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SPEAKER_18: This is 99% invisible.
I'm Roman Mars.
As anyone who has ever been to a White Castle restaurant knows, the food is...how do I put
SPEAKER_10: this? It's never going to be considered classic five star food, but you know what you're getting
when you go there.
SPEAKER_18: Jeremy Brooks has been a diehard White Castle fan ever since going regularly as a kid with his dad.
SPEAKER_10: It's either something you're going to love or you cannot stand.
SPEAKER_18: For starters, the patties are square. That's kind of their thing with five holes in each patty. And they're small too. Two and a half inch sliders just big enough to fit in the palm of your hand. And since they're steamed on a bed of onions, everything is infused with this very specific onion-esque flavor.
SPEAKER_10: Plus you get the steam buns too, so they're nice and soft. You can basically just like squish it in your hand and just shove in your mouth if you want. Like the man said, you either love it or you hate it. I happen to love it and I still do 40 plus years later.
SPEAKER_12: If you've never been to a White Castle though, that's not entirely surprising. They're not exactly easy to come by.
SPEAKER_18: That's reporter producer Mackenzie Martin who first dug into this story for the KCUR Studios podcast, A People's History of Kansas City.
SPEAKER_12: But that obscurity is also kind of White Castle's thing. They're only in the US and your state probably doesn't have any. If it does, even just making it there can sometimes be challenging. Like in the 2004 buddy comedy, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.
SPEAKER_18: A film in which the entire plot revolves around trying to find a White Castle. What happened to the White Castle?
SPEAKER_06: What? There used to be a White Castle right here in this location. Where is it?
I hate to be the bearer of bad news guys, but Burger Shack, they bought this location
about four years ago.
Please tell me there's another White Castle in town.
SPEAKER_12: No. White Castles are so scattered that even I, the reporter of this story, have never actually been to one. Where I live in Kansas City, we haven't had a White Castle in decades, which is absolutely crushing to superfan Jeremy Brooks.
SPEAKER_10: I drive by the places where I know those locations used to be and I'll look at the building and just let a little quiet sigh out as I drive on by.
SPEAKER_12: And for most people today, that's really all White Castle is. A semi-obscure, guilty pleasure, cultural punchline. Which okay, fine. It kind of is. But White Castle is also so much more than that.
SPEAKER_18: Because over a century ago, White Castle invented something that became so important and all-encompassing that today it touches pretty much every person in America. Sometimes several times a day. Something that, in other countries, has almost come to define American culture.
SPEAKER_03: White Castle has the strongest claim to have been the first restaurant that is a fast food restaurant.
SPEAKER_12: That's Adam Chandler, a journalist and the author of Drive Through Dreams, a book about Americans' love affair with fast food. And Chandler says that before McDonald's, before Burger King, before Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, there was White Castle.
SPEAKER_03: You cannot throw a stone in the air without hitting a fast food restaurant. But what White Castle really did in paving the way for all of its brethren is hard to match. It's hard to understand, it's hard to grasp because it came from virtually nothing.
SPEAKER_12: The first chain restaurant in the United States popped up in the late 19th century, catering to disembarking passengers along the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway. But it catered to a fancier clientele, and it didn't serve food all that fast. For that, you were stuck with your typical food carts or automats.
SPEAKER_18: And crucially, none of these places served anything that we moderns would recognize as a hamburger.
SPEAKER_03: Back then, we had kind of a loose confederation of places that served hamburger-like objects.
SPEAKER_18: These proto-burgers usually involved loosely ground beef or a meatball served between two slices of bread. But that's about it.
SPEAKER_03: It wasn't a bun. It didn't have the name hamburger in a lot of instances. It was just kind of a sandwich.
SPEAKER_12: No one can say for sure exactly when the first properly compacted bun encased hamburger appeared. But one of the first steps toward the modern hamburger also happened to be the first step toward fast food. When, as the legend goes... Please be advised that Sirius XM Incorporated can neither confirm nor deny the veracity
SPEAKER_18: of the next 30 seconds of this audio program.
