White Castle (restaurant) facts for kids
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White Castle Building No. 8, originally built in 1936 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and later remodeled. The castle-like features mimic Chicago's Water Tower Pumping Station. White Castle no longer operates this building, which is currently an antique shop.
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| Founded | March 11, 1921 Wichita, Kansas, U.S. |
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U.S.
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Number of locations
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377 |
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Areas served
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Key people
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Lisa Ingram (CEO) |
White Castle is a famous American hamburger restaurant chain. It has 377 locations across 13 states, mostly in the Midwest and New York metropolitan area. Many people believe it was the world's first fast-food hamburger chain, started in 1921.
The company is well-known for its small, square hamburgers called "sliders". These burgers cost five cents until 1929 and then 10 cents until 1949. Sometimes in the 1940s, White Castle even offered five burgers for ten cents with coupons!
Even though White Castle started in Wichita, Kansas, there hasn't been a restaurant there since 1938. In 2014, Time magazine called the White Castle slider the most important burger ever.
Contents
The Story of White Castle
How it Started
Walter (Walt) A. Anderson (1880–1963) was a cook who had run food stands in Wichita since 1916. He opened his first diner in an old streetcar. After opening two more places, he wanted to open a fourth. That's when he met Edgar Waldo "Billy" A. Ingram, who worked in insurance and real estate. Together, they decided to create the White Castle chain.
Building the First White Castle
White Castle officially began in March 1921 in Wichita, Kansas. Anderson and Ingram teamed up to build a chain of restaurants and make their unique product famous.
They started with only $700 for the very first White Castle. This first location was at First and Main streets, but the building is no longer there.
At that time, many Americans were worried about eating ground beef. This was because of a 1906 book called The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. The book showed how unclean the meat packing industry could be. The founders of White Castle wanted to change this public fear. To show how clean their restaurants were, they made them small buildings with shiny stainless steel inside. Their employees also wore spotless uniforms. Their first restaurants in Wichita were a big hit! The company then grew into other Midwestern cities, starting with El Dorado, Kansas in 1922.
Growing the Business
In 1925, White Castle started its own magazine for employees called White Castle Official House Organ. It was first named The Hot Hamburger. This magazine shared news, photos of workers, and updates from different areas. This helped everyone know what was happening across the company. The magazine was published for many years and was later renamed The Slider Times.
The first White Castle buildings, like Indianapolis White Castle #3 built in 1927, had white brick exteriors and steel interiors. The Indianapolis location stayed open until 1979, making it the longest-running fast-food restaurant in the country at that time. White Castle built this style of building from 1924 to 1929.
White Castle Building No. 8 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, built in 1936, is another example. It was made to look like the Chicago Water Tower. It had special white porcelain enamel on steel outside. The building was about 28 feet (8.5 m) by 28 feet (8.5 m) and featured castle-like details.
Many Imitators Appear
White Castle's success led many other restaurants to copy them. These new places often looked like White Castle buildings and had similar names to confuse customers. For example, one early copycat in Wichita was called Little Kastle. Many competitors used names that sounded like "White Castle," like "Blue Castle" or "King's Castle." Despite all these copycats, none of them became as successful as White Castle.
Making Their Own Supplies
When White Castle started, there wasn't a system to support fast-food restaurants like there is today. So, the company built its own bakeries, meat supply plants, and warehouses. They made almost everything themselves, except raising the cows or growing the wheat! Billy Ingram even invented a machine to make the paper hats for employees' uniforms.
In 1932, Ingram created a company called Paperlynen. This company made the paper hats and other paper products for White Castle. It also made products for many other businesses. By 1955, Paperlynen made over 42 million paper hats around the world!
White Castle also started a company called Porcelain Steel Buildings in 1934. This company made special movable buildings with steel frames and porcelain panels. These buildings could be put together quickly at any restaurant site. This was the first time this material was used in building design.
Changes in Leadership and Location
In 1933, Walter Anderson sold his part of the business to Billy Ingram. The next year, the company moved its main office to Columbus, Ohio. Billy Ingram's son, E. W. Ingram Jr., and then his grandson, E. W. Ingram III, later took over as the head of the company.
White Castle has always been a private company. This means it's owned by a family or a small group, not by many shareholders. All its restaurants are company-owned, meaning they are not franchised (except for short times in Japan and China).
Cravers' Hall of Fame
In 2001, for its 80th anniversary, White Castle started the Cravers' Hall of Fame. "Cravers" are fans who are chosen each year based on stories they or others write about them. Only a few stories are picked, making it a very special honor.
