Robots, listeria, and calories, oh my! The kingdom of White Castle holds many secrets you never knew about.
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00:00Robots, listeria, and calories, oh my. The kingdom of White Castle holds many secrets
00:06you never knew about.
00:09One glance at a White Castle restaurant is all the proof you need to see that the white
00:13in its name is quite literal. Seems unusual for a food brand that broke into the market
00:18with a bold, novel idea to gloss over catchy color options in favor of plain old white,
00:24doesn't it?
00:25Well, the color choice wasn't without reason, as the events that led to it began years prior
00:30to the chain's launch. In 1906, Upton Sinclair, a reform-minded novelist, released The Jungle,
00:38a book painting a graphic portrait of the health situation, terrible working conditions,
00:43and immigrant exploitation in America's meatpacking industry.
00:47The Jungle was so impactful that it started a cultural shift encouraging most people to
00:51avoid ground meat. When White Castle opened shop in 1921, people still weren't very big
00:58on processed meats.
00:59You know what's going down your throat, man? Big chunks of hamburger, you know? Big gobs
01:03like dog food, dog friskies, doggy yummies. You know something, Joey? He's gonna turn
01:07into a dog.
01:09Hamburgers were already associated with filth, so White Castle had a huge responsibility
01:14to prove that everything about the brand was clean.
01:17Meat is about as clean as can be, so White Castle opted for both the name and color.
01:22They even went a step further and made sure the interior featured easily cleanable stainless
01:27steel, as per Consumerist. Jamie Richardson, a vice president at White Castle, told Dayton.com
01:34that Billy Ingram was so particular about a clean appearance that he'd bring out a manager
01:39if Ingram found so much as a speck of dirt on a counter.
01:43The idea of fast food was created to provide customers with a warm, tasty, on-the-go meal
01:48in short order. Early on, White Castle's founders had to balance the price of their goods with
01:53the quick turnaround in value that fast food offered to the American population, most of
01:59whom hadn't yet experienced it.
02:01No soup today, huh?
02:03White Castle! Who says Daddy Frank doesn't take care of you?
02:09On opening in 1921, a White Castle burger cost 5 cents, according to QSR. Despite the
02:16spikes of inflation in the early 20s, the average change in inflation was so small that
02:21the brand could afford to keep the price of its menu constant. A White Castle burger still
02:26sold for just 10 cents at the turn of the 1950s, yet price changes were inevitable.
02:32By the 80s, White Castle prices had risen almost threefold, with a burger selling for
02:38As of November 2022, the average price of an original slider, according to Fast Food
02:44Menu Prices, is 72 cents. Yet that's not the whole story. While it may seem that White
02:51Castle's sliders have gotten increasingly expensive, the actual cost of the slider has
02:56not changed dramatically. The inflation rate since 1921 has gone up 1,384.04 percent, according
03:05to the CPI Inflation Calculator. In short, that means that the spending power of 5 cents
03:11in the first years of White Castle is roughly equal to 74 cents now. Ultimately, your White
03:17Castle sliders cost nearly the same as they always have.
03:21World War II was tough on all businesses, and fast food certainly was no exception.
03:26When United States service members began to engage in active combat, the government had
03:31to resort to rationing, as the National World War II Museum reports. Each citizen got a
03:36certain number of ration points based on their age, estimated nutritional needs, and whether
03:42or not they were deemed to be essential workers. The ration points restricted how much of a
03:46certain item a consumer could buy, with the idea that there'd be enough leftover for others,
03:52especially those in the military.
03:54In 1943, as Cook's Info notes, beef and other meats joined the growing list of food items
04:00to be rationed. In a rather ominous turn, this meant that making hamburgers wasn't feasible
04:06for White Castle anymore. What was a growing fast food restaurant to do? In a desperate
04:11effort to keep the doors open, White Castle attempted to make burgers out of everything
04:15but ground beef. The brand tried fish burgers, soy burgers, baked bean burgers, and even
04:21chili burgers, as per Cook's Info. Some of these ideas at least kept the doors open,
04:27but people weren't buying the burger reinvention in the long run. Customers were so unenthused
04:32that, by the end of the war in 1945, White Castle had closed down about one-third of
04:37its outlets and raised hamburger prices by 100 percent.
04:42A signature characteristic of the White Castle Slider is the five-hole puncture visible in
04:47the burger patties. The holes are probably the easiest way to tell a White Castle Slider
04:52apart from the competition, and there's a really good reason why they're a part of the
04:56patty. According to Thrillist, the punctures are strategically placed to help the burgers
05:01cook faster. Slider patties are steamed rather than grilled, and they are placed atop a bed
05:06of onions as they cook. The structure of the patties allows that steam and onion flavor
05:11to permeate the meat. Better still, the holes in the patties allow them to be fully cooked
05:16without having to be flipped.
05:17So where did this genius idea come from? The holed patties were the brainchild of White
05:23Castle Cincinnati's Earl Howell, according to Thrillist. He came up with the idea while
05:27trying to grill burgers faster in 1954, and this method was more efficient and tasty than
05:33Earl or anyone else expected.
