White Castle (restaurant)

White Castle

Company type	Private
Industry	Food
Founded	Wichita, Kansas, USA, September 13, 1921
Headquarters	Columbus, Ohio
Key people	Billy Ingram, Walter Anderson, Founders
Products	Fast food, including hamburgers, french fries, and dairy desserts
Website	www.whitecastle.com

File:WhiteCastleCheeseburgerbox.png

A White Castle Cheeseburger box.

White Castle is the oldest American hamburger fast food restaurant chain. It is known for square burgers, sometimes referred to as "sliders" (officially spelled and trademarked as "Slyders"). They were priced at five cents until the 1940s, and remained at ten cents for years thereafter while growing smaller. For several years, when the original burgers sold for five cents, White Castle periodically ran promotional ads in local newspapers which contained coupons offering five burgers for ten cents, takeout only. The typical White Castle restaurant architecture features a white exterior with a crenelated tower at one corner to resemble a medieval castle. The Chicago Water Tower, which stands on Michigan Avenue's Magnificent Mile, is said to be the model for the classic building.

History

White Castle was founded in 1921 in Wichita, Kansas. Billy Ingram partnered with cook Walter Anderson to make White Castle into a chain of restaurants and market White Castle. At the time, Americans were hesitant to eat ground beef after Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle had publicized the poor sanitation practices of the meat packing industry. Founders Edgar Waldo "Billy" Ingram and Walter Anderson set out to change the public's perception of the cleanliness of the industry. They constructed small buildings with hygenically white exteriors and stainless steel interiors, and outfitted their employees with spotless uniforms. Their first restaurants in Wichita, Kansas, were a success, and the company branched out into other midwestern markets, starting in 1923 with Omaha, Nebraska. White Castle Building No. 8, built in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1936, was an example of the chain's prefabricated porcelain buildings. The building measured 28 feet (8.5 m) by 28 feet (8.5 m) and was modeled after the Chicago Water Tower, with octagonal buttresses, crenellated towers, and a parapet wall.

Anderson is credited with invention of "the kitchen as assembly line, and the cook as infinitely replaceable technician"[1], hence giving rise to modern fast food phenomenon. He had developed an efficient method for cooking hamburgers, using freshly ground beef and fresh onions. The ground beef was formed into balls by machine, eighteen to a pound, or forty per kilogram. The balls were placed upon a hot grill and topped with a handful of fresh thinly shredded onion. Then they were flipped so that the onion was under the ball. The ball was then squashed down, turning the ball into a very thin patty. The bottom of the bun was then placed atop the cooking patty with the other half of the bun on top of that so that the juices and steam from the beef and the onion would permeate the bun. After grilling, a slice of dill pickle was inserted before serving. Management decreed that any additives, such as ketchup or mustard, were to be added by the customer. Anderson's method is not in use by the chain today, having changed when the company switched from using fresh beef and fresh onion to small, frozen square patties (originally supplied by Swift & Co.) which are cooked atop a bed of dehydrated onions laid out on a grill. The heat and steam rises up from the grill, through the onions. In 1949, five holes in the patty were added to facilitate quick and thorough cooking. The very thin patties are not flipped throughout this process. This "steam grilled" method is unique among major fast food restaurants.

Since fast food was unknown in the United States in that era, there was no infrastructure to support the business, as is common with today's fast food restaurants. The company established centralized bakeries and warehouses to supply itself. It created a subsidiary, Paperlynen, to make paper products used in the restaurants. They also created a subsidiary named Porcelain Steel Buildings that manufactured movable, prefabricated structures that could be assembled at any White Castle restaurant site.

The company also began publishing its own internal employee magazine, the "White Castle Official House Organ," on November 1, 1925. The bulk of the material was contributed by Castle personnel, mostly letters and photographs of workers, promotion announcements, 25-year milestones and retirements, etc., arranged by geographic area. "Employees could...read about the progress and innovations made by those in other Areas which made everyone aware of the entire System's direction and condition.". The House Organ was published quarterly at least through the early 1980s and at some point was renamed "The Slyder Times." The Ohio Historical Society houses an extensive archive of White Castle System, Inc. records from 1921–1991, including issues dating from 1927 to 1970 of the White Castle House Organ.

Ingram's business savvy, argues David Gerard Hogan in Selling 'Em By the Sack: White Castle and the Creation of American Food, not only was responsible for White Castle's success, but for the popularization of the hamburger. For example, to counter charges that burgers were not healthy, Ingram paid several young men to dress as doctors and eat White Castle hamburgers, the idea being that if doctors ate it, it had to be healthy. This same logic led Ingram to fund a study in which a University of Minnesota medical student went on a ten-week diet of nothing but White Castles and water. The experiment, though scientifically dubious, yielded results and increased legitimacy for the hamburger in general and White Castle in particular.

