White Castle Management Co. is an American regional slider restaurant chain with about 345 locations across 13 states, with its greatest presence in the Midwest and New York metropolitan area.

[8] In the 1940s, White Castle periodically ran promotional ads in local newspapers which contained coupons offering five burgers for ten cents, takeout only.

Walter (Walt) A. Anderson (1880–1963), a cook, had been running food stands in Wichita since 1916, when he opened his first diner in a converted streetcar.

[11] Anderson partnered with Ingram to make White Castle into a chain of restaurants and market the brand and its distinctive product.

[11] After the novel The Jungle by Upton Sinclair had been published in 1906 and exposed the poor sanitation practices of the meat-packing industry, many Americans became wary of eating ground beef.

To invoke a feeling of cleanliness, their restaurants were small buildings with stainless steel interiors, and employees outfitted with spotless uniforms.

The company also began publishing its own internal employee magazine, the White Castle Official House Organ, circa November 1925 (it was originally named The Hot Hamburger).

The bulk of the material was contributed by company personnel and consisted mostly of letters and photographs of workers, promotional announcements, 25-year milestones, retirements, and similar items of interest arranged by geographic area.

"[14] The White Castle Official House Organ was published quarterly at least through the early 1980s, and at some point was renamed The Slider Times.

The Indianapolis unit was in operation until 1979, making it, at the time of its closure, the longest-operating fast food restaurant in the country.

8 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, originally built in 1936 and remodeled, is an example of the chain's buildings with prefabricated white porcelain enamel on steel exteriors.

Restaurants copied the distinctive architecture of White Castle buildings, as well as created confusion for consumers by using a similar name.

Some restaurant chains just replaced the word "Castle" with their own word (Cabin, Cap, Clock, Crescent, Diamond, Dome, Fortress, Grille, House, Hut, Kitchen, Knight, Log, Manna, Mill, Palace, Plaza, Shop, Spot, Tavern, Tower, Turret, Wonder), while others chose to replace "White" with another color or adjective (Blue, King's, Little, Magic, Modern, Prince's, Red, Royal, Silver).

[19] Since fast food was unknown in the United States at the time of White Castle's founding, there was no infrastructure to support the business, as is common with today's fast-food restaurants.

Ingram developed a device to produce previously unheard of paper hats (for employees to wear as part of the uniform).

In 1933, Anderson sold his half of the business to Ingram, and the following year the company moved its corporate headquarters to Columbus, Ohio.

It remains privately held today, and its restaurants are all company-owned; none are franchised,[clarification needed] except very briefly in Japan during the 1980s[23] and more recently in China since 2017.

[30] In September 2015, White Castle began to offer Veggie Sliders with dairy-free buns to provide a vegan option.

[36] White Castle announced on November 25, 2019, that the chain would return to Florida after previously leaving the state in 1968, with plans to open the first restaurant in Orlando.

[40] The system is able to discriminate amongst burgers, chicken fingers, and french fries, pick them up, cook them through automated temperature detection and flipping action, place the cooked item in a fry basket, and in turn place the basketed food in an area for holding hot items.

[40] The Ingram family's steadfast refusal to franchise, take on debt or offer shares to the public throughout the company's existence has kept the chain relatively small, with a more discontinuous geography than its principal competitors.

White Castle currently has locations in the following metropolitan areas in the United States: Louisville and Columbus also house bulk-manufacturing (grocery-store sales, meat, and bun production) divisions.

Through franchise deals with local corporate business partners, White Castle briefly had restaurants outside of the United States in Singapore, Malaysia, and Japan during the late 1980s and early 1990s, but the concept never caught on in those countries.

[47] During the same time period, White Castle also tried to establish franchised operations in Mexico and South Korea, but these restaurants also failed.

[53][54] In 2017, White Castle opened its first and second restaurants in China in the city of Shanghai through a partnership with Shanghai-based ClearVue Partners.

[56] For the production of the 2004 film Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, a full-size outlet was built in Caledon, Ontario, but never commissioned opened to the local public, instead reopened as Yuppie's Burgers, only to go quickly bankrupt (later converted to an Ultramar gas station).

In April 2020, White Castle responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by announcing that the chain would be delivering free meals to healthcare workers.

[71] In late 1982, White Castle established a toll free phone line in which customers can order as few as 50 burgers to be shipped frozen to any metropolitan area in the United States serviced by Federal Express for as low as $57 as part of a program called "Hamburgers to Fly".

[78] Anderson is credited with the invention of the hamburger bun[79] as well as "the kitchen as assembly line, and the cook as infinitely replaceable technician,"[80] hence giving rise to the modern fast-food phenomenon.