White Castle, through its founder, Edgar “Billy” Ingram, successfully popularized the hamburger sandwich; created a uniform company standard of architecture, menu, and quality among its many outlets; and introduced consumers to a carryout style of eating. Many of White Castle’s culinary and corporate innovations would later become fundamental to both the American diet and modern business operations.
Partnering with Walter Anderson, a fry cook, in Wichita, Kansas, in 1921, Ingram founded the White Castle System of Eating Houses. The premise of Ingram’s White Castle operation was simply to sell inexpensive hamburger sandwiches in large volume. To accomplish this goal, however, he had to convince hungry consumers that ground beef was a safe and healthy food, that his restaurants were clean and hygienic establishments, and that his products were a good value. The buying public distrusted the meat industry in the early twentieth century and held ground meat in particularly low regard. The popular perception during this era was that butchers routinely ground up meat when it began to spoil, giving them a few additional days to sell it. Compounding this public disregard for ground meat, small sandwich shops customarily carried a stigma of being both transient and unsanitary.
