White Castle was founded in Wichita, Kansas in 1921 by Billy Ingram and Walter Anderson, building on an earlier burger stand started in 1916. Anderson created the chain’s signature slider burgers: thin patties cooked with onions, which enabled fast cooking and differed from thicker, meatball-like hamburgers. The burgers were sold for five cents each, roughly equivalent to about one dollar today, and were small enough to encourage customers to “buy ’em by the sack.” The chain gained popularity with Wichita factory workers. White Castle also introduced modern branding and used small, clean, efficient restaurant buildings to address hamburgers’ poor reputation at the time.
"The first White Castle was founded in Wichita, Kansas in 1921 by Billy Ingram and Walter Anderson, evolving from an earlier burger stand started by Anderson in 1916. It was at that stand that Anderson has created the most enduring thing about White Castle - the chain's famous "slider" burgers. The thin patties, cooked with onions, were a real innovation, as before then hamburgers had mostly been thicker, almost like meatballs, and the thin form made White Castle sliders easy to cook quickly."
"At the time Anderson sold them for the still shocking price of only five cents apiece, which is the equivalent of around $1 today. The burgers were small even for the time, and Anderson encouraged folks to "buy 'em by the sack." The cheap, easy-to-eat sliders became a hit among Wichita factory workers. But White Castle would never have become what it is today without another innovation: modern branding."
"It was Anderson's partnership with Ingram that actually created White Castle. The two had met years earlier but joined up to open the newly branded White Castle using Anderson's burgers. The new concept was conceived as a response to hamburgers' bad reputation at the time. This w"
"The earliest White Castles were tiny buildings that emphasized cleanliness and efficiency"
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