SPEAKER_12: One day, sometime between 1912 and 1916, a self-described ne'er-do-well and fry cook named J. Walter Anderson was preparing some meatballs at a diner in Wichita, Kansas, when, according to David Hogan...
SPEAKER_14: He was frying these meatballs and he got frustrated and took the spatula and just slammed it down
and made it into a patty.
SPEAKER_12: David is a history professor at Heidelberg University and author of a book about White Castle.
SPEAKER_14: He put it between two halves of a bun.
And now we have the food that we're most familiar with.
People liked it.
SPEAKER_18: Now, whether Walt Anderson was truly the first to create a contemporary hamburger is not really what matters. What matters, and the part of the story for which we do not need to issue a disclaimer, is what happened next.
SPEAKER_12: Building on his success, Walt opened his first burger place in 1916, outfitting an old shoe repair stand with three stools selling burgers for five cents apiece. The stand's official slogan was, buy them by the sack. David Hogan's book, by the way, is called selling them by the sack.
SPEAKER_18: Eventually Walt's burgers would be nicknamed sliders. And contrary to popular belief, sliders are not just tiny burgers. They're specifically burgers cooked with raw onions, because that's how Walt made his.
SPEAKER_12: As it turns out, Wichita was the perfect place to set America on its burger journey. In the early 1900s, immigration from Europe and Latin America, urban migration from farms, and the Kansas oil boom brought in thousands of laborers, all looking for a fast, cheap meal.
SPEAKER_03: And these were people who were on their breaks or on their way to the factory or taking lunch or leaving, and they wanted something that was quick and savory and hearty and cheap.
And that is exactly what these sliders provided.
SPEAKER_12: By 1920, Walt Anderson had multiple stands in Wichita, but it wasn't yet a fast food restaurant chain in the way we would understand it.
SPEAKER_18: Because there was still a big obstacle preventing burgers from really taking off. Most Americans didn't trust ground beef, thanks in large part to a book that is so famous, so important, and so influential that I'm actually a little shocked to realize that it has never once been mentioned in the course of 569 episodes of 99% Invisible.
SPEAKER_12: Journalist Upton Sinclair's best-selling novel, The Jungle, was meant to raise the alarm of the unsanitary and appalling working conditions at meat processing plants, but it had an unintended side effect.
SPEAKER_03: And everybody who read it or heard about it read instead that, oh my God, eating meat is bad.
SPEAKER_18: Here's just one passage. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms, and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats.
Oh my God.
SPEAKER_12: Suffice to say, the book was impactful enough that over a decade later, many meat products couldn't shake the stink, especially ground meat.
SPEAKER_14: But what ground meat really was and everybody knew is meat that had essentially gone bad was ground up, infused with chemicals, literally preservatives, and it would be marketable
for another week or so.
SPEAKER_12: Ground meat was for the poor. For the better off, eating at one of Walt Anderson's burger stands would have been embarrassing.
SPEAKER_18: Walt told the local newspaper that children would routinely order a half a dozen burgers to carry out.
Then he'd watch as they would run around the corner to a fancy car where their mothers were waiting, too ashamed, he presumed, to come into Walt's dinky little place themselves.
SPEAKER_12: If he wanted the business to grow, Walt needed a partner, specifically a salesman.
SPEAKER_03: Billy Ingram is the ultimate 1920s booster, you know, just hustling nonstop to sell you something.
SPEAKER_12: Edgar Waldo Ingram, who went by Billy, was a Wichita insurance and real estate broker. And in 1921, he partnered up with Walt to help sell the public on hamburgers, even though at the time, everyone warned Billy to stay away.
SPEAKER_12: This is one of Billy's old business associates.
SPEAKER_08: But it didn't work out that way, did it? Definitely not.
