Robots, listeria, and calories,
oh my! The kingdom of White Castle holds many secrets you never knew about.
One glance at a White Castle restaurant is all the proof you need to see that the "white" in its name
is quite literal. Seems unusual for a food brand that broke into the market with a bold, novel
idea to gloss over catchy color options in favor of plain ol' white, doesn't it? Well, the color
choice wasn't without reason, as the events that led to it began years prior to the chain's launch.
In 1906, Upton Sinclair, a reform-minded novelist, released "The Jungle" — a book
painting a graphic portrait of the health situation, terrible working conditions,
and immigrant exploitation in America's meatpacking industry. "The Jungle" was
so impactful that it started a cultural shift encouraging most people to avoid ground meat.
When White Castle opened shop in 1921, people still weren't very big on processed meats.
"You know what's going on in your throat, man? Big chunks'a hamburger, y'know? Big gobs,
like dog food, dog friskies, doggie yummies, you know something Joey, he's gonna turn into a dog!"
Hamburgers were already associated with filth, so White Castle had a huge responsibility to
prove that everything about the brand was clean. White is about as clean as can be,
so White Castle opted for both the name and color. They even went a step further and made sure the
interior featured easily cleanable stainless steel, as per Consumerist. Jamie Richardson,
a Vice President at White Castle, told Dayton.com that Billy Ingram was so particular about a clean
appearance that he'd bring out a manager if Ingram found so much as a speck of dirt on a counter.
The idea of fast food was created to provide customers with a warm,
tasty, on-the-go meal in short order. Early on, White Castle's founders had
to balance the price of their goods with the quick turnaround and value that fast
food offered to the American population — most of whom hadn't yet experienced it.
"No soup today. Huh?"
"White Castle!" "Who says daddy Frank doesn't take care of you?"
Upon opening in 1921, a White Castle burger cost 5 cents, according to QSR. Despite the
spikes of inflation in the early '20s, the average change in inflation was so small
that the brand could afford to keep the price of its menu constant. A White Castle burger still
sold for just 10 cents at the turn of the 1950s. Yet, price changes were inevitable. By the '80s,
White Castle prices had risen almost threefold, with a burger selling for 27 cents. As of November
2022, the average price of an original slider, according to Fast Food Menu Prices, is 72 cents.
Yet that's not the whole story. While it may seem that White Castle's sliders have gotten
increasingly expensive, the actual cost of the slider has not changed dramatically. The inflation
rate since 1921 has gone up 1384.04%, according to the CPI Inflation Calculator. In short,
that means that the spending power of 5 cents in the first years of White Castle is roughly equal
to 74 cents now. Ultimately, your White Castle sliders cost nearly the same as they always have.
World War II was tough on all businesses, and fast food certainly was no exception. When United
States service members began to engage in active combat, the government had to resort to rationing,
as the National World War II Museum reports. Each citizen got a certain number of ration
points based on their age, estimated nutritional needs, and whether or not they were deemed to be
essential workers. The ration points restricted how much of a certain item a consumer could buy,
with the idea that there'd be enough left over for others — especially those in the military.
In 1943, as Cook's Info notes, beef and other meats joined the growing list of food items
to be rationed. In a rather ominous turn, this meant that making hamburgers wasn't
feasible for White Castle anymore. What was a growing fast food restaurant to do?
In a desperate effort to keep the doors open, White Castle attempted to make burgers out
of everything but ground beef. The brand tried fish burgers, soy burgers, baked bean burgers,
and even chili burgers, as per Cook's Info. Some of these ideas at least kept the doors open,
but people weren't buying the burger reinvention in the long
run. Customers were so unenthused that by the end of the war in 1945,
White Castle had closed down about one-third of its outlets and raised hamburger prices by 100%.
A signature characteristic of the White Castle slider is the five-hole puncture visible in the
burger patties. The holes are probably the easiest way to tell a White Castle slider apart from the
competition, and there's a really good reason why they are part of the patty. According to
Thrillist, the punctures are strategically placed to help the burgers cook faster.
Slider patties are steamed rather than grilled, and they are placed atop a bed of onions as they
cook. The structure of the patties allows that steam and onion flavor to permeate the meat.
Better still, the holes in the patties allow them to be fully cooked without having to be flipped.
So, where did this genius idea come from? The holed patties were the
brainchild of White Castle Cincinnati's Earl Howell, according to Thrillist. He
came up with the idea while trying to grill burgers faster in 1954,
and this method was more efficient and tasty than Earl or anyone else expected.
