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Comment by hkmurakami | Hacker News Reader

Any insight into what does In n' Out does differently? They seem to continue to attract that demographic.

One key factor is that they require English fluency, since every employee is in a position to be customer-facing.

The progression with most other fast food chains in CA was that once you start hiring employees who don't speak English, then you have to have all shift managers be Spanish-speaking, leaving no upward path for line employees who aren't bilingual. Before long, most of the kitchen crew is non-English-speaking.

They don't have franchises like the other chains. That is also why their rollout seems slow. This means the boss is the company, not a franchisee who will have their own way of doing things. They then make a reasonable effort of benefits for their employees: http://www.in-n-out.com/employment/restaurant.aspx

Do affluent teenagers care about benefits although when their parents very likely have benefits for them already?

My fellow teens only cared about how much money they made, if the uniforms made them look like idiots to the opposite sex, and what their schedule was.

  They don't have franchises like the other chains.

I don't think that's a factor. Both corporate-owned stores and franchisees use the same employee demographics, generally. Sometimes you'll find a franchisee who is an immigrant from outside the Americas and find a lot of family members and their friends making up the crew. (For example, there's a local Taco Bell that has more South-Asian employees than not.)

The franchising is a factor because franchisees have latitude in setting their own policies for employees. eg one franchisee could offer education credits while another doesn't. Or one could pay more than another, beyond just local circumstances.

There rollouts are also slower for a couple reasons:

- every In-N-Out must be within 500 miles of a beef distribution center [1]

- In-N-Out tries to buy it's land [2]

My impression is that they grow the business from cash flow, not debt, and they move slowly so they can keep up quality. They are a privately held company, so hard to verify some information.

[1] http://www.ocregister.com/articles/accelerates-291670-expans...

[2] http://www.innoutrealestate.com/

Elsewhere in the States, Panera, Starbucks, Chick fil-A, Tropical Smoothie, and likely some others tend to have staff that fits the same visual archetype.

Some of it is likely due to "organic" stratification and segregation of society, which is a less-nice way of saying people keep to their own circles. Some of it may be deliberate discrimination due to factors such as attractiveness and access to resources, often obscured by information asymmetry in the hiring process. Some of it may be that these businesses tend to be located in more prosperous areas that are both distant and difficult to access to by people who lack reliable transportation.

Several of these factors, while alone may not be significant, can occur together to striking effect.

I would love to know what exactly it is Chic-fil-a does. Right now I less than a block from one, but it's all chipper teenagers and, yes, mostly white. This is despite the fact that the neighborhood I live in is majority black, and lower income. I have neighbors who work at McDonalds, but not Chic-fil-a. I can't imagine Chic-fil-a outright discriminates, but every one I visit has polite, probably affluent, teens.

In my experience, there are many black employees at fast food places in Oakland and southeastern S.F. (Bayview).

What does Starbucks pay? Or are their employees just naturally unhappy, if not grumpy?

Also, to piggyback: does anyone know if In-N-Out has a Disney-type dress/grooming code? Every time I go (about once a year, so I'm a bit fuzzy) I get the impression that everyone is cleancut.

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