Lynsi Torres, the 30-year-old owner and president of In-N-Out Burger, is one of the youngest female billionaires on the planet, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire's Index. 
 
 How did that happen? 
 
 She inherited the fast food chain after a series of deaths in the family, Seth Lubove at Bloomberg News reported. 
 
 In-N-Out was founded by her grandparents, Harry and Esther Snyder. Harry died in 1976 and one of his sons, Rich, took over. Rich died in a plane crash when he was 41, and Torres' father, Harry Guy Snyder, took over in 1993. Guy died in 1999 of a prescription drug overdose at the age of 49. Esther, Torres' grandmother, controlled In-N-Out until 2006, when she died at 86. 
 
 That left Torres as the only heir to In-N-Out. She currently has half ownership through a trust, but will get the entire company upon turning 35. 
 
 Torres doesn't have a college degree and is on her third marriage. Oh, and as Gawker's Hamilton Nolan noted, she's also a competitive drag racer. 
 
 She's pretty mysterious, too. Apparently, even people in the restaurant industry don't know much about her. 
 
 “I have no clue about her,” restaurant consultant Janet Lowder told Bloomberg. “I was even surprised there was a granddaughter.” 
 
 We do know that she owns a $17.4 million, 16,600-square-foot mansion in Bradbury, California. It has seven bedrooms, 16 bathrooms, and a whole bunch of amenities. ||||| Join us on Facebook Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. 
 
 Sign up for the Curbed National newsletter Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. ||||| It's not easy to make a story about hamburgers interesting, but as we discover in Stacy Perman's "In-N-Out Burger," at least one fast-food narrative comes complete with tasty helpings of drug smuggling, corporate espionage, untimely death, conniving ex-wives, feckless in-laws, ne'er-do-well progeny, heroin, Christian fundamentalists and Dan Quayle. It's an odd assemblage, linked only by the ill-fated and often unlikable members of the Snyder clan, founders of a string of West Coast hamburger restaurants known as In-N-Out Burger. And since Ms. Perman's overcooked book means to celebrate the Snyders and their company as "a testament to old-fashioned values . . . reminiscent of a simpler time when people, loyalty, and a freshly-made juicy hamburger meant something," she's in a bit of a pickle. 
 
 "Harry Snyder's dream was a modest one," Ms. Perman writes, by way of introduction. "He was going to start his own little food business -- a hamburger stand." And we're off. The year is 1948. The place, Baldwin Park, 17 miles east of Los Angeles. Our budding mogul is a 35-year-old first-generation American, a veteran and a newlywed. Harry and Esther gin up $5,000, buy a small lot fronting what is soon to be a major artery between L.A. and Palm Springs, and begin selling burgers for a quarter and soft drinks for a dime. 
 
 Good timing. Tender shoots of fresh highway crisscross California, cars are plentiful and cheap, and the family meal has already begun its migration from dinner table to dashboard. Harry sticks a microphone and speaker on a pole, strings a wire from the lot to the grill, and rides the car-hop wave. By the book's end, In-N-Out is pulling down $450 million in annual sales. We're getting ahead of the story, though. 
 
 Ms. Perman is a business writer, most recently at BusinessWeek, and "In-N-Out Burger" is published by Collins Business. Thus one cracks the book expecting a business lesson or two. And voilà: Harry Snyder's formula for success, we learn, "was not based on some fancy management methodology"; it was "based on three simple words: 'Quality, Cleanliness, and Service.' " This is relayed on page 44. If you've bought the book seeking business wisdom, you can stop reading. You're done. 
 
 In-N-Out Burger 
 
 By Stacy Perman 
 
 (Collins Business, 345 pages, $24.99) 
 
 Ah, but our tale is not, though it unfolds in a way that Ms. Perman cannot soon control. She wants us to admire the chain and its plucky founder, à la Sam Walton, but the company benefits mostly from blind luck, and her protagonist is a bit of a martinet. Fearful of debt, Harry Snyder expands on the pay-as-you-go plan. As it happens, such flintiness serves the company well. It never overreaches, never over-extends. While Ray Kroc (McDonald's) and Carl Karcher (Carl's Jr.) attach franchise-fueled booster rockets to their fast-food businesses, Ma and Pa Snyder take it slow and steady, one or two million in sales at a time. The relative scarcity of their burgers only adds to the appeal, and the chain gains a mystique. 
 
 Cut to 1976. McDonald's boasts 4,000 restaurants; Harry has only 18, but things are going pretty well. Then, rather abruptly, he dies. Passing over the elder Snyder son, Guy, Esther and the board install 24-year-old, portly, dyslexic Rich Snyder as president. "The upending of primogeniture created a conflict between the two brothers whose relationship was already exacerbated by personality clashes," Ms. Perman writes. "It had the emotional intensity of the biblical story of Jacob and Esau without, of course, the bloodlust or deceit." Um, sure. 
 