"The White Castle employee who did everything right."
Soon enough, all other White Castle restaurants adopted the technique. It became so important
that White Castle obtained a patent on that method for cooking burger patties.
It's clear that, although he was a seemingly humble hamburger flipper from Cincinnati,
Howell single-handedly changed the course of a multi-million dollar food chain with
his idea. His reward? As company Vice President Jamie Richardson told Thrillist,
a picture in the Employee Hall of Fame at the White Castle headquarters.
White Castle is the first known fast food restaurant to offer takeout services with
Billy Ingram's Buy 'em By the Sack campaign in 1927, according to a 2021 press release.
The campaign name was taken from the slogan coined by Walter Anderson, which encouraged
customers to buy sliders in bulk at a reduced price. The strategy has remained effective,
pushing White Castle to continually repackage its sliders into newer,
cuter boxes. Instead of just slider bags, White Castle restaurants now sell a Crave Clutch,
Crave Case, and Crave Crate, as the White Castle menu boasts.
White Castle has long abandoned any attempts to disprove how unhealthy it's sliders are,
and the company isn't big on putting nutritional information at the forefront. The 100-slider Crave
Crate of White Castle's most nutritious offering, for example, has about 14,000 calories in it. With
an average requirement of 2,000 to 2,500 calories per day for an adult, according to Verywell Fit,
a Crave Crate has as many calories as the average person would need for an entire week.
All of this eye-popping nutritional information is reportedly public,
but White Castle appears to deal in technicalities because that data is contained in a crowded,
barely visible table that takes a bit of detective work to find on the White Castle website.
For its first 93 years of business, White Castle simply didn't cater to vegetarians — except for
the time the restaurant was pushed to do so by a global war. But aside from that,
the brand was all about beef, and it seemed to have little intention of exploring any vegetarian
options with its burgers. There was likely little push for meat-free sliders from customers, too,
since vegetarianism in the U.S. was not as popular for much of the 20th century as it is today,
according to the New York Historical Society. Vegetarians and vegans simply didn't make up
a large enough sector of the market to be a profitable customer base for White Castle.
Things began to change in the 21st century, however. White Castle made one of its largest
publicity moves of all time in 2004 when it was featured in the comedy "Harold & Kumar go
to White Castle." Kal Penn, who played Kumar, is vegetarian, which means that food workers
on set had to craft veggie burgers for him to consume on screen, as he told Business Insider.
"I want 30 sliders, five french fries, and four large Cherry Cokes."
"I want the same except make mine Diet Cokes."
For every vegetarian who wasn't a film actor, though,
it was tough luck for a few more years. White Castle finally saw the changing tide
and officially released veggie sliders for sale in December 2014. After that,
sliders made from Impossible Beef known as "Impossible Sliders" debuted in 2018.
Back in 1931, White Castle innovated the sale of frozen burgers,
as per Refrigerated and Frozen Foods. The idea came from customers who used
to pack burgers on dry ice and send them across the country. By the late '80s,
the frozen version of the burgers had gotten so popular that White Castle had to move them into
retail groceries, where they fast became one of America's best-selling frozen food brands.
For a company built on strict cleanliness and high quality, one would assume that White Castle would
soar without the messy quality control problems of the frozen food world. But boy, were we wrong.
In December 2019, a quality assurance test at an external laboratory found proof that
a batch of frozen White Castle sliders may have been contaminated by listeria,
according to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. The evidence of contamination was solid enough
for the brand to voluntarily recall that entire batch of frozen sliders.
The company also halted all shipping from the factory where the bacteria was detected
and increased sanitation measures for its frozen food production, according to ABC News.
White Castle has come a long way, from building the first fast-food assembly line to investing
in high-tech burger-making. During the COVID-19 pandemic, its kitchens had to deal with fewer
people while also making burgers at a fast rate, so the chain sped up its technology investments.
White Castle partnered with Pasadena's Miso Robotics as the first fast-food chain to test
Flippy — a machine that uses AI technology to flip burgers, cook fries, and help out with
other repetitive kitchen tasks. According to USA Today, Flippy got into a bit of a mess in 2018
when it started to churn out burgers at a faster rate than the human kitchen workers could manage.
Even so, White Castle took a chance on an improved version of Flippy in 2020,
according to TechCrunch. As TODAY reports, in early 2022, it put the upgraded version,
Flippy 2, in 100 additional White Castle restaurants. Depending on where you order,
there's a chance that your next White Castle slider will be made by a Flippy.