In-N-Out headed to Waco

The Califorina-based burger restaurant In-N-Out, which first came to Texas in 2011 and has since opened 16 stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, has plans to come to Waco.

In an email interview with Carl Van Fleet, In-N-Out's vice president for planning and development, we learned the burger joint is getting closer to opening a Waco location.

"As far as Waco is concerned, we are now actually looking south of DFW and that includes Waco," Van Fleet said.

Although he added that it's early in the process, this still represents a huge step forward in Waco getting an In-n-Out. I first contacted Van Fleet a year ago for this blog. He said then that Waco made sense when the burger chain began expanding from its Dallas-Fort Worth base, but they weren't looking at sites outside of DFW at the time.

Van Fleet couldn't give many specifics, but news broke last year that In-N-Out would be opening in Round Rock, which would be the first location outside of Dallas-Fort Worth. Urbanspoon currently has a Round Rock In-N-Out mapped at the highway intersection of Interstate 35 and FM 1431, which would be across the street from IKEA.

One of the things that makes In-N-Out so popular is that it produces all of its own burger patties to ensure freshness and quality. As such, one distribution center in Baldwin Park, Calif., produces the hamburger patties for all 247 In-N-Out burger locations in California as well as Nevada, Utah and Arizona.

So the idea behind expanding to Texas was to open a second hamburger patty distribution center in the Dallas area and then expand throughout the state. They seem to be on an efficient schedule, which means we need to keep following this story.