In-N-Out Burger (30 page)

If anything, the transcript appeared to cast doubt on many of the declarations and statements that she had previously made against Boyd.

On April 26, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled that Esther could be deposed in two-hour blocks over three days.

 

By several accounts, as the fight raged on, Esther's health deteriorated further. Although she was living in Arizona, Meredith Stites
visited with her grandmother once a month. Sometimes the two just sat and watched movies; during other visits they did nothing but talk. “She really liked having the company,” Meredith recalled. “She talked about the office—she missed going there. She said the associates were so kind.” During their time together, Esther usually asked Meredith to stay. “She told me I could stay out late and she wouldn't tell my mother. Here I was in my late twenties, living on my own. It was really sweet.”

In early May, Wolf Kahles had flown to California for one of his regular visits. While there, he decided to drive directly to Esther's Glendora house, since his efforts to telephone her had all proved fruitless. When he arrived, Kahles was dismayed by what he saw. Unable to move on her own, Esther was lying on a bed in her living room with the television on. He found her weak, “isolated,” and generally unaware of the events taking place around her. When Kahles told her that he had attempted to call her several times, “She didn't know that they changed her telephone,” he said. Furthermore, she complained, “Now I know why I wasn't getting any calls.”

When Kahles brought up the topic of the legal battle between Boyd, her granddaughter, and the company, “she seemed confused and upset,” he later recalled. “She didn't know what was going on in the company. I talked to her about how they were suing Boyd and how they said that he had stolen money. She said, ‘He should have come and talked to me.' She wasn't aware that he was kicked out.”

Kahles left Esther's house deeply saddened, upset to find this “beautiful woman” who took such pride in her company left virtually alone in her large home. “She told me that the only joy she had was watching old movies on television,” he recalled ruefully. “She called it her window to the outside.” Still in possession of her chronic optimism, Esther “thanked the Lord that she still had her eyesight.” As he left, Kahles said, Esther told him, “My door is always open.”

The legal endgame came to an abrupt halt with a terse press release on May 10, 2006, approximately two weeks after the transcript of the recorded telephone conversation between Elisa Boyd and Esther Snyder was entered into the record of the Los Angeles Superior Court. The five law firms representing all sides of the dispute announced that a settlement had been reached, effectively scuttling the courtroom showdown slated for October. Their statement declared, “The civil action and the probate actions have been fully and amicably resolved as to all parties to those proceedings, including Lynsi Martinez and Mark Taylor.” The details of the agreement, however, remained under wraps, and neither side would comment on the deal except to acknowledge that Boyd would have “no further role with In-N-Out or the Snyder family trusts.” And with that, the window into what had long been considered the most secretive company in the fast-food industry was closed once again.

Still, speculation as to the outcome was rife. Did Boyd walk away empty-handed, or with a sizable cash settlement? Did In-N-Out capitulate or prevail? The only thing certain was that throughout his numerous filings, Boyd had aired a litany of uncomfortable allegations regarding Lynsi, her mother, her brother-in-law, and the company's internal machinations. The prospect of a jury trial had promised that more would follow. It was likely that the company, which
had long guarded its privacy and denied the allegations, did not relish the notion of a further public thrashing. Besides, in the weeks leading up to the settlement, Boyd's defense seemed to marshal some significant wins; a close reading of the court documents suggested that the case against Boyd might quickly unravel. It was possible that after months of legal wrangling under harsh public scrutiny, Lynsi and Taylor reconsidered the wisdom of having their dispute dredged out further. Then again, Lynsi may have had another reason to put an end to the inflammatory discord—she was pregnant.

 

By most accounts, Esther spent the months following the settlement largely confined to her Glendora home, surrounded by her memories, a collection of old movies that she enjoyed, and the many photographs of her family—as well as a small team of full-time caretakers. Esther's health continued to deteriorate. As she had been largely removed from the legal battles of the previous year, it was unclear whether she had an accurate understanding of how the skirmish eventually played out. Esther Snyder was still In-N-Out Burger's president, but control of the burger chain was shifting to the third generation.

Meanwhile, in a Scottsdale, Arizona, hospital room 370 miles away, another fast-food legend was drawing to an end. On Tuesday, June 6, Esther's dear friend Margaret Karcher, the wife of Carl's Jr. co-founder Carl Karcher, died after a lengthy battle with liver cancer. She was ninety-one years old. Within days of receiving the news, Esther sent Margaret's husband a one-page condolence letter on In-N-Out letterhead. According to the Karchers' daughter Barbara Wall, Esther expressed how much the couple had meant to her as friends and her gratitude for the fact that they were always there for her, especially after Harry died, and later, following the deaths of her sons. She also expressed one of Karcher's own sentiments. “She wrote that she saw Dad not as a competitor, but as a colleague,” recalled Wall. “He was happy that she took the time to write the note.” (On January 11, 2008, a year and half later, Karcher died just four days shy of his own ninety-first birthday, a casualty of Parkinson's disease.)

