Washington\u2019s first In-N-Out Burger<\/a> opened Thursday morning in Ridgefield, and fans lined up for hours \u2014 some overnight \u2014 to be among the first to grab a burger.<\/p>\nThe restaurant opened with a ribbon-cutting, drawing a crowd that quickly filled a queue in the back of the parking lot. The drive-thru saw steady traffic, filling up a nearby gravel lot with several lines, some customers waiting a couple hours to place their order.<\/p>\n
Kevin Kehn of Milton, Wash., near Seattle was the first in the drive-thru line, arriving around 8:15 p.m. the night before.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was actually technically the second person, but the person in front of me had to leave, so I got first spot,\u201d Kehn said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His order included three Double-Doubles, three fries and even an unsalted \u201cpuppy patty\u201d for his dog. For being first, Kehn received a T-shirt, a burger coin and a wristband.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just going to frame everything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Others weren\u2019t far behind. Steve Mathis showed up just after midnight and waited to place his order from within.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be second in line,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mathis called the Double-Double the most popular order: \u201cThe cool thing about it is you can customize it. You can have extra everything; you can have extra onion. Whatever you want \u2014 you can have the onions fried, you can have it chopped, you can have it whole.\u201d<\/p>\n
Customers of all ages packed into the new location. One 16-year-old told KGW, \u201cIt\u2019s honestly just the best burger I\u2019ve ever had. I\u2019ve been waiting for this day all my life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
His friend added simply: \u201cI came here just for these fries \u2014 man, amazing!\u201d<\/p>\n
For families, the opening became an event of its own.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMy husband and my kids came by about 9 o\u2019clock to do a little recon mission, and he saw that it was open, so we ended up being fourth in line,\u201d one parent said. \u201cCore memories, the things you do for kids.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
A young child summed up his order plainly: \u201cA cheeseburger and soda.\u201d<\/p>\n
Denny Warnick, In-N-Out\u2019s chief operating officer, said the chain expects to continue hiring.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll continue to hire after the store opens; the starting wage is $18.75 an hour, and the good news is associates get raises pretty quickly from there,\u201d Warnick said.<\/p>\n
He added that the company worked closely with the city and transportation officials to prepare for the rush.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cWe\u2019ve put a lot of thought into making the best plan that we can because the last thing we\u2019d like to do is interrupt everybody else\u2019s day,\u201d Warnick said.<\/p>\n
Even with the long waits, fans said the payoff was worth it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel great. I think I was No. 3 in ticket order to get food,\u201d one customer said. \u201cYeah, it feels amazing to finally have In-N-Out closer to home.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are four In-N-Out locations in Oregon and another location planned for Vancouver.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In-N-Out fans lined up overnight for the first Washington state location’s opening in Ridgefield, embracing long waits for…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":163422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-163421","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115066004122148100","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}