People chosen for the Hall of Fame get to visit Columbus, Ohio, where White Castle's main office is. The company pays for their travel, food, and hotel. They also receive a special award in front of many White Castle leaders and team members.
New Locations and Menu Items
The first White Castle in the western U.S. opened in Las Vegas Strip on January 27, 2015. This was the first time White Castle expanded outside the Midwest and Northeast in 56 years! On opening day, so many people wanted food that the restaurant had to close for two hours to get more supplies. A White Castle leader said they sold 4,000 sliders per hour in the first 12 hours! Other locations later opened in Las Vegas and Jean.
In September 2015, White Castle started offering Veggie Sliders with dairy-free buns. This gave customers a vegan option.
In December 2015, Lisa Ingram became the fourth CEO of White Castle. She is the daughter of the previous CEO, E.W. “Bill” Ingram III. In 2018, White Castle also began selling meat-free Impossible Burgers, which taste and feel like real beef burgers.
The first White Castle in Arizona opened in Scottsdale on October 23, 2019.
On November 25, 2019, White Castle announced it would return to Florida after leaving in 1968. The first new restaurant opened in Orlando on May 3, 2021. This Orlando location is the world's largest White Castle and opened during the company's 100th anniversary.
Where You Can Find White Castle
United States Locations
Because the Ingram family has always kept White Castle private and avoided debt, the chain has stayed smaller than its main competitors. There are 377 White Castle restaurants. Most are in the Midwest, Kentucky, and Tennessee. There are also about 50 in the New York - New Jersey area, three in Las Vegas, one in Scottsdale, Arizona, one in Orlando, Florida, and two in Shanghai, China. To compare, McDonald's has over 36,000 locations worldwide!
However, White Castle does sell frozen sliders in grocery stores across the country.
Current White Castle locations in the United States include:
- Chicago (and Kenosha, Wisconsin)
- Cincinnati
- Columbus
- Dayton
- Detroit
- Indianapolis
- Las Vegas
- Lexington
- Louisville
- Minneapolis–St. Paul
- Nashville
- New York - New Jersey (and Allentown, Pennsylvania)
- Orlando
- Scottsdale, Arizona
- St. Louis
Louisville and Columbus also have factories that make products for grocery stores, like meat and buns. The company's main office and the Porcelain Steel Buildings division are in Columbus, Ohio.
In the early 2000s, White Castle tried to open restaurants in Philadelphia, Kansas City, and Cleveland-Akron. But these restaurants closed within a few years.
White Castle Around the World
White Castle has tried to open restaurants outside the United States through franchise deals. They had restaurants in Singapore, Malaysia, and Japan in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They also tried in Mexico and South Korea. However, these international restaurants did not last long. For example, the only Korean restaurant in Seoul closed by 1993.
In 2017, White Castle opened its first two restaurants in China in Shanghai. These locations offer beef sliders, plus unique items like a spicy tofu slider and a cherry duck slider. At the time, these were the only White Castle restaurants outside the U.S.
Even though White Castle has never opened restaurants in Canada, Canadians can buy White Castle hamburgers from the frozen food section in some grocery stores and at Walmart.
- Countries that used to have White Castle restaurants
What White Castle Sells
White Castle sells its famous sandwiches in boxes of 30, called a Crave Case. The number 30 is special because that's how many burgers can be cooked on one of their grills at the same time. You can also get a "Crave Crate" with 100 burgers!
You can also find many White Castle products, mostly frozen, in grocery stores.
White Castle has tried different ideas over the years. For a while, some locations shared space with Church's Chicken, a fried chicken chain. This partnership ended around 2010. Around 2012, White Castle also experimented with a brand called Laughing Noodle, which offered different food options, but this idea was later stopped.
As mentioned, White Castle started in Wichita, Kansas, but there hasn't been a restaurant there since 1938. It's one of the few restaurant chains that doesn't have a location in its original city.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, White Castle gave free meals to healthcare workers. In May 2021, they also offered a free dessert to anyone who showed proof of vaccination.
White Castle's Big Impact
Walter Anderson is known for inventing the hamburger bun. He also helped create the idea of a kitchen as an assembly line, where cooks do specific tasks. This helped start the modern fast-food industry. Because White Castle made sure all its restaurants used the same methods, customers knew they would get the same food and service every time.
Billy Ingram's smart business ideas not only made White Castle successful but also helped make the hamburger popular. On January 14, 2014, Time magazine called the White Castle slider the most influential burger of all time.
See also
In Spanish: White Castle (restaurante) para niños