 Rich's reign lasts 74 pages. Not much of a tinkerer, he leaves untouched most of his father's less-is-more business practices, except for an unconsummated flirtation with a chicken sandwich. Learning of the plan, Guy went "ballistic," according to a friend. "He was not going to go for that at all." 
 
 Crisis averted, Rich devotes his energy to buffing his conservative bona fides. He gives hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Republican Party and adds "The Best Enterprise is a Free Enterprise 'God Bless America' " to In-N-Out stationery. He prints Bible verses on the chain's soda cups and signs off on In-N-Out radio spots that ask listeners to let Jesus into their lives. Confronted with the inevitable complaints, Rich snaps: "Well, that's too bad. This is God's company, not mine." Soon he's supping at the White House, eating roast loin of veal with Dan Quayle. He marries a woman 14 years his junior, builds a mansion and, then, rather abruptly, dies in a plane crash. At the funeral, hamburgers are served. 
 
 It's now 1993. Enter Guy Snyder. Awkward, also portly, and prone to substance abuse, he is not an ideal chief executive for a company now generating $133 million in sales. Before long Guy is shooting heroin, sending a company executive into Mexico to smuggle drugs, and getting busted (on Christmas Day) with a briefcase stuffed with pot, Valium, Klonopin, a 9mm Glock, a switchblade and $27,475 in cash. Poor Ms. Perman does her darnedest to put a sunny spin on things. "It was due in no small part to the talented and loyal executive team that In-N-Out Burger remained on a stable and successful course." No doubt. 
 
 We're running of out time, so let me speed things up. Rather abruptly, Guy dies in 1999 of a drug-related heart attack, precipitating an ugly tussle for control of the burger chain between one of Guy's ex-wives, 79-year-old Esther, and one of those talented and loyal In-N-Out executives. Charges fly over the misuse of corporate funds and sweetheart deals. Lawsuits get filed. At one point, Esther is made a prisoner in her home, with phone calls and visitors screened by her ex-daughter-in-law. 
 
 Then, rather abruptly, Esther dies in 2006, leaving Guy's 24-year-old daughter to inherit the company (now worth almost half a billion dollars). With only a high-school education and an affinity for joining off-beat Christian sects, Lynsi Martinez "lacks sufficient personal maturity, experience, and skill necessary to successfully run In-N-Out," or so testifies an In-N-Out board member. No matter, as Ms. Perman writes: "The dynasty had been preserved." 
 
 So, what to make of all this? Ms. Perman repeatedly tells us that the story of this "family-owned, fiercely independent chain" is in fact simply the story of America, writ small. Alas, she may be right. 
 
 Mr. Tayman is the author of "The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai." 
 
 Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A13 ||||| Lunchtime at the flagship In-N-Out Burger restaurant in Baldwin Park, California, is a study in efficiency. As the order line swells, smiling workers swoop in to operate empty cash registers. Another staffer cleans tables, asking customers if they’re enjoying their hamburger. Outside, a woman armed with a hand-held ordering machine speeds up the drive-through line. 
 
 Such service has helped In-N-Out create a rabid fan base -- and make Lynsi Torres, the chain’s 30-year-old owner and president, one of the youngest female billionaires on Earth. New store openings often resemble product releases from Apple Inc. (AAPL), with customers lined up hours in advance. City officials plead with the Irvine, California-based company to open restaurants in their municipalities. 
 
 “They have done a fantastic job of building and maintaining a kind of cult following,” said Bob Goldin, executive vice president of Chicago-based food industry research firm Technomic Inc. “Someone would love to buy them.” 
 
 That someone includes billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who told a group of visiting business students in 2005 that he’d like to own the chain, according to an account of the meeting on the UCLA Anderson School of Management website. 
 
 Photographer: Libby Volgyes/The Palm Beach Post/Zuma Press In-N-Out burger and fries in Salinas, California. Close In-N-Out burger and fries in Salinas, California. Close Open Photographer: Libby Volgyes/The Palm Beach Post/Zuma Press In-N-Out burger and fries in Salinas, California. 
 
 The thrice-married Torres has watched her family expand In- N-Out from a single drive-through hamburger stand founded in 1948 in Baldwin Park by her grandparents, Harry and Esther Snyder, into a fast-food empire worth more than $1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. 
 
 Biblical Citations 
 
 Famous for its Double-Double cheeseburgers, fresh ingredients and discreet biblical citations on its cups and food wrappers, In-N-Out has almost 280 units in five states. The closely held company had sales of about $625 million in 2012, after applying a five-year compound annual growth rate of 4.6 percent to industry trade magazine Nation’s Restaurant News’s 2011 sales estimate of $596 million. 
 
