Meet the 36-Year-Old Billionaire Who Owns In-N-Out

The young, wealthy and elusive owner of California’s beloved burger joint will debut on this year’s Forbes 400 as the youngest woman on the list. Her company is valued at over $3 billion … and she’s only 36.

According to Forbes, Lynsi Snyder, the often media shy heiress to the In-N-Out fast food chain, keeps operations very much the same as her grandparents did when they founded the company in 1948 in Baldwin Park, about 30 minutes outside Los Angeles. But her trajectory has been anything but traditional.

“Snyder is an unlikely shepherd of her family’s business. By all rights, her uncle should be running In-N-Out, if not for his untimely death. She never graduated from college and lost her father to drug abuse. As a young woman, she battled through a period of alcohol and drug use and three di­vorces. Snyder, a devout Christian who sports tattoos of Bible ­verses, came out of those experiences drawn to In-N-Out’s long-standing stability determined to change the company as little as possible, particularly the brand’s image of 1950s wholesomeness. After taking over in 2010, she embarked on a slow, steady expansion across the West, opening more than 80 stores in the same period that Five Guys, a close competitor, added more than 500 across America.

“’I felt a deep call to make sure that I preserve those things that [my family] would want. That we didn’t ever look to the left and the right to see what everyone else is doing, cut corners or change things drastically or compromise,’ says Snyder, who has spoken with the media only a handful of times. ‘I really wanted to make sure that we stayed true to what we started with. That required me to become a protector. A guardian.’”

Read more about Snyder and In-N-Out’s enviable success here.