Fourteen years after that, it became the first quick-serve to dish out a billion hamburgers. White Castle modified the Slider, adding five holes to speed cooking and add flavor, in 1947. Billy Ingram moved the brand to Columbus, Ohio, in 1934 after buying out Anderson’s share. The first White Castle sprung up in Wichita, Kansas, in 1921 and began selling sliders by the sack. Yet nobody can deny White Castle’s burger breakthrough-the Original Slider was dubbed the most influential burger ever by Time Magazine. Trying to split hairs on the history between A&W and White Castle is a friendly debate, Lisa says. Allen opened his first root beer stand in Lodi, California, in 1919 and then introduced A&W, along with Frank Wright, as a drive-in concept four years later in Sacramento, California. According to White Castle, this is the moment the fast-food burger chain industry was born.
White Castle turned 100 on March 10, a full century from the day Billy Ingram and Walter Anderson chose to sell square hamburgers for 5 cents each. “It really made you feel, here you are, a fast-food hamburger chain that sells 2-inch square sliders, and look what it meant to people,” he says. That store would go on to sell more than 4.2 million sliders in 12 months.īut the broader implications of White Castle’s Orlando experience is what’s stuck with Richardson. Among the first five people who got in line that day, one ordered 700 burgers and another 500. White Castle set a limit of 60 sliders per order after learning the hard way during a Scottsdale, Arizona, debut the previous October. Seven members of the chain’s founding family, including CEO Lisa Ingram, worked all day, slinging sliders on the grill. The grand opening broke White Castle’s previous sales record by 17 percent. There was something about that from the vantage point of our 100th birthday year, opening in Orlando, and the response was beyond our wildest dreams.” “It was so gratifying,” he adds, “because it was real. “And the crowd would cheer,” Richardson says.
Others hoisted Crave Cases above their heads like an Olympic goal medal. Some cried when they got their orders, Richardson says. And those people still had another two to go. I’d ask, how long have you been in line? Oh, about four, four and a half hours,” Richardson says. Richardson, still a White Castle “rookie” at 23 years tenure, walked the drive-thru line with COO Jeff Carper at 10:30 at night. The brand opened its largest location-4,567 square feet-in Orlando, breaking back into the state for the first time since 1968. “Gratifying,” is a word White Castle vice president Jamie Richardson keeps coming back to. Yet while this quirky vibe is gospel to employees and loyal guests, or “Cravers,” it’s not always easy to materialize or demonstrate a century’s worth of affinity. White Castle is no stranger to doing so, from its guest pilgrimages to taking reservations on Valentine’s Day, and even the slide in its home office where workers scoot down to the first floor. But you don’t get to 100 years without busting a few traditions along the way.
These sound like unicorn figures, especially in the triple-digit turnover, churn-and-burn world of fast food. Of 450 leadership and above positions (GMs, district supervisors, and regional directors), 442 started behind the counter and worked their way up.
There are 10,000 employees at White Castle, and one in four have been with the burger chain for 10 or more years.