 

The summer of 2006 was a difficult one on several fronts. A record heat wave enveloped California. As casualties mounted in Iraq and war raged between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Southland's attention was largely fixed on the unrelenting heat that had for most of July pushed thermometers well past 100 degrees, creating a blanket of smog that traveled from California to Maine. The air was so stiflingly toxic that more than a hundred deaths resulted. The prolonged scorcher strained the state's power grid. Authorities took to the airwaves, issuing warnings to residents and asking them to limit their physical activities, drink plenty of fluids, stay indoors, and, when possible, not drive. While there was a host of many other pressing issues of the day, it was the spectacle of the summer swelter that hung in the air like the brown haze.

On Friday, August 4, 2006, the record-breaking temperatures had just begun to recede when another attention-grabbing story captivated the region, casting a further pall over the Southland. In-N-Out Burger announced that Esther Snyder had died; she was eighty-six. Flags at the company's headquarters and at its more than two hundred shops dotting California, Arizona, and Nevada flew at half-staff.

The turbulence kicked up in the wake of the litigation between In-N-Out and Richard Boyd had barely quieted down in the three months since the two parties agreed to an undisclosed settlement. News of Esther's death pushed the reticent chain once again into the public spotlight. The company released a heartfelt public statement that began, “All of us at In-N-Out will mourn the loss of Mrs. Snyder, who provided strength and inspiration for the company and its associates.” Lynsi, who a few months earlier had spent a weekend in San Diego with Esther, also paid tribute to her grandmother. “She had so many great qualities; she was sweet, warm, loving, strong, and smart,” she said in a rare public statement of her own. “She had the biggest heart that stretched over miles and miles.”

Esther's funeral was a private affair; there was no memorial service. A security cordon ensured that only the three hundred invited mourners gained entrance to the La Verne Church of the Brethren (about nine miles from Esther Snyder's Glendora home). The Calvary Chapel's pastor, Chuck Smith Sr., presided over the service. Esther had touched many, and she was remembered as a gentle and kind woman who through sheer determination of spirit not only helped to build a small, iconic empire but also maintained it without sacrificing her principles. Calling Esther “mom,” Lynda Snyder Kelbaugh and her daughters Terri and Traci gave eulogies. Lynsi nervously took the podium, telling the mourners that she loved and missed her grandmother. None of the members of the extended Snyder or Johnson families spoke. A video montage of Esther's life was played, showing her with Harry and her sons. Following the service, the assembled went into the church's courtyard. Fittingly, an In-N-Out trailer was set up to serve hamburgers.

Not long thereafter, while going through Esther's house and readying it for sale, Joe Stannard came upon his aunt's briefcase, the one that she carried every day. Tucked inside the well-worn bag, among the various business papers, Stannard found a cache of love letters that Harry had written to his wife nearly sixty years earlier.

Word of Esther's passing quickly spread across the country. By the time that she died, In-N-Out had become an iconic American cultural institution, massively beloved: a legend. In-N-Out's loyal and besotted fans, most of whom had never even seen a picture of Esther, reacted as if they had lost a member of their own family. The saddened minions went into a kind of electronic mourning. “God bless Esther Snyder,” posted one on the Internet. “Still the #1 fast-food hamburger ever created, God Bless the Snyder family…they didn't sell out to big corporations.” proclaimed another. “You folks changed many a life with your burgers.” A columnist at the
Orange County Weekly
wrote that Esther Snyder “is known in my house as the Greatest Woman Who Ever Lived.” And on and on it went.

The Baldwin Park city council suspended its previously scheduled meeting twelve days after Esther's death in honor of her generosity
and many contributions to the place that In-N-Out had called home from its very inception. The mayor of Baldwin Park, Manual Lozano, described Esther's passing as “a great loss to the city.”

Within days, In-N-Out's founding matriarch had been memorialized in the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
, the
Wall Street Journal
, and the
Los Angeles Times
. Even CNN and NPR mentioned her passing in their national broadcasts. Remarkably, when her husband, Harry Snyder, had died thirty-one years earlier, there was no national trumpet blast. He received a brief mention under the “Death Notices” page in his hometown paper, the
San Gabriel Valley Tribune
. It was a standard announcement that ran to only sixty-three words. In the spare, efficient manner of newspaper obituary pages everywhere, the piece listed his other surviving siblings and the time and place where funeral services were to take place.

