Bed Bath & Beyond is Abandoning Failing California: High Taxes, High Fees, High Wages, ‘Endless Regulations’

Last month we were talking non-stop about In-N-Out President Lynsie Snyder relocating her family and company headquarters to Tennessee.

This month we are talking about Bed Bath & Beyond announcing Wednesday that the company won’t open or operate retail stores in California, saying the decision “isn’t about politics – it’s about reality.”

Gov. Newsom’s office accused us of spreading misinformation and demanding a correction to our article about In-N-Out.

Here is what the Globe reported:

California ranks dead last once again in Chief Executive Magazine’s Best & Worst States For Business 2025. Tennessee ranks #1 once again, and now “The Volunteer State” is getting another of California’s oldest and one of the best known businesses in the country: After 77 Years in California, In-N-Out Is Moving to Tennessee.

Lynsi Snyder, President of In-N-Out is moving her family to Tennessee, and plans to open Tennessee In-N-Out restaurants by 2026.

California Governor Gavin Newsom and the state’s Democrat Marxist class have sent yet-another successful California business packing, looking for greener pastures, lower taxes, fewer regulations and a family-friendly environment.

“There’s a lot of great things about California, but raising a family is not easy here,” Lynsi Snyder said during a recent appearance on the Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey podcast.

“Doing business is not easy here now,” Snyder said of California.

Snyder said that in addition to moving her family to Franklin, Tennessee, a significant portion of the company will move as well. Some corporate employees will move to Tennessee, and others will remain in Southern California.

Snyder said they are making a long-term moving plan to give employees time to make their plans, as well.

Snyder shared her frustrations with California policies including the crime issues the stores have had in San Francisco and Oakland. She also the shared frustrations with the impossible policies during Gov. Newsom’s Covid lockdowns – “so many pressures and hoops we were made to jump through,” Snyder said. Masks, plastic shields, and the state made restaurants check customers’ vaccine cards during the Covid flu era.

“You’ve got to do this, you have to wear a mask, you gotta put this plastic thing up between us and our customers and it was really terrible you know. And I look back and I’m like, ‘Man, maybe we should have just pushed even harder on some of that stuff and dealt with all of the legal backlash.’”

No correction or apology was needed.

Fox News reports that Bed Bath & Beyond Executive Chairman Marcus Lemonis told ‘The Big Money Show’ that Bed Bath & Beyond will relaunch 300 stores nationwide — excluding California — while blasting high costs, strict regulations, and weak crime enforcement.

I am guessing that Bed Bath & Beyond wants to prevent their stores from being ripped off by thugs. And avoid the state’s absurd regulations. And high taxes. And failing cities. And politicians who won’t give them the time of day to discuss these issues.

“California has created one of the most overregulated, expensive, and risky environments for businesses in America,” Lemonis said, noting that the state’s policies created a system “that makes it harder to employ people, harder to keep doors open, and harder to deliver value to customers.”

California currently has the highest unemployment rate among all 50 states.

California’s governor, who has a strained relationship with the truth, denies that Californians and their businesses are fleeing to other states, despite mountains of evidence, well-documented news articles, and economists across the country chronicling the phenomenon.

California’s own Chevron Oil company announced in 2024 that it is moving its headquarters to Houston, Texas from San Ramon, California – another big business to flee the Golden State. Chevron joins X/Twitter, Space X, Oracle, Hewlett Packard, Charles Schwab, and Toyota Motor North America, to name a few of the mega-businesses that departed California because of the state’s leftist/Marxist politics and regulatory environment.

Bed Bath & Beyond filed Chapter 11 in 2023. Chapter 11 is a business reorganization, something Gavin Newsom doesn’t understand based on his nasty X post:

“The company that already went bankrupt and closed every store across the country two years ago? Ok.”

That won’t age well.

Marcus Lemonis was far more gracious in his reply:

“We don’t want the government telling us how to run our business,” Lemonis told Brenberg. “And to do business in California, quite frankly, for my shareholders and my customers, I don’t think we can deliver a good product and make a profit, which is the idea behind business.”

“Lemonis said the state’s budget surpluses come at the expense of ‘ordinary citizens who are paying too much and businesses who are squeezed until they break,’ and Bed Bath & Beyond ‘won’t participate in a system that he says undermines both its customers and shareholders.’”

That’s going to leave a mark… another mark on Gavin Newsom’s sickly political record.