SPEAKER_18: Because when Billy Ingram took a look at the market for burgers, he saw something that bestirred his businessman's beating heart.
SPEAKER_12: This is from an interview with Billy years later.
SPEAKER_09:
There were no hamburger stands in St. Louis.
And when I came to Columbus, there were no hamburger stands in Columbus.
SPEAKER_18: In this glorious vacuum, Billy set about convincing Americans to buy burgers by turning Walt's stands into a special kind of restaurant, the likes of which didn't yet exist.
SPEAKER_12: Walt was well aware of the stigma attached to ground beef. So he already had fresh beef delivered twice a day and even ground the meat in front of customers. But with the addition of Billy on the team, these initiatives were taken to new, slightly neurotic heights.
SPEAKER_14: He said, we have to have the best product, the healthiest product in the most cleanly surroundings that we could possibly have.
SPEAKER_12: In 1921, Billy and Walt debuted a new concept with a very scientific sounding name, the White Castle system of eating houses, white to signify purity and castle to signify strength and permanence.
SPEAKER_18: And system to signify a system of eating houses.
SPEAKER_03: What White Castle did was absolutely unique. I'm sure that there are other versions of automats and small scale diners that that really served food quickly indoors. But White Castle had a whole system that made it stand out in its efficiency and really replicated the experience of dining in a way that a lot of other restaurants that had multiple locations didn't really do.
SPEAKER_03:
That consistency started with the castles themselves.
SPEAKER_18: Every restaurant would soon be made out of white porcelain enameled steel, making the exterior extra shiny and easy to clean.
SPEAKER_03: There was a lot of character in these White Castle buildings. They actually looked like castles. They had this kind of aura and stained glass turreted aesthetic that I thought, looking at it, why wouldn't you want to eat there? It looks like a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_18: Inside, the restaurants all had the same layout, a grill, a counter and five stools, and everything was scrubbed daily. So it sparkled the checkered tile, the woodwork, the utensils.
SPEAKER_12: Every restaurant was open concept so you could watch the cook prepare your burger on a visibly clean grill in front of you.
SPEAKER_14: And from the very beginning, Billy Ingram said, we want our employees to be extremely positive. We want them to be customer friendly.
SPEAKER_12: Billy insisted that employees all wear clean white shirts, pants and aprons. Hair was to be covered by a white paper cap. Fingernails were to be kept neat and clean, and elaborate jewelry and wristwatches were strictly prohibited.
SPEAKER_18: The menu featured just a handful of items, coffee, Coca-Cola, pie and hamburgers made exclusively of beef shoulder meat. The smaller the menu, the faster and more reliably the items on it could be made.
SPEAKER_12: Likewise, everything about the patties, the square shape and the five holes, which were added later, were designed to promote faster cooking and seemingly instantaneous service every time.
SPEAKER_03: The funny thing is today, if we had the exact same experience everywhere we go, we think of it as kind of weird and dystopian, right? But there is a beauty in going to a place where you know what the experience is going to be like. You know how much the food is going to cost. You know exactly what it's going to taste like. You know what the store generally is going to look like.
SPEAKER_18:
This was also the time when Americans were becoming more invested in national products than locally produced ones. White Castle appealed to the same customers buying off the rack clothing from Sears Roebuck and shopping for Kellogg's Corn Flakes and Campbell's Soup. Uniformity and affordability was the point.
SPEAKER_03: I think there was something about what Billy Ingram was selling with the hamburger that made it seem modern, that made it seem like he has this proto assembly line of people creating all these burgers while, you know, a few hundred miles north, the assembly lines of Detroit are churning out Model Ts.
SPEAKER_12: White Castle also made its restaurants accessible, strategically building their factories and later college campuses. And during a time when African-Americans couldn't travel safely around the country or freely enter most restaurants, David Hogan says Billy Ingram didn't discriminate.
SPEAKER_14: He was going to take anybody's dollar.
You know, we're in the case of this, anybody's nickel.