Although Esther Snyder did not possess the kind of public face of such fast-food titans as McDonald's Ray Kroc, Wendy's Dave Thomas, or Kentucky Fried Chicken's Colonel Harlan Sanders, all the same she was every inch the commanding figure that her better-known counterparts were. In fact, she may have been one of the least known and yet most beloved figures in the industry. Esther preferred to take a back seat—at least publicly—first to her husband, Harry, and later to their sons, Guy and Rich, and yet this gentle and modest woman was in many immeasurable ways the quiet, incandescent power behind the regional burger empire. She never prevaricated; Esther stressed quality, trust in the Lord, and the importance of making sure that her associates were happy. Esther preferred to let the company she had founded with her husband six decades earlier speak for her.

 

For the third time in thirteen years, fans and investment-hungry suitors began asking what would happen next. Although the legal brawl was settled, with Esther gone, there seemed to be an opening for change—a generational shift was already under way. The temptation to grow from small and regional to large and national was hard to resist.

Predictably, it didn't take long for the phone in Irvine to begin ringing with a host of private equity firms and other investors on the other end. Ten days after Esther died, Ron Paul, the chief executive of restaurant industry consultancy and research outfit Technomic Inc., did the math for the
Orange County Business Journal
: “If the chain was worth $300 million to $400 million, it could sell roughly $100 million to $150 million to a private equity company with the family keeping control of the rest,” he said. Already an IPO favorite, the burger chain seemed to catapult to the top of the heap after Esther died. Not long after, Ben Holmes (the head of Morningnotes.com, an IPO research firm) told CNN, “It's a total cult restaurant. People would chase that one.”

And yet, despite consumer fervor and clamor among investors, such moves don't necessarily mean a happy ending. There are numerous examples of great little companies imploding on their own success. Krispy Kreme, the beloved southeastern donut chain, once had customers waiting in the cold dawn hours before its store openings, too. It fell from grace after its April 2000 IPO and the far-flung and rapid expansion (including selling its donuts in supermarket chains) that followed. The debate over exploiting a brand while keeping its mojo was kicked into high gear in February 2007, when Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz released a memo admitting that the coffee giant—with more than thirteen thousand outlets in thirty-nine countries—“no longer ha[d] the soul of the past.” Starbucks, he bemoaned, had come to reflect a “chain of stores vs. the warm feeling of a neighborhood store.”

In-N-Out had never lost its way. Already weary from the legal wrangling of the past year, In-N-Out's faithful had been wondering whether a similar fate might befall In-N-Out. “Expansion is fine,” Thomas Keller weighed in, “but I'd probably err on the side of being territorial. It would be nice to keep this mysterious. It's a great company. It shows what can be done when you focus on being the best.” Sitting in the Barstow In-N-Out on their way between Las Vegas and their home in Bullhead City, Arizona, Esther Mata and her husband, Edward, felt similarly. “There's nothing better than In-N-Out,” said Esther. “We've been coming to one for twenty years.” Looking at the
snaking line inching its way toward the counter, separated by an amusement park divider, Edward chimed in, “Let me put it this way. It is a chance to remember where we came from in the 1940s, even before there was a McDonald's. We used to go to the drive-in. We'd wait here, and the waitress came on skates. We ate in our car.” Even though Edward Mata was sitting on a red plastic chair inside the restaurant and there wasn't a waitress in sight or a pair of roller skates to be found, he continued, “This reminds us of what was back then, but on a small scale. We never go to McDonald's—just In-N-Out.” The Matas' remarks reflected the mood in the Southland, where the hamburger had been elevated to America's culinary patrimony, that these were not idle concerns.

 

On Monday, August 7, 2006, five days after Esther's death, the Irvine headquarters announced that Mark Taylor had assumed the role of president of In-N-Out Burger. With Boyd out and Esther gone, it appeared that—in addition to his new position as head of the chain—Taylor was left as the only member of the company's board of directors. It was unclear when or if he would name others. Perhaps more significantly, Taylor was now the sole trustee of the Snyder family trusts (with the court-ordered Northern Trust Bank of California serving on an interim basis). In one of Richard Boyd's filings, he had described this scenario as “Guy Snyder's worst nightmare.” It might have been one area where the late Snyder brothers were in total agreement. As someone close to the situation remarked, “This is never how Rich would have wanted things to turn out. He would be rolling over in his grave five thousand times.”

Taylor released a statement shortly after heading up the chain in which he personally promised that “the family is absolutely committed to keeping the company private and family-operated.” He assured everyone that In-N-Out would continue on the path “laid out for us by our founders,” growing at a moderate pace, adding only ten to twelve new restaurants each year. He also refuted the constant murmurings that the chain would now go public.