In-N-Out Burger

by Stacy Perman

  On October 27, 1997, Tom Wright was stopped at the San Ysidro Port of entry near San Diego at the Mexican border. There, U.S. customs agents searched Wright’s 1997 In-N-Out–owned Ford Explorer, where they found a cache of drugs that included fifty 120-milliliter bottles of a codeine/ephedrine mixture; four bottles of 21-milligram Rohypnol; approximately 1,000 tablets of muscle relaxants; and miscellaneous containers of inhalants and nasal spray.* According to arrest documents, Wright told the agents that he had traveled to Tijuana to purchase “medicine from a nearby pharmacy for his personal use,” paying roughly $1,500 for the supply.

  Wright’s wife, Dale, however, said that her husband had gone down to Tijuana at Guy’s request in order to buy a number of sleeping pills, asthma inhalers, and other prescription drugs for his use. “It wasn’t the first time,” she said. “But it was his last.”

  Dale, who had accompanied her husband a few times on these trips to Mexico, said that in hindsight “I didn’t care for [Tom] doing it, but it was part of his job, being Guy Snyder’s assistant. It was something he had to do or take the results and hit the road. We couldn’t help it, and it was better than trying to get them all the time through different doctors.”

  Years later, Dale still shudders at the memory of what she called her husband’s first brush with the wrong side of the law. “It was just horrible,” she said. “We were afraid that Tom would go to jail.” Guy told the couple not to worry; he assured them that he would pay for any of the financial fallout from the episode. For a time, they kept the entire affair under wraps. The Explorer was impounded, and, as Dale recalled, they explained its disappearance to company managers by telling them the engine blew up.

  In December, two months after his arrest, Tom Wright went before the U.S. District Court in San Diego. He was charged with illegal importation of a controlled substance, pled guilty to misdemeanor possession of codeine, and was sentenced to one year’s unsupervised probation and fined $1,000. According to his wife, Wright had to pay an additional $40,000 to retrieve the Explorer and about another $100,000 went toward legal fees. Guy kept his word, said Dale, and paid for the entire mess.

  By then, Guy’s continuing decline was hard to ignore. It was around this time that Guy was diagnosed with porphyria, a complex medical condition often triggered by alcohol and drug use and associated with a variety of ailments including nervous disorders, a severe skin condition, and blue urine. The disease, often cited as the source of King George III of England’s mental illness, left Guy’s hands covered with open sores that needed to be frequently cleaned and wrapped.

  It appeared that even Guy could not overlook the fact that he was trapped in a downward spiral. Just four days before Wright’s arrest, in one of his more cogent moments, Guy made arrangements to obtain a legal order appointing successor trustees to the Esther L. Snyder Trust in the event that he died, became incapacitated, or failed to serve as trustee before his daughter, Lynsi, turned thirty (when she was to receive the second installment of the trust, giving her a majority ownership of the company). Guy apparently realized that he needed to do something to protect his only child and the only living direct descendant of the Snyder family. A year earlier, the terms of the trust transferred the majority of In-N-Out’s shares to Guy Snyder. His daughter was just a teenager, and she was the sole beneficiary of those trusts worth hundreds of millions of dollars; Lynsi alone stood to inherit In-N-Out Burger.

  Three cotrustees were named: Douglas K. Ammerman, an accountant with Peat Marwick; Richard Boyd, longtime Snyder family friend, In-N-Out board member, and the company’s vice president of real estate and development; and Tom Wright. In the event that Ammerman, Boyd, or Wright should cease or fail to act as a cotrustee, Mark Taylor, Guy’s former stepson-in-law and the chain’s director of operations, was named to serve with the remaining trustees. On October 23, 1997, Esther Snyder, the trustor, signed the order before Judge George Olafson of Los Angeles Superior Court.

  The new agreement was set up in such a way that no new successor trustees could be subsequently named. If any two of the trustees failed or ceased to act, then the remaining two would serve as cotrustees. Likewise, should the three named cease or fail to act as cotrustees, then the remaining cotrustee would become the sole trustee. It was a straightforward order intended to protect the entwined futures of In-N-Out Burger and its young heiress, Lynsi Snyder. It was this seemingly clear-cut order that later emerged as a factor in an ugly and protracted internal squabble that proved to be a major turning point in the private, family-owned company’s history.