 In-N-Out is valued at about $1.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg ranking, based on the average price-to-earnings, enterprise value-to-sales and enterprise value-to-earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization multiples of five publicly traded peers: Yum! Brands Inc. (YUM), Jack in the Box Inc., Wendy’s Co. (WEN), Sonic Corp. (SONC) and McDonald’s Corp. (MCD) Enterprise value is defined as market capitalization plus total debt minus cash. 
 
 One private equity executive who invests in the food and restaurant industry said the operation could be valued at more than $2 billion, based on its productivity per unit, profitability and potential for expansion. The person asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak about his company’s potential investments. 
 
 Photographer: Adam Lau/AP Photo Cars line up in the drive-thru lane at In-N-Out Burger in Baldwin Park, California. Close Cars line up in the drive-thru lane at In-N-Out Burger in Baldwin Park, California. Close Open Photographer: Adam Lau/AP Photo Cars line up in the drive-thru lane at In-N-Out Burger in Baldwin Park, California. 
 
 Plane Crash 
 
 “In-N-Out Burger is a private company and this valuation of the company is nothing more than speculation based on estimates from people with no knowledge of In-N-Out’s financials, which are and always have been private,” Carl Van Fleet, the company’s vice president of planning and development, said in an e-mailed statement. 
 
 Torres, who has never appeared on an international wealth ranking and declined to comment for this article, came to control In-N-Out after several family deaths. When her grandfather Harry died in 1976, his second son, Rich, took over as company president and expanded the chain to 93 restaurants from 18. 
 
 Torres’s father, Harry Guy Snyder, became chief executive following Rich’s 1993 death in a plane crash at age 41. The chain expanded to 140 locations under Guy, who inherited his father’s passion for drag racing. 
 
 Ford Cobra 
 
 When he died of a prescription drug overdose at age 49 in 1999, Snyder’s estate included 27 cars and other vehicles, including a 1965 Ford Cobra and a pair of 1960’s-era Dodge Dart muscle cars, according to his will. 
 
 Torres’s grandmother Esther -- Harry’s widow -- maintained control of the company until her death in 2006 at age 86. When she died, Torres was the sole family heir. She now controls the company through a trust that gave her half ownership when she turned 30 last year, and will give her full control when she turns 35. The company has no other owners, according to an Arizona state corporation commission filing. 
 
 Few in the restaurant industry have met or know much about the hamburger heiress. 
 
 “I have no clue about her,” said Janet Lowder, a Rancho Palos Verdes, California, restaurant consultant, who said she was one of the few people to extract the company’s internal finances from Esther Snyder in the 1980’s for industry-wide surveys. “I was even surprised there was a granddaughter.” 
 
 Limited Menu 
 
 Technomic’s Goldin said the lack of visibility extends to management. 
 
 “I’ve been in the industry a long time, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of their people at an industry meeting,” he said. “They’re very quiet. That’s their culture.” 
 
 Torres has little formal management training and no college degree. The company was structured to carry on after the demise of its founders, according to a 2003 Harvard Business School case study. In-N-Out has never franchised to outside operators, the Harvard researchers said, giving up a low-cost revenue stream in exchange for maintaining quality control. 
 
 In a 2005 article in the Harvard Business Review, Boston- based Bain & Co. consultants Mark Gottfredson and Keith Aspinall attributed the company’s estimated 20 percent profit margins at the time to the simplicity of its limited menu. Contrast that with competitors such as Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonald’s and Miami-based Burger King Worldwide Inc. (BKW), which regularly change their food offerings. 
 
 Over-sized Tires 
 
 “Other chains seem to change positions as often as they change their underwear,” said Bob Sandelman, chief executive officer of San Clemente, California-based food industry researcher Sandelman & Associates. 
 
 Butchers carve fresh beef chuck delivered daily to the company’s distribution facility in Baldwin Park, where hamburger patties leave for restaurants on 18-wheeled refrigerated trucks outfitted with over-sized tires so the In-N-Out logo can be better seen on the highway. The company only expands as far as its trucks can travel in a day, either from the Baldwin Park complex or a newer facility in Dallas, the only two places where the company makes hamburger patties. 
 
 ‘Calculated Growth’ 
 
 In-N-Out expanded to Texas in 2011, after building a warehouse and the patty facility. There are now 16 units in the state. Conrad Lyon, a Los Angeles-based senior restaurants analyst for B. Riley Caris, said additional expansion will continue to be gradual. 
 
 “I would expect slow, calculated growth,” he said in a phone interview. “To outsiders the company’s growth out West likely appears sluggish. However, it was management carefully leveraging its brand, real estate and distribution. As a private company-owned system, In-N-Out has the luxury of calling the shots to replicate its success without succumbing to potentially detrimental outside influences.” 
 