SPEAKER_18: Meanwhile, in its zeal to introduce hamburgers to the middle class, the company developed some slightly bizarre but effective marketing strategies.
SPEAKER_12: The company commissioned a study at the University of Minnesota where a medical student ate nothing but White Castle hamburgers and water for 13 weeks. At the end of the experiment, a food scientist came to the conclusion that a normal, healthy child could subsist off a totally White Castle diet and be perfectly fine.
SPEAKER_18: Kind of like the documentary, Super Size Me, except, you know, the opposite.
SPEAKER_12: The combination of predictability, cleanliness and good old fashioned false advertising was a winning formula. By the early 1930s, White Castle and along with it, hamburgers were considered so mainstream and trendy that they had even become the favorite meal of beloved cartoon characters.
SPEAKER_08: There's nothing in the world that can compare with a hamburger juicy.
SPEAKER_14:
It was a craze. It literally was a craze. It was like everybody just thought that this new product was so incredible.
SPEAKER_12: Throughout the 1920s and 30s, the White Castle burger empire expanded out from Wichita rapidly. In that interview with Billy from later on, he lists off the locations. First, Laredo, then Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis.
SPEAKER_09: In Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Columbus,
Cincinnati, New York and New Jersey.
We now have 84 in operation.
SPEAKER_18: But White Castle would eventually encounter the problem suffered by every truly great innovative, groundbreaking company.
SPEAKER_14: People in cities across America said, OK, there's something about this White Castle, we're not sure what it is. Let's just copy the whole damn thing. Let's copy the name almost. Let's copy the architecture. Let's copy the burger. Let's copy. Let's copy the delivery system. Let's copy everything. Cuppy hamburger, pickle on top.
SPEAKER_05: Makes your heart go fiddly flop. Cuppy.
SPEAKER_16: Kids just naturally love crystal hamburgers because the flavor steamed right into the buns.
SPEAKER_18: Before long, you could find White Hut, White Palace, White Tower, Red Tower, Blue Tower. Little Tavern, Little Crowns, Little Castle.
SPEAKER_18: That's Castle with a K.
SPEAKER_17: Have you ever had one of those wonderful days when everything seems to turn into a tasty donut or a meal of tasty castle burgers?
SPEAKER_12: The quality of these copycat operations was often questionable, but since many of the White Castle imitators were housed in white buildings or featured castle architecture like turrets, they appeared extremely similar.
SPEAKER_18: Some places didn't even try and come up with a new name. They just straight up called themselves White Castle.
SPEAKER_14:
It's trademark infringement, obviously. A company is only as good as its name.
You know, when that name gets diluted, it's a threat to their existence.
SPEAKER_18: White Castle ended up suing one of the biggest imitators and winning a large payout. But ultimately, it was a game of legal whack-a-mole. It was impossible to go after everyone.
SPEAKER_12: But even if they could, the company would still face a dilemma because the thing that White Castle pioneered, the unique dining experience Walt and Billy started selling back in 1921, it was becoming commonplace.
In a sense, there was nothing unique for White Castle to sell that wasn't also offered by its competitors.
SPEAKER_18: And there was one imitator who would do more than just compete with White Castle. Instead, it would essentially replace it by becoming nearly synonymous with fast food itself.
SPEAKER_05: Get yourself ready for a trip through McDonaldland.
SPEAKER_12: McDonald's was founded in San Bernardino, California, by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald in 1940. That's 20 years after White Castle. And at first, just like the other copycats, it took so much from White Castle. Diligent levels of cleanliness, a limited menu.
SPEAKER_03: And if you find an old picture of the very first McDonald's, it has a slogan that says, buy them by the bag on the marquee. And that's a direct ripoff of White Castle.
SPEAKER_12: But McDonald's had a crucial advantage that all the other White Castle imitators didn't have. It had Ray Kroc.
SPEAKER_18: Kroc was the businessman who took the company national in 1955.
