by Jon Styf
Tennessee’s Department of Economic and Community Development has agreed to give In-N-Out Burgers a $2.75 million incentive payment as it creates an eastern territory office in Franklin.
A press release on the agreement said In-N-Out plans to invest $125.5 million in the state and it will open its first restaurants in Nashville in 2026. The restaurant group said there will be 277 jobs in Williamson County at a 100,000-square-foot office, set to begin construction in 2024 and finish by 2026.
The building will have jobs that support the restaurants, from operations management to HR and IT.
In-N-Out’s move was announced on Jan. 10 by Gov. Bill Lee at a press conference, but the incentive was not announced at that time. The State Funding Board meets on Feb. 15 and the incentive will likely be approved then.
In-N-Out has 385 restaurants in California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Texas, Oregon and Colorado but the Nashville restaurants will be the first east of Texas.
“This expansion is significant for our company,” In-N-Out Owner and President Lynsi Snyder-Ellingson said in a press release. “For many years, we’ve heard requests from our customers in Tennessee to consider opening locations near them, further east than we’ve ever been. Our customers are our most important asset at In-N-Out, and we very much look forward to serving them in years to come and becoming part of the wonderful communities in the Volunteer State.”
The department consistently announces economic development projects without releasing the amount of incentives given to a company.
Later, that information is released before it will be voted on at State Funding Board meetings.
Last year, The Center Square asked why the department won’t release the incentives at the time a project is announced.
“Projects are announced when a company has made a commitment to make a capital investment and create new jobs in Tennessee,” wrote Lindsey Tipton, Public Information Officer for the TNECD. “Announcements are typically made prior to a public meeting (such as State Funding Board or a local government meeting) when the existence of the project would be revealed at that meeting.
“Due to state contracting laws, the contracts are not finalized at the time of an announcement. State public records laws provide that the contracts themselves and the information contained in those contracts are not considered public records until the contracts are finalized.”
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Jon Styf is an award-winning editor and reporter who has worked in Illinois, Texas, Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan in local newsrooms over the past 20 years, working for Shaw Media, Hearst and several other companies. Styf is a reporter for The Center Square.
Photo “In-N-Out Burger” by Dan Nguyen. CC BY-NC 2.0.
They won’t need the clawback Joe, those Ford, Amazon, Google and Facebook layoffs have to go somewhere.
But ever since Lockdown Lee decimated the restaurant industry in Tennessee (not the USDOD/NIH bioweapon virus that no has been held accountable for), this industry seems to suffer chronic staffing shortages, even after Dementia Joe is no longer competing against them with $600/week. The In/Out “jobs” already exist, and are unfilled. Or maybe Lockdown Lee never drives down any streets in Tennessee to see the permanent now hiring, open interviews signs. Or how dining rooms are still closed because they can’t be staffed.
Well, we need to create more business for Pfizer, right?
Elvis is dead. Willie is still playing music.
Inside Monday Night’s Nomination of Pfizer VP Josh Brown to Williamson County School Board
https://tennesseestar.com/2021/10/12/inside-monday-nights-nomination-of-pfizer-vp-josh-brown-to-williamson-county-school-board/
More taxpayer dollars going to crony capitalism. If Tennessee is such a great place to locate a business then no monetary “incentive” should be required.
Is there a clawback provision if In-N-Out fails to meet their projections on the number of jobs this will create? I figure that is a silly question, but I thought that it should be asked.
This government operation seems to have too much money in their slush fund.