In-N-Out Eyes Arkansas, Mississippi and Oklahoma in Eastward Push

In-N-Out Burger is considering opening restaurants in Arkansas, Mississippi and Oklahoma, owner and president Lynsi Snyder said in a recently posted interview on the company's website. The three states would push the 445-location chain's footprint deeper into the central United States and mark its next move in a slow, deliberate march east.

Snyder laid out the thinking in a conversation with actor Terry Crews. The logic is supply chain, not guesswork: In-N-Out's Tennessee restaurants receive supplies shipped from Texas, and Arkansas, Mississippi and Oklahoma already sit inside that distribution path. Adding restaurants there would let the chain leverage logistics infrastructure it has already built, rather than extend it into new territory.

How big is In-N-Out right now?

The numbers frame the move. The chain:

• Operates 445 restaurants across 10 states.
• Runs 289 of those locations in California, its home market.
• Entered Tennessee last year, its farthest push east to date.
• Plans to open its first New Mexico location next year.
• Intends to keep expanding within California as well.

That California-heavy footprint is the backdrop for everything else. A chain with 289 of its 445 restaurants in one state still has most of its operational weight anchored on the West Coast, and each eastern outpost represents a bigger logistical commitment than the raw location count suggests.

The company was founded just outside Los Angeles in 1948, and for most of its history it stayed closely identified with the West Coast. The Tennessee entry changed that calculation. It put In-N-Out's easternmost restaurants hundreds of miles from its core markets and forced the chain to build a supply line long enough to reach them — which is exactly the infrastructure that now makes the three new candidate states attractive.

Why the expansion is grounded in distribution

The clearest signal in Snyder's comments is the sequencing. Arkansas, Mississippi and Oklahoma are not being floated because of population data or franchise demand — In-N-Out doesn't franchise. They're on the list because trucks already run through those states on the way to Tennessee. In a business where freshness standards and tightly controlled supply chains define the model, distribution reach effectively draws the map of where the chain can grow.

That constraint cuts both ways. It slows expansion, but it also means each new cluster of states becomes cheaper to serve once a regional hub exists. Tennessee created the corridor. The three states under consideration would fill it in.

California expansion plans, mentioned alongside the eastern push, signal the chain isn't abandoning its base while it stretches outward.

How fast is the chain growing?

The commercial case for expansion is strong. In-N-Out's domestic sales grew about 10% last year compared with 2024, according to a June report in the Wall Street Journal citing Technomic data. Among U.S. burger chains, only New York-based Shake Shack posted faster growth over that period.

A 10% sales gain on a 445-restaurant base gives the privately held chain both the cash flow and the confidence to fund new markets. Regional burger chains broadly are showing outsized growth, and In-N-Out sits near the top of that group.

Nothing in Snyder's remarks came with opening dates, location counts or construction timelines for the three states. What she did make clear is the direction: eastward, along the trucks' existing routes.