1) In-n-out is not public. At all. So they don’t have to answer to the pressure of Wall Street and it’s sharks or get a huge stake taken by a hedge fund or Any of those other external pressures of that nature.
2) they’re still majority family owned and the guy who founded it reallly believed in taking great care of his workers
There's an agricultural company called Seaboard Corp that's public. Its's a $5 billion market cap company controlled by the founding family. There are no analysts covering it, they've never once held a conference call, they don't give guidance, etc. The stock is near its all-time high and has returned a staggering 22% annually since 2000. Sure, these are rare, but the market is pretty efficient about this stuff over time.
So it's possible, and I bet it would be possible for In-N-Out as well. But it would probably still be viewed as a hassle, and if no one in the family needs liquidity to buy a super-yacht, or pay a massive divorce settlement, or buy an NBA team, there's no point.
I also think that Amazon is a really bad example. Not only are they growing at a phenomenal rate, but they have been profitable for a few years. The markets would not have tolerated their unprofitability if there wasn't also a pretty clear direction for becoming a profitable business.
Of course, the financial press does a terrible job of explaining these things.
Amazon is a good example because they aren't hostage to the capital markets...they are not consumers of capital, though their reported profits are pathetic in comparison to their market cap. Bezos hasn't gone on an earnings call in...I don't know, maybe forever.
When your business doesn't need to raise money, you have a license to run it like a private company. The vast majority don't, but there are reasons for that, too.
I was interested by this, so I checked.
It's indeed near it's all-time high. Though this is not surprising, it's the case for many companies that aren't dwindling currently, and that didn't have huge peaks around 2000.
But to say it's had a 22% annual return since 2000 is a bit of a misrepresentation. The overall return between 2000 and 2018, divided over the 18 years, might be 22% YoY (not sure, I didn't check -- could well be that it's not). But it's had a number of years with negative returns (e.g. 2015), certainly not 22% returns.
Edit: I checked. A yearly 22% growth from 2000 to today would put it quite a bit higher than its current stock price. So it's not a 22% YoY growth.