 The company’s pace of expansion was one of the issues at stake in an exchange of lawsuits in 2006 between Torres, In-N- Out executives and Richard Boyd, the company’s former vice president of real estate and development. Boyd was one of two trustees overseeing the trust that controls the company’s stock on behalf of Torres. 
 
 Complaints, Allegations 
 
 Among other allegations filed in California state court in Los Angeles, Boyd claimed Torres and Mark Taylor -- her brother- in-law from a half-sister -- conspired to remove Esther Snyder from the company to gain control of In-N-Out. He filed a separate petition with the probate court seeking to prevent Torres from removing him as a trustee. 
 
 Torres denied the allegations in both a formal answer to Boyd’s complaint and a 2006 letter to the editor published in the Los Angeles Times, in which she said she only had “minimal involvement” in the company’s business decisions, and didn’t favor rapid expansion. 
 
 The company in turn filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Boyd, alleging fraud and embezzlement in connection to Boyd’s relationship to one of In-N-Out’s outside construction firms. Boyd’s lawyer, Philip Heller of Fagelbaum & Heller LLP in Los Angeles, said all the litigation was dismissed following a confidential settlement. Boyd resigned from the company and the trust. 
 
 “They were all in the end amicably resolved,” Heller said. 
 
 16 Bathrooms 
 
 Since then, Torres has refused most interview requests, even by author Stacy Perman, who wrote a 352-page book about In- N-Out in 2009. Torres asked to set up a meeting with the author after the book’s publication, but it never occurred, Perman wrote in an afterword to the 2010 paperback edition. 
 
 Torres popped up in real-estate blogs in September, after buying a $17.4 million, 16,600-square-foot mansion in the wealthy enclave of Bradbury, California, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. A Realtor.com listing for the house described it as having seven bedrooms, 16 bathrooms, a pool, a tennis court and other amenities. 
 
 Torres is one of almost 90 hidden billionaires discovered by Bloomberg News since the debut of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index in March 2012. Among them: Dirce Camargo, the richest woman in Brazil, and Elaine Marshall, the fourth-richest woman in America. 
 
 Like Camargo and Marshall, Torres maintains a low profile. Her most visible presence has been on the drag strip. She competes in the National Hot Rod Association’s Super Gas and Top Sportsman Division 7 categories, alternating between a 1970 Plymouth Barracuda and a 1984 Chevrolet Camaro, according to NHRA results. Her third husband, Val Torres Jr., is also a race- car driver. 
 
 ‘Open Question’ 
 
 She also inherited her Uncle Rich’s interest in religion, funding a non-profit organization called Healing Hearts & Nations that proselytizes in Africa, according to a 2010 Form 990 foundation filing that lists Torres as the chief financial officer. Former In-N-Out executive Boyd alleged in his 2006 cross-complaint against the company that Torres attempted to fire him because he was not a “man of God,” and because he didn’t attend prayer meetings at her home. She denied Boyd’s claims in the company’s answer. 
 
 Whether the mother of twins will maintain ownership in the chain after she gains full control in five years is uncertain, said John Gordon, founder of San Diego-based restaurant consultant Pacific Management Consulting Group. 
 
 “It’s an open question whether she may have different feelings later,” said Gordon. “Like most kids, or second or third generations of a very wealthy family, I don’t know that she has restaurant blood in her veins, or if she’s a trust fund baby.” 
 
 To contact the reporter on this story: Seth Lubove in Los Angeles at slubove@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Matthew G. Miller at mmiller144@bloomberg.net
– As far as company owners go, Lynsi Torres has to be among the most intriguing. A Bloomberg article attempts to put a finger on the mysterious In-N-Out Burger president who, at age 30, is one of the youngest female billionaires on the planet. As Seth Lubove reports, she ended up at the helm of the company, estimated by Bloomberg to be valued at $1.1 billion, by way of birth and more than a few tragic deaths: Her father took control after his 41-year-old brother died in a 1993 plane crash; he died after ODing on prescription drugs six years later. Torres' grandmother then grabbed the reins until her death in 2006, which left the company with a single heir: Torres, who gained 50% ownership after turning 30 in 2012; she'll claim the other half upon her 35th birthday. And things get more intriguing from there: She's been married three times and has twins, reports Lubove, but no college degree. She largely chooses not to give interviews, but her name quietly and occasionally pops up in the press: In September, she was reported to have purchased a $17.4 million 16-bathroom mansion in Bradbury, California; she's also a drag racer who competes in two National Hot Rod Association categories; and a 2009 Wall Street Journal article noted her "affinity for joining off-beat Christian sects." Business Insider has an image of the colorful heiress, and Bloomberg has more, including a rundown of a 2006 lawsuit a former VP filed against Torres, which claimed she was trying to wrest control of In-N-Out from her grandmother. Or click for another intriguing burger-chain story.