How In-N-Out's Animal Style Burger Was Born From a Customer's Spot

In the early 1960s, someone at an In-N-Out Burger watched one of the restaurant's associates assembling a burger exactly the way he wanted it—mustard cooked right into the beef patty, hand-leafed lettuce, tomato, pickle, extra spread, and grilled onions piled on top. The customer asked for one made the same way. The name Animal Style was born on the spot, a term that stuck because it described, simply and memorably, how that person wanted his burger prepared.

That small moment of customization became the seed of something larger. In-N-Out's founding philosophy—that the company existed to make customers happy—meant the kitchen would build whatever you asked for. Over the decades, as regulars returned with their own preferences, they gave names to their variations. Some ordered double meat. Others wanted three patties and three slices of cheese, or four of each. Someone wrapped their burger in lettuce instead of a bun and called it Protein Style. A former CEO named Guy Snyder created the Flying Dutchman, two patties and two slices of cheese with nothing else, before his death in 1999. These weren't official menu items. They were the language of a place that listened to what people wanted and made it.

For decades, this off-menu world remained genuinely secret—known to regulars and passed along by word of mouth, a kind of insider knowledge that made frequent customers feel like they belonged to something. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2004 that In-N-Out patrons had been ordering Animal Style for years without most people knowing it existed. By 2005, the paper was writing about it as a discovery worth sharing, suggesting readers try their burgers that way and their fries well done, and hunt for the Bible verses hidden in the wrappers and stamped under cups.

Then, in 2005, In-N-Out did something that seemed to contradict the whole premise: the company posted its "Not-So-Secret Menu" online. Animal Style was there. So were the 3x3, the 4x4, the Grilled Cheese, Protein Style, and others. The mystique didn't vanish. Instead, it democratized. People who had never heard of these options suddenly could. The company's Chief Operating Officer Denny Warnick explained the decision simply: whether you ordered from the secret menu or not, In-N-Out cooked every burger fresh to order, exactly as you wanted it. That was the real promise.

Today, more than 400 In-N-Out locations operate across ten states, still privately owned by the Snyder family, which opened the first restaurant in a Los Angeles suburb in 1948. Animal Style has become so well known that it attracts new converts constantly. On Reddit, years after the secret menu went public, people still post about discovering it for the first time—"a game changer," one person wrote. Another user, from Los Angeles, described how their parents, who had been going to In-N-Out since before their child was born, only learned about Animal Style a month ago. The burger that started as one customer's request to replicate what he saw being made continues to surprise people, to feel like a small rebellion against the standardization of fast food, even though it's now listed on the company website for anyone to find.