  The point of contention hinged in part on the naming of Mark Taylor as a replacement successor. During this time, among intimates (including his wife, Kathy), Guy questioned Taylor’s abilities and seemed to grow uncomfortable with what he believed was Taylor’s growing ambition. According to Kathy, “Guy had every intention of firing Mark.” Others concluded that it was Lynsi’s mother, Lynda, pulling the strings up in Redding, who agitated to install Taylor, her son-in-law, as a successor cotrustee. Whatever the case, Guy was in no position to put up much of a fight. For Guy, time was running out.

  In-N-Out provided a stark contrast to Guy’s unspooling life. In February 1997, the chain unseated Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers after eight years at the top of Restaurants & Institutions magazine’s annual survey of the nation’s best burger chain. It also happened to be the first year that In-N-Out had qualified for inclusion. It was a feat all the more remarkable because at the time, Wendy’s had about 4,757 stores across the United States, and In-N-Out, with 124 stores in just two states, was competing with all of the large national chains, edging out Burger King (third) and McDonald’s (sixth).

  The same year In-N-Out earned the Restaurants & Institutions recognition, Esther Snyder was singularly honored. At seventy-seven, she was inducted into the California Restaurant Association’s Hall of Fame. A year later, the U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation bestowed Esther with its Lone Sailor award. Given to those who have distinguished themselves following their navy careers, demonstrating honor, courage, and commitment, the Lone Sailor had been awarded previously to President John F. Kennedy, former Washington Post editor Benjamin Bradlee, author Herman Wouk, and Senator John McCain.

  The company was moving forward with new plans of its own. After more than four decades spent alongside freeway off-ramps and suburban intersections, In-N-Out Burger’s management team decided, as the turn of the millennium approached, to push further into select urban areas. In a radical break with tradition, In-N-Out unveiled its boldly designed store number 119 in Westwood on the edge of the UCLA campus. It looked nothing like any In-N-Out store that had come before. Stephen Kanner, a celebrated Los Angeles architect known for his pop modern style, created a sculptural burst of bright red and yellow with soaring, sweeping boomerang angles. The neon In-N-Out sign appeared to jut through the cantilevered roof and the glass drive-through allowed motorists to see inside the kitchen from their cars. From the street, the whole building served as a kind of billboard. The store, which Kanner called “a dream commission,” quickly racked up a slew of architectural awards.

  The chain was now looking to position itself into other high-density and heavily traveled locations. A far cry from the outlying areas where it had traditionally planted its crossed palm trees, In-N-Out was increasingly moving, at least as far as its locations were concerned, from the outside in.

  Kanner hoped that the new store marked the beginning of a new visual brand for the chain. “I got really excited,” he recalled, and he came up with a series of computer prototypes that would allow the chain to adapt the Westwood design to other locations and still be cost competitive. However, it was not to be. Kanner was told that the Westwood restaurant was too visual. Back at In-N-Out headquarters, Kanner lamented, “They said the burgers should be the star.”

  As Guy’s tenuous hold on his professional activities slipped, his marriage to Kathy was quickly unraveling as well. According to Kathy, the main problem was
Guy’s louche activities. She had grown increasingly disenchanted with the marriage and felt betrayed by her husband’s escalating drug use. Fingering the one-of-a-kind, solid gold Double-Double hamburger pendant around her neck that Guy had commissioned for her, she said, “I feel so stupid, I didn’t see the signs,” clearly anguished. “I had no clue until after we were married—the severity of it. It was like Elvis. Nobody stopped him. Nobody said no to Guy.”

  On April 28, 1998, Guy Snyder filed for divorce. The two briefly reconciled—“I kept hoping things would get better,” Kathy said—but then on May 18, 1999, he once again filed for divorce. She moved out of the large Claremont house they shared and into a smaller house nearby. “It was pretty mutual and amicable,” she said. “Guy really had drug issues and I did not want to be subjected to that life he chose.” During their brief marriage, Guy seesawed between rehab and overdoses. “You can’t make a marriage like that,” she said, looking back. “I know he’d have given anything to come to terms with it.” Her tone softening she added, “He was wonderful when he was clean and sober. He was fun, and he was sooo handsome.”

