Why In-N-Out keeps popping up and never staying
In-N-Out's Melbourne pop-up sold out within 30 minutes
This week popular US burger chain In-N-Out opened a pop-up restaurant in Melbourne, selling out of 300 burgers within 30 minutes of opening.
The sell-out came despite news of the pop-up only becoming public only a couple hours before the store opened. Customers lined up outside and around the corner hoping to get one of the chain’s famous burgers.
It is not the first time In-N-Out has run a sell-out pop-up restaurant in Australia. In January 2018, the chain opened a store in Perth that attracted a big line. Similar situations have occurred when In-N-Out has popped up in Sydney over the past couple of years.
With a number of pop-ups run, it would perhaps seem like In-N-Out is testing the waters in Australia and are likely to open here soon.
Unfortunately for fans of the chain this is unlikely the case.
In-N-Out is a US West Coast based, family owned business that has built a reputation for its reluctance to expand quickly, or to franchise out of fear of losing control over product quality.
In-N-Out does not even have any restaurants on the East Coast of America, let alone any outside of its home country.
Owned by the Snyder family, In-N-Out has now been passed down through a couple of generations since first establishing as one restaurant in 1948. Current owner, and President of the business since 2010, Lynsi Snyder, has previously said she has no intentions to franchise or sell the business. She hopes to one-day pass the business down to her children.
So why would In-N-Out continue to run pop-up stores in Australia, along with other parts of the world it reportedly has no intentions of setting up business in?
Marketing.
In 2016, a spokesperson told Nine News that its Australian pop-ups are no indication that it will open permanent stores in Australia. The spokesperson said they are instead run “to get our name out there and familiarise people with the brand so they know about us when they visit the US”.
With In-N-Out’s reputation for not wanting to expand at any rapid speed, it is likely the latest pop-ups are just another marketing move for the brand.
Bad luck for Australian In-N-Out fans unfortunately, but perhaps a marketing lesson for other Australian food producers.
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