Agreed. They are my least favorite burgers and fries but the service is absolutely incredible. Every single person I have EVER dealt with is very professional and polite. I have never seen another restaurant with employees like that.

It's often compared to Five Guys but the vast majority of Five Guys I've been in have employees that don't really seem to care.

Five Guys isn't fast food in the traditional sense - a basic cheeseburger/fries/drink is over $15 out here in southern California, whereas the same at In-N-Out is $6.

But in that market we do have Burger Lounge which goes well beyond In-N-Out's service level. We also have Luna Grill for Mediterranean, similar excellence in service and quality of food.

In-N-Out is fast food. Five Guys and all the other restaurants you've mentioned fall under fast casual.

Right. That's why I said Five Guys isn't, to highlight that they aren't really competitors despite people choosing to compare them.

And more to the point, that In-N-Out is so exceptional in both food and service it can begin to draw comparisons to operations in a higher market segment.

I’ve never had a fast trip to an In-N-Out. Lines are always really long. Quality of their food has gone down hill over the years as they’ve tried to keep up. While it’s not even close to my fave I’d still shove an animal double double down my face so fast...

In the Bay Area, at least, the quality is always the thing I've been most impressed with. The burgers are picture-perfect (like, could be in an advertising photo) every time, and the food is good.

I haven't had such consistent high quality of anything at any other chain.

> The burgers are picture-perfect

Yep definitely going to different In-N-Outs.

They are immensely popular. But drive-thrus are still at the core of their service ever since the first location which was drive-thru only. That's one of many things that can't be said of any of their upscale competitors, hence the fast food vs fast casual.

What? I'm in southern California and a burger at five guys is $5. For another $3 you get a giant amount of fries. I don't see how you get to $15.

Cheeseburger: 7.99, soda: 2.49, regular fries for 4.19 or small fries for 3.29. Either way, that's about 15 with tax.

Yeah, in my experience Five Guys doesn't really compare. They're run well but nothing exceptional.

Maybe the secret is paying _everyone_ enough the make that happen. There's also a lot to be said for providing clean paths to climb the ladder by hiring internally (but that's made viable by paying well to provide good stability and mentoring at all levels...). Then you end up with inherently informed and connected management.

I think part of it is also that the restaurants are owned by In-N-Out, not franchised.

It's amazing how different a franchised versus company owned restaurant can be. When I worked at a franchised McDonald's as a teenager we were all jealous of the corporate McDonald's a few miles down the road as they had better pay, benefits, uniforms and everything just looked way cleaner there. At my franchised McDonald's we were told to do the bare minimum for _every single thing_ we did.

I'm curious if there is any data on franchised versus non franchised restaurants and if there is a way to objectively compare them.

I had a slightly different experience. In high school my first job was corporate Mackers in a Walmart. At 15 I was somehow the second most responsible person working there.. After high school I did another stint at a franchise location. The owner had an ace manager in there to "turn around" the store. Everything was ship shape and above board; top rating on store review was the expectation.

As committed as everyone was the one thing I would have seriously cracked down on was... Wait for it... Pulling the fries out early. A couple of the managers didn't have the stomach for waiting the full time when cars were stacked up. They were mistakenly prioritizing the service time (which is usually sacred TBH!) over the quality of the french fries. This is a huge mistake and Mcdonalds has very tight lifetime limits on fries for a reason; aint nobody wants undercooked or stale fries.

I always dropped my own fries for my free meal, and would often invite people in to purchase fries while I was there so they could be done right. A 1/2, or ideally 1/4, basket cooks the best and most evenly at the McDonalds prescribed cooking times IMHO. Full baskets without a cooking time adjustment would result in fries that are not quite so cooked properly.

Is “Mackers” McDonalds? I’ve never heard that nickname before. We mainly use “Mickey Dees”.

I did a stint in New Zealand; picked up some of the slang :)

For the record in NZ although we do say that, we usually spell it 'Maccas'.

Yeah but with the accent it's probably spelt Mackers.

Spelling was never my strong suite ;) Nor was avoiding picking up slang in NZ that was later pointed out to me to be racial slurs :| Nobody ever told me about ol' uncle Rangi!

The timing for the drive through made our life very difficult at the McDonald's I worked at. Managers would frequently clear orders not yet finished off of the screen just so the system registered a faster time completed. We would then have to carry around the receipt to try and figure out what the person ordered. In the worst of cases we'd have to pass the receipt to the grill area to get food made.

All of our drive through times were complete bullshit because of this. Even during slow times where we'd have just a car every few minutes managers would IMMEDIATELY clear them off as they just need to "remember" the order. Which, as you can guess, increased wrong order complaints but those are also not sent to corporate so they never cared.

For one thing, it enables careers instead of just jobs - In'n'Out employees are promoted all the way up the corporate chain, moved to launch new locations, and generally signals to employees that if they want to spend next 40 years working for the company, they will not be seen as failures by their peers, parents, significant others, children and people at high school reunion.

With franchised restaurants the promotion ladder looks like employee -> manager -> dead-end.

Is there a way to check whether a given McD is corporate or franchise?

The McD by our house growing up was amazing. Even as a teen I remember it being well run. As an adult I moved to a different city and the local McD was the worst I’ve ever seen. That includes highway service area stores. Be curious to confirm my suspicions as to which is corporate.

YMMV, but when the franchise I worked at was extremely well run, and compared to a corporate store, far better. I used to be able to walk into a McDs and tell within a minute or two if they were franchise or McOpCo. The McOpCo stores were always dirty, understaffed, and had really demoralized employees.

Back in the day the corporate McDonald's had a different uniform that was almost sorta suit like. Today they might be all the same, not sure, but you can probably contact them and ask.

There's usually a sign somewhere inside the restaurant.

There are a number of good chains in that category. Shake Shack, Five Guys. But In-N-Out is pretty good. I suspect it's a category that rewards quality/consistency and isn't just a race to the bottom like the truly mass market fast food chains are.

It's hard to separate causality here. Maybe they can afford to pay people a lot because they make a lot of money, and maybe they make a lot of money because people like their menus and ingredients.

I have seen signs advertising $15/hour starting wages for their Bay Area restaurants. Not exactly great pay considering the cost of living.

Or could it be that with such high salaries, they can be extremely picky? Almost like a, "we only hire the best."