  The couple’s divorce moved fairly quickly. The prenuptial that Kathy had signed gave her little leverage. All of the couple’s property, according to Kathy, was in In-N-Out’s name: “our house, the ranch up in Arroyo Grande, and all of our cars. In-N-Out had their hands on everything.” While at court in Orange County, Kathy said the judge displayed little sympathy for her. “He told me that I should consider myself lucky that I got to live the lifestyle of a millionaire’s wife while I had the time,” she laughed. In the end, she said, “I left with more than I went in with and a lot of wonderful memories.”

  In his last years, one would hardly guess that Guy was the scion of a multimillion-dollar company. Scruffy and unshaven, bloated and overweight, he resembled a vagrant. Guy no longer cut the dashing figure he once had as a young man in denim with a silver belt buckle and a purposeful stride. Disappearing behind sunglasses and under baseball caps, large T-shirts, and baggy shorts, he was lapsing into a state of dysfunction. In the spring of 1999, he came down with pneumonia, and before the year was up he had suffered and recovered from three drug overdoses. As his behavior grew increasingly erratic, Guy was prone to memory lapses and simply wandering off.

  Largely estranged from his family, Guy was worn down and felt increasingly isolated. He moved out of the spacious home he had shared with Kathy in Claremont, and the millionaire who could check into any luxury hotel instead holed up in his motor trailer that was parked inside the old In-N-Out Burger warehouse in Baldwin Park.

  At times, and briefly following his divorce, Guy would stay up at the Flying Dutchman Ranch, hoping to see his daughter. Ironically, throughout 1999, Lynda was involved in Guy’s hospitalizations after his bout with pneumonia as well as his overdoses.

  Toward the tail end of the summer of 1999, Guy once again flew up to Shingletown in an attempt to see his daughter, installing himself in a guest house on the property at the Flying Dutchman Ranch where she was living. According to Dale Wright, Lynda was not happy about this and called her husband, Tom, in the middle of the night and asked him to fly up and take Guy away. “She told Tom that she didn’t want him dying up there on her, and asked Tom to come and get him,” recalled Dale. Wright caught an early morning flight out of Fox Field in Lancaster and flew up to Redding.

  In September, not long after Wright had extracted Guy from his ex-wife’s house in Shingletown, Guy moved in with the Wrights. Guy had his mobile trailer transported from the Baldwin Park warehouse to the Wrights’ property in Lancaster, located on the dry scrubs of the Mojave Desert on the outskirts of the Antelope Valley, north of Los Angeles.

  At the Wrights’, Guy had good days and bad ones—on some days, he could count on just a few good hours. As Dale remembered it, “You could tell he was going downhill.” Some nights he spent just wandering around their house. The Wrights installed a second telephone line in their house for Guy because, as Dale explained, “he loved to talk on the phone.” Sitting on their porch, Guy held forth about In-N-Out and drag racing and seemed excited about plans to launch his new Top Fuel team.

  Then, on the morning of November 6, 1999, Guy disappeared. Dale remembered the day clearly because it was the wedding day of her eldest daughter, Janet. It wasn’t the first time that Guy had gone missing—but this time they couldn’t find him. At about 8:00 a.m., the Wrights called the police to report that Guy was gone. Sheriff’s deputies found him wandering near a desert road and brought him to the hospital. When they located Guy, he was disheveled and wearing gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt with the In-N-Out logo.

  Not quite a month later, at around midnight on December 4, the Wrights were sitting in their living room watching the TV Land channel with Guy when their eighteen-year-old daughter Darci noticed that Guy was slumped over in the chair where had been sitting. He had collapsed and was not breathing. “I remember thinking ‘oh my God,’” said Dale. Her husband put a blood pressure cuff on Guy, but he had no pulse, and they called the paramedics. The emergency medical team arrived at about 12:30 a.m., but they found Guy unresponsive. Exactly two minutes after arriving at the Antelope Valley Hospital at 1:10 a.m., Guy Snyder was declared dead; he was forty-eight years old. Sheriff’s deputies, who had arrived on the scene unaware of who Guy was, took note of his simple clothing and unexceptional motor home and wrote “Unemployed” on their report.