SPEAKER_14: Ray Kroc, bless his heart, just learned. Somehow to do it bigger and ultimately, I guess you could argue better.
SPEAKER_18: Take location for starters, White Castle places restaurants near factories, downtowns and colleges. But McDonald's came of age during the building of the interstate and the rise of the suburb. So Kroc placed his restaurants on increasingly busy highways.
SPEAKER_03: And that was something that Ray Kroc and a lot of his operators and a lot of his executives helped pioneer was a system to basically flood the zone of American roadsides with McDonald's.
SPEAKER_12: McDonald's wasn't just a place for someone on foot to grab food on their lunch break. It was for anyone in a car on their way to anywhere.
But it was also able to expand much faster than White Castle because it was willing to do something that White Castle refused to do.
It franchised.
SPEAKER_18: Billy Ingram, bless his heart, was way too much of a control freak to do that. The man who wanted every customer to have the exact same perfect experience wasn't about to relinquish any control. But even if it resulted in the occasional limp fry, franchising allowed McDonald's to grow to 1000 locations in just over 12 years.
SPEAKER_12: Faced with the restaurant's sheer ubiquity, it was easy for the public to just assume that McDonald's did it all first. And Kroc didn't disabuse them. To believe the stories of Ray Kroc, he invented fast food.
SPEAKER_14:
And of course, that is essentially the message that people get today is that McDonald's was the revolutionary factor in the fast food industry.
SPEAKER_12: Today, there are more than 40000 McDonald's worldwide. Meanwhile, there are fewer than 400 White Castles, mostly in the New York area and the Midwest. Just a blip by fast food standards. To understand just how small White Castle's geographical and cultural footprint is nowadays,
SPEAKER_18: look no further than Wichita, the city where the company was founded. White Castle left Wichita in 1938. Now the nearest one is over 300 miles away.
SPEAKER_12: I recently went to Wichita to see the first ever White Castle location, literally on Main Street. The original building is long gone.
In its place is this large bank.
For many years, I was told, people would stop in and ask the tellers about the history. But when I arrived, the bank was boarded up.
Eventually, Denise Sherman let me into the bank. She's the executive director for the Kansas African American Museum, who now owns the building. This is the actual White Castle plaque.
SPEAKER_13: Okay, it says site of the original White Castle opened March 10, 1921.
SPEAKER_12: It's got a photo here. She showed me how hidden inside the empty building next to discarded desks and other
furniture was an ode to White Castle bolted to the wall. But once we were there, Denise didn't have a lot to say about it.
So when did you find out that this was a former White Castle? I knew a long time ago.
SPEAKER_13: Yeah. Did you grow up here? No. Do you have any thoughts on the White Castle history here?
SPEAKER_12:
If it's significant? The only thought is that it's a shame we don't have one here.
SPEAKER_13: But we will honor that and still keep that plaque there. I also don't have to keep asking you questions about White Castle if you don't have anything.
I don't know if I can add anything else to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just one of those things. Now you might think that Denise is an outlier, that Wichita is surely lousy with
SPEAKER_12:
Wichitaans who love to boast about how they invented fast food. But no. While in Wichita, I tried to gauge the public's civic appreciation of White Castle and its contribution to fast food history.
And although I did find a small handful of fans, mostly the situation was pretty bleak. What do you think of as like the first burger chain that you can think of in America?
Like if you had to guess, like what's the first burger chain? What comes to mind? McDonald's. McDonald's? Do you think there's a fan base for White Castle here?
No. No. Probably not. It's not here anymore.
SPEAKER_11: Yeah.
I don't like oniony burgers anyway, so I'm not a huge White Castle fan, so that's fine with me.
SPEAKER_11: Now, if you've spent any time in the Midwest, this all might seem a little strange because there is nothing the residents of a Midwestern town love more than finding something, anything to brag about.
SPEAKER_12: And Wichita is no exception. They just don't brag about White Castle. And there is at least one big reason for this.
