing company. Sloe-eyed and willowy with chestnut hair, Christina Bradley had a young daughter named Siobhan. The new couple shared a strong Christian faith and a commitment to helping disadvantaged and abused children. “He was just larger than life,” was how his new wife later described him. “He had a magnetism that just drew you to him.”
The couple was married in a small green church in Maui. Their fun-filled, 1950s-themed reception was held at the Grand Wailea resort. Although it was small, no expense was spared. Rich paid to fly eighty-two of the couple’s friends and family to Hawaii (Guy and his wife, Lynda, were conspicuously absent from the wedding party). He also had his classic 1957 white Cadillac convertible shipped across the Pacific for the occasion. Rich’s friend and spiritual adviser, Pastor Chuck Smith Jr. of the Cavalry Chapel (son of the church’s founder), presided over the ceremony.
In June, just weeks after the Snyders’ Hawaiian nuptials, the newlyweds received an engraved invitation from President George H. W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, to join them at a state dinner at the White House in honor of Russian president Boris
Yeltsin. Although Rich had attended Bush’s inaugural festivities in 1989, he could barely contain his joy. In the final months of the Bush administration, Rich was finally able to check off the two-year goal that he had first set for himself twelve years earlier in 1980—he had received a White House invitation.
Arriving at the White House, Rich and Christina Snyder found themselves in the company of such notables as Kenneth T. Derr, the chairman and CEO of Chevron Corp.; Louis V. Gerstner, then the chairman and CEO of RJR Nabisco, and his wife, Robin; Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan; and a Stanford University professor of political science named Condoleezza Rice. After dining on a menu of caviar, roast loin of veal, and caramel mousse in the elegant State Dining Room, the Snyders (along with the president’s other guests) moved to the East Room to listen to soprano Carol Vaness.
It was the best party that Rich Snyder had ever attended. As he excitedly told Karen De Witt, a New York Times reporter who covered the evening, “I love history, I love our country, and it was all there. The classiest thing I’ve ever been to. And it wasn’t stuffy, either.” This time it was Rich Snyder who felt as if he had won the golden ticket to enter Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. In-N-Out’s president spent the entire evening slack-jawed, pinching himself, overcome by the opportunity to chat up Defense Secretary Richard Cheney, General Colin Powell, and Vice President Dan Quayle, who a year earlier made a well-publicized stop at the Kearny Mesa In-N-Out. The absolute pinnacle of the evening came at about 11:00 p.m. As Yeltsin and his wife, Naina, said their good-byes, President Bush motioned to the Snyders to join him and Mrs. Bush on the dance floor, where the two couples two-stepped to “Shall We Dance.” “There we were, dancing with the President and Mrs. Bush, the only ones on the dance floor,” Rich marveled.