  It was a tragic ending for a man for whom life had offered so many opportunities. Unable to measure up to his father’s expectations, long in the shadow of his younger brother, unable to shake his substance abuse, Guy sank into a life of drugs and despair. Following Guy’s death, the American and California flags and another with the words “Don’t Tread on Me” flew at half-staff outside In-N-Out’s Baldwin Park headquarters. “It was sad and kind of shocking when he died,” said old friend Paul Althouse. “That boy had everything, and all that money.” Later he wistfully exclaimed, “He was a hell of a guy. The drugs screwed up his life.”

  The Los Angeles County Coroner’s office performed an autopsy on Guy at 10:30 a.m. on December 5, 1999. His body betrayed numerous medical problems and a history of drug abuse (specifically opiates and methadone). The attending coroner, Dr. Ogbonna Chinwah, found Guy’s bloated body wracked with scars, bruises, and evidence of track marks on his arms. He had had an irregular heartbeat and an enlarged heart as well as active Hepatitis B and inactive C. The coroner declared that the cause of death was an accidental overdose of the drug hydro-codone, the synthetic opiate found in the painkiller Vicodin.

  On February 6, 2000, two months after Guy died, the story of his arrest in Claremont three years earlier surfaced publicly. It appeared in a lengthy obituary that ran in the Orange County Register with the headline: “The CEO of In-N-Out Fought Drug Use and an Injury that Quashed His Racing Dreams.”

  Unlike the large public memorial given following the death of his younger brother, Rich Snyder, Guy’s service was a strictly private affair. It was Lynda Snyder who made the arrangements for the family-only funeral; Guy was buried in his red In-N-Out racing jersey. Lynda’s brother-in-law, an ordained minister, performed the service. A small memorial was held at the Pomona Raceway—among the attendees were Esther, Guy’s racing team, his ex-wife, Lynda, their daughter Lynsi, and his former stepdaughters and their husbands. Wilbur Stites’s widow, Kim, and their daughter Meredith were also there. It was the third time in twenty years that Esther had buried a son.

  The Tuesday following Guy’s death, In-N-Out’s corporate lawyers called Jerry Darien to tell him they were pulling the plug on the Top Fuel team sponsorship.

  There seemed to be a lot of blame and ill-feeling surrounding Guy’s last days. Lynda and Mark Taylor excluded several friends and family members from the memorial. Many of Guy’s friends, including those from his high school days, were barred. Significantly, the Wright family was also excluded. Kathy Touché said that she received a phone call fr
om Taylor informing her that she was not welcome. “They didn’t allow my folks to go either,” she sniffed, “and they loved the hell out of him, it was cruel. Not much Christianity there.”

  At the time of Guy Snyder’s death, In-N-Out Burger had grown to 140 stores, employing about sixty-five hundred employees. It was earning an estimated $212 million anually, an 8.7 percent increase from the previous year. Actually, in the six years between the time that Guy was named chairman following his brother Rich’s death in 1993, the chain’s revenue had jumped almost 83 percent. In-N-Out had pushed out geographically to Nevada and was about to move into Arizona. It had earned the unfettered loyalty of its customers, envy from its competitors, and plaudits in every imaginable category. When asked to characterize the mark that Guy Snyder left on the beloved chain, an insider remarked, “He just didn’t change a thing. He knew well enough to just leave it alone.”

  CHAPTER 21

  At seventy-nine, Esther Snyder stepped up to assume control of the chain that she had founded with her husband more than half a century earlier. “Don’t let her age fool you,” exclaimed Mark Taylor, who quickly began taking on a more prominent role in the company, to the Los Angeles Times. “She is as sharp as a tack. She is the hardest-working Snyder there ever was. She remains the president and is our leader and has all of our support.”

  Taylor’s florid assurances did little to quash speculation about the future of In-N-Out. The chain that had for decades said little about itself was too often the subject of conjecture. And from the outside, at least, the company appeared vulnerable—just as it had six years earlier following the death of Rich Snyder. After all, the chain’s sole heiress, Lynsi Snyder, was still in high school, just five months shy of her eighteenth birthday; Esther was fast approaching her ninth decade. Despite Esther’s obvious determination and spirit, her old friend Carl Karcher voiced the concerns of many when he told the Los Angeles Times, “Esther is very, very tired. She’s really had her ups and downs.”