This is the Pizza Hut Museum. This is the actual original building.
SPEAKER_02: Sam Morris is director of staff development and special initiatives at Wichita State University, where yes, there is a museum dedicated to Pizza Hut.
SPEAKER_12:
Pizza Hut was started in Wichita in 1958.
SPEAKER_18: And while it's not technically the first American pizza chain, it predates all the most famous ones today. Little Caesars, Domino's, Papa John's. Today, it has more than 19,000 restaurants worldwide. That's 50 times as large as White Castle. There's various different memorabilia in here. The original cash register is around the corner here.
SPEAKER_02: They've got this pair of sweet sneakers. I think they only got 50 made, but what they were supposed to do is you'd click the tongue and it would order you a pizza. Wait, what? Yeah. So pretty ridiculous. But there's all kinds of those types of things.
SPEAKER_02:
So there's a Pizza Hut Barbie? Let's go see that.
SPEAKER_12: There is a Pizza Hut Ken as well, but he's right now in storage.
SPEAKER_02: During the tour, I was honestly kind of pissed.
SPEAKER_12: Why wasn't the original White Castle this well preserved? Where was its fancy museum?
Where was its Ken doll? But I couldn't be too angry because even in the past, I've been in the original White Castle.
Because even if it is a semi-obscure cultural punchline, the truth is that today, White Castle is not struggling. Its definition of success is just a bit different than most of its competitors.
SPEAKER_18: White Castle is still family owned, but it's no longer trying to pitch itself as the definitive fast food chain. Instead, it's found something else to sell.
SPEAKER_04: You know, our vision as a family owned business is to feed the souls of craver generations everywhere.
SPEAKER_12: Jamie Richardson is an executive at White Castle headquarters in Columbus, Ohio. He is married to a fourth generation Ingram, and he leaves no room for confusion about the company's current strategy.
SPEAKER_04: I'm vice president of marketing for restaurants and retail. But really, my unofficial title is keeper of the crave.
SPEAKER_18: Over the years, the company has patiently developed a cult following. People who will go to any lengths to get their hands on a White Castle slider.
SPEAKER_12: The fact that you can't always find one nearby now actually works to their advantage. It's kind of like the fast food equivalent of an outlet mall. Once you're finally there, the whole point is to go nuts and consume as many of those tiny square sliders as possible.
Something, as Jamie explained, they make sure is always easy to do.
SPEAKER_04: So you can buy a sack of 10 or get a crave clutch with 20, crave case with 30, crave crate with 100. I'm still working on the crave palette. Maybe someday. That's 6,982 if you're interested. Please call ahead. But yeah, it keeps it fun. We don't take ourselves too seriously.
SPEAKER_12: This approach has earned White Castle an extremely loyal fan base. When White Castle opened up a new location in Orlando, Florida in 2020, customers camped out overnight and waited in line for six hours.
And for those who just can't wait that long, there's also a version of their favorite slider in the frozen food aisle.
SPEAKER_18: White Castle even has an exclusive Cravers Hall of Fame for its most devoted fans.
SPEAKER_16: In a small room behind an undisclosed door, a group of White Castle staff sift through thousands of applications to determine who has what it takes to be inducted into the Cravers Hall of Fame.
SPEAKER_01: Wow. I can't believe how many Cravers Hall of Fame applications.
SPEAKER_18: Applications are evaluated by a panel of judges according to four criteria. Loyalty to the White Castle brand, creative presentation of the story, uniqueness and originality of the content and extent and magnitude of the author's crave.
SPEAKER_12: Inductees are flown to Columbus, Ohio, for a formal ceremony at White Castle headquarters, a building which one Hall of Fame were described as Willy Wonka-esque. In addition to a giant wooden throne in the lobby, there's also a two-story spiral slide.
SPEAKER_04: So there's an emotional connection to these fans that's real. And at the end of the day, we don't try to be like everybody else.