05:36The White Castle employee who did everything right!
05:39Soon enough, all other White Castle restaurants adopted the technique. It became so important
05:44that White Castle obtained a patent on that method for cooking burger patties. It's clear
05:49that although he was a seemingly humble hamburger flipper from Cincinnati, Howell single-handedly
05:55changed the course of a multimillion-dollar food chain with his idea. His reward? As company
06:00vice president Jamie Richardson told Thrillist,
06:03"...a picture in the Employee Hall of Fame at the White Castle headquarters."
06:08White Castle is the first known fast food restaurant to offer takeout services, with
06:13Billy Ingram's Buy'em-by-the-Sack campaign in 1927, according to a 2021 press release.
06:20The campaign name was taken from the slogan coined by Walter Anderson, which encouraged
06:24customers to buy sliders in bulk at a reduced price.
06:28The strategy has remained effective, pushing White Castle to continually repackage its
06:32sliders into newer, cuter boxes. Instead of just slider bags, White Castle restaurants
06:38now sell a Crave Clutch, Crave Case, and Crave Crate, as the White Castle menu boasts.
06:44White Castle has long abandoned any attempts to disprove how unhealthy its sliders are,
06:50and the company isn't big on putting nutritional information at the forefront.
06:54The 100-slider Crave Crate of White Castle's most nutritious offering, for example, has
06:59about 14,000 calories in it, with an average requirement of 2,000 to 2,500 calories per
07:06day for an adult. According to VeryWellFit, a Crave Crate has as many calories as the
07:11average person would need for an entire week.
07:14All of this eye-popping nutritional information is reportedly public, but White Castle appears
07:19to deal in technicalities because that data is contained in a crowded, barely visible
07:24table that takes a bit of detective work to find on the White Castle website.
07:30For its first 93 years of business, White Castle simply didn't cater to vegetarians,
07:36except for the time the restaurant was pushed to do so by a global war. But aside from that,
07:41the brand was all about beef, and it seemed to have little intention of exploring any
07:45vegetarian options with its burgers.
07:48There was likely little push for meat-free sliders from customers, too, since vegetarianism
07:53in the U.S. was not as popular for much of the 20th century as it is today. According
07:59to the New York Historical Society, vegetarians and vegans simply didn't make up a large enough
08:04sector of the market to be a profitable customer base for White Castle.
08:09Things began to change in the 21st century, however. White Castle made one of its largest
08:14publicity moves of all time in 2004 when it was featured in the comedy Harold and Kumar
08:19Go to White Castle. Kal Penn, who played Kumar, is vegetarian, which means that food workers
08:25on set had to craft veggie burgers for him to consume on-screen, as he told Business
08:30Insiders.
08:31I want 30 sliders, 5 french fries, and 4 large cherry Cokes.
08:35I want the same, except make mine diet Cokes.
08:37For every vegetarian who wasn't a film actor, though, it was tough luck for a few more years.
08:43White Castle finally saw the changing tide and officially released veggie sliders for
08:47sale in December 2014. After that, sliders made from impossible beef, known as Impossible
08:54Sliders, debuted in 2018.
08:57Back in 1931, White Castle innovated the sale of frozen burgers, as per Refrigerated and
09:03Frozen Foods. The idea came from customers who used to pack burgers on dry ice and send
09:08them across the country. By the late 80s, the frozen version of the burgers had gotten
09:13so popular that White Castle had to move them into retail groceries, where they fast became
09:19one of America's best-selling frozen food brands.
09:22For a company built on strict cleanliness and high quality, one would assume that White
09:27Castle would soar without the messy quality control problems of the frozen food world.
09:31But boy, were we wrong.
09:33In December 2019, a quality assurance test at an external laboratory found proof that
09:39a batch of frozen White Castle sliders may have been contaminated by listeria, according
09:44to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The evidence of contamination was solid enough
09:49for the brand to voluntarily recall that entire batch of frozen sliders. The company
09:54also halted all shipping from the factory where the bacteria was detected and increased
09:59sanitation measures for its frozen food production, according to ABC News.
10:05White Castle has come a long way, from building the first fast food assembly line to investing
10:10in high-tech burger making. During the COVID-19 pandemic, its kitchens had to deal with fewer
10:16people while also making burgers at a fast rate, so the chain sped up its technology
10:21investments. White Castle partnered with Pasadena's Miso Robotics as the first fast food chain
10:27to test Flippy, a machine that uses AI technology to flip burgers, cook fries, and help out
10:33with other repetitive kitchen tasks.
10:36According to USA Today, Flippy got into a bit of a mess in 2018 when it started to churn
10:41out burgers at a faster rate than the human kitchen workers could manage. Even so, White
10:46Castle took a chance on an improved version of Flippy in 2020, according to TechCrunch.
10:52As Today reports, in early 2022, it put the upgraded version, Flippy 2, in 100 additional
10:58White Castle restaurants. Depending on where you order, there's a chance that your next
11:03White Castle slider will be made by a Flippy.