White Castle in Ohio, the state where the restaurant chain is now headquartered. Credits – Wikipedia
White Castle was started in 1921 by a Wichita fry cook called Walter Anderson and an insurance and real estate agent named E.W. Ingram (better known as Billy) with a $700 loan. Anderson’s interest in the business faded as it grew, and Ingram bought him out in 1933. The Ingram family still owns the company, now led by Billy Ingram’s great-granddaughter, Lisa Ingram and Nation’s Restaurant News reported in March 2026 that White Castle has about 340 restaurants in 14 states.
Because of the reputation that hung over the entire enterprise, it was a strange time to launch a restaurant based on little more than ground beef, onions and a hot griddle. Many Americans still associated ground beef with the unhygienic practices of the meatpacking industry in the early 1920s and not every principled consumer would touch a burger purchased from a street stand. However, a little stand in Kansas accomplished just that and the way its founders overcame public scepticism became the blueprint for the later fast food sector. The partnership turned a speedy cooking method into a standardised chain and the Kansas Historical Society cites Wichita as the birthplace of the fast-food business. Company lore has it that the debt was paid back in just three months. The following year, the headquarters moved to Columbus, Ohio, where it remains. In a twist, there are no White Castle restaurants in Kansas at all. That is how a cook with better burger-cooking skills and an insurance agent with great convincing skills helped define the overall American style of eating out.
Hamburgers and coffee were 5 cents each. A 1926 company newsletter reports that the company sold more than three million hamburgers and 48,000 gallons of coffee in 1925. Anderson introduced paper hats, paper-wrapped hamburgers, a food preparation handbook and requirements on employee cleanliness and appearance.
Ingram wanted the restaurant to be as clean as possible, according to the Ohio History Connection , which holds the White Castle corporate files. The building was white with gleaming stainless steel counters and staff had to meet stringent standards of dress and grooming. His pitch to Anderson was simple: call the place White Castle and run the cleanest restaurant in town. The standards didn’t stay local. The idea was consistency. A client should get the same product and service at every White Castle. Numbers like that made one stand in Wichita look like a lot more than one stand.
