Animal Style Loyalty, Double-Double Standards
“We’re not leaving California.”
That was the headline from In-N-Out, after its billionaire owner announced she’s moving to Tennessee. Not the company. Just her.
Also, the company is opening a major new office there. Also, it’s closing its Irvine office. But don’t worry, it’s not leaving. Just expanding. Just realigning. Just helping families afford homes. Just doing everything that looks like leaving, while insisting it isn’t.
There’s a script now.
Companies that quietly start the exit process from California recite a ritual: a love letter to the state, a nostalgic nod to their roots, and a vague line about opportunity. All while quietly transplanting their operational backbone to redder, cheaper, more governable terrain.
The message is clear, even when the PR isn’t. And it comes with plausible deniability built in.
Lynsi Snyder didn’t say “We’re leaving.” She didn’t have to. Her move to Tennessee, the closure of the Irvine office, and the creation of an “Eastern Territory HQ” do the talking.
The playbook is familiar:
Keep the brand loyalty of California customers.
Reap the tax, regulatory, and real estate benefits of red-state expansion.
Avoid political heat by framing it as personal or family-driven.
The new frontiers are states like Texas and Tennessee, where regulators are friendly and labor is cheaper. Executives frame it as opportunity. What they mean is control. Land is cheaper. Laws are looser. Governments are hungrier for jobs and less likely to enforce mandates.
California, by contrast, expects too much: climate rules, labor protections, vaccine checks. That’s the subtext in Snyder’s comments, not just that it’s hard to raise a family here, but that it’s hard to run a business without being told no.
The exit is staged in slow motion. A transfer of power disguised as growth. The state that built the brand becomes a showroom, while the back office moves east, out of sight, out of regulation.
In-N-Out built its identity on being the California burger. Surfside nostalgia in a paper-wrapped box. Snyder wants to keep that mythology intact even as she chips away at the state’s role in it.
California is still good enough for the image. Just not the operations. The loyalty is performative. The expansion is real.
And yet the backlash, from both sides, misses the deeper point. Build your brand in the blue states. Move your money to the red ones.
Don’t just watch where companies go. Watch what they keep pretending not to do.
The next era of corporate migration won’t come with press releases or political defiance. It’ll come with soft exits, split headquarters, and words like “realignment” and “balance.”
The incentives are doing the work. The branding just hasn’t caught up.