In 1933, Ingram bought out Anderson, and the following year the company moved corporate headquarters to Columbus, Ohio. The company remains privately held and its restaurants are company-owned; they are not franchised in the United States (international White Castle outlets are a different matter). Co-founder Billy Ingram was followed as head of the firm by his son E. W. Ingram, Jr. and grandson E. W. Ingram, III.

In concurrence with its 80th anniversary in 2001, White Castle started its Cravers' Hall of Fame. "Cravers" are inducted annually based on stories that are submitted about them, either for them by another person or by that particular Craver. Between five and ten stories have been chosen each year with a grand total of 64 stories being selected through the 2007 induction class, less than 1% of the total stories submitted since the inception of the Cravers' Hall of Fame.

Marketing

File:White castle meal - feb 05.JPG

A typical White Castle meal.

White Castle is known as an early example of successful fast food marketing. While the White Castle company is based on four earlier hamburger stands owned by Anderson, the current name was chosen by Ingram in 1921 to distinguish it from other, less healthy fast food outlets that many consumers were reluctant to visit. "White" was chosen for its connotations of purity, while the "Castle" element was selected as it suggested stability and permanence. This factor was essential in the store's early successes, so much so that several chains (some of which still exist, such as Krystal) imitated the formula.

White Castle's innovative approach to preparing and presenting its hamburgers created a loyal following that, over time, developed slang used today by patrons and restaurant staff to communicate an order or otherwise discuss White Castle products. For example, a customer ordering a "sack of six with both", will receive six burgers with both ketchup and mustard (this is also a reference to White Castle's habit of keeping three bottles of condiments at hand for the burgers: ketchup, mustard, and a combination of the two—or "both"). (It should be noted this does not apply everywhere because restaurants in many regions only serve the burgers plain, allowing customers to add condiments.) In 1994 White Castle was granted a U.S. trademark on the term "slyders" which was a common nickname for its product. An individual who consumes six or more "slyders" in one sitting earns the distinction "slyder pilot." White Castle's burgers are also sold in frozen boxes in grocery stores nationwide. The frozen White Castle burgers are available with American cheese or without, but both varieties lack the pickle slice standard to burgers purchased fresh, possibly due to their high water content which would make microwave cooking problematic.

White Castle's marketing campaign capitalizes on the unique qualities of its product. "The Crave" is depicted in radio and television spots as a sort of addiction to White Castle burgers. An individual afflicted by "The Crave" can only be satisfied by slyders.

White Castle also markets its slyders in 30-hamburger boxes, dubbed a Crave Case. The figure of thirty burgers represents the number that can be produced on one of its standard grills at the same time. In some stores, a "Crave Crate" is offered, with the contents being 100 burgers. Many of these stores will offer the Crate, but not advertise it on its menu.

Every year on February 14, White Castle offers to reserve a candlelit table for two, complete with a server.

In 2003, White Castle unveiled a new logo and has been promoting the slogan "What You Crave" since 1994.

Typically the breakfast menu is available from 5:00 AM until 10:30 AM, but some stores have attempted to boost overnight sales and start breakfast service as early as midnight. The regular menu is available 24 hours a day. (Some restaurants have started closing at 1 am on weeknights and only staying open all night on Friday and Saturday)

Locations

Map showing the states with locations of White Castles (in blue) along with states with locations of Krystal Restaurants (in red). States with both Krystals and White Castles are colored in green.

A White Castle in Queens, New York.

A White Castle/Church's Chicken co-branded restaurant in Cleveland.

White Castle can be found in the following states in the United States:

• Illinois
• Indiana
• Kentucky
• Michigan
• Minnesota
• Missouri
• New Jersey
• New York
• Ohio
• Tennessee
• Wisconsin

Many Southerners tend to compare White Castle's sliders with Krystal's square burgers. With the exception of Kentucky and Tennessee, the two restaurants' locations do not overlap geographically.

World's Largest White Castle

The world’s largest White Castle restaurant opened on February 15, 2008 in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. It has 3,270 square feet (304 m²) of space.

Logos

• White Castle's original logo. Used from opening-2005
  White Castle's original logo. Used from opening-2005
• 
  The current White Castle logo. 2005-present

See also

• White Castle Building No. 8 - A historic White Castle located in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Similar restaurants:

• White Mana - similarly themed restaurant that was built at the 1939 New York World's Fair and relocated to New Jersey.
• Krystal - considered to be much like White Castle but for the Southern United States.
• Little Tavern - a similar chain in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area.
• White Tower Hamburgers [2] - founded in 1926 in Milwaukee

In popular culture:

• White Palace (film) - White Castle refused permission to use its name in either the novel or the film.
• Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle - A film in which White Castle did allow their trademarks to be used.

External links

• Official White Castle web site
• White Castle Merchandise web site