SPEAKER_12: All of which helps keep White Castle customers coming back again and again and again.
SPEAKER_10: And you can buy them in the grocery store freezer frozen. It's it will get you by in a pinch, but it's not the same.
SPEAKER_12: That's Jeremy Brooks, the White Castle superfan who lives in Kansas City, where there are, remember, no White Castles. Which is why even though he may not be in the Cravers Hall of Fame, he and his friends still make the pilgrimage to the nearest White Castle location.
SPEAKER_18: In Columbia, Missouri, a four hour round trip.
SPEAKER_12: So is this something that is very premeditated or is it spontaneous?
SPEAKER_10: I would say more spontaneous than premeditated. You know, get to like a Friday night, everybody's off of work. It's like, all right, you know, whoever's car has the most available room or in best condition, as the case might be with some of us. And just hit the road.
SPEAKER_12: Is this in any way inspired by a certain movie?
SPEAKER_10: My, if you want to call it an addiction, call it what it is. My fascination and my my love for White Castle existed long before said movie existed, although that definitely did not hurt things at all.
SPEAKER_12: At the end of Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, there's this moment. Harold and Kumar have spent all night trying to make it to a White Castle location when they finally see one in the distance. And Kumar starts this motivational speech about why his parents immigrated to this country in the first place.
SPEAKER_07: They wanted to live in a land that treated them as equals, a land filled with hamburger stands and not just one type of hamburger.
OK, hundreds of types of different sizes, toppings and condiments.
SPEAKER_12: It's incredibly cheesy, but it does take on new meaning when you realize that what he's referring to, it's White Castle's legacy.
SPEAKER_07: This is about the pursuit of happiness.
This night.
It's about the American dream.
SPEAKER_18: Because even if it doesn't always get the credit it deserves, we live in the world White Castle built.
One in which, whether you're on the road or in a new city, you're able to get exactly the thing you're hungry for and to have it taste just the way you remember every time.
After the break, Mackenzie is back to explain why every year thousands of your fellow Americans head to White Castle for Valentine's Day.
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So we're back with the reporter producer, Mackenzie Martin. Hey, Mackenzie. Hey, Roman.
SPEAKER_12: So, as you know, Valentine's Day is coming up. Yes. What are your feelings on this particular holiday?
SPEAKER_18:
You know, mixed to good. You know, I don't know. Yeah, I get that.
SPEAKER_12: Well, I personally I like the aesthetic and the chocolate centric aspect of it.
But I find being in a restaurant on Valentine's Day just a horrible experience to the point that I cannot go out. The stakes are just way too high. You've got these expensive prefix menus. Everyone's supposed to be having this super romantic night. It's just a lot of pressure. And that is why, Roman, when I found out that White Castle has a unique kind of Valentine's Day tradition, I was immediately hooked.
Yeah. Well, you have to be intrigued by that.
SPEAKER_18: So tell me more. So in essence, every year on Valentine's Day only, all participating White Castle locations in the country transform into a fine dining establishment.
SPEAKER_12:
But it's not stuffy because it's still White Castle. So it's just suddenly it has table service. It's got menus, white tablecloths, candlelight, roses. And they have been doing this for a long time, since 1991. So we're coming up on nearly 35 years. And I first heard about this tradition from Adam Chandler, our fast food expert from the episode.
I presume you remember him.
SPEAKER_18: Of course. Of course.
SPEAKER_12: So I don't think I made this super clear in the episode, but I cannot stress enough how fascinated Adam is by fast food.
SPEAKER_03: This is my dog, Arby, after the roast beef place. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I love that your dog is named Arby.
SPEAKER_03: Arby, come on.
SPEAKER_12: Nine years ago, Valentine's Day was approaching much like it is now. And Adam had just started dating someone, which is kind of an awkward thing.
SPEAKER_03: You know, Valentine's Day felt like it was a lot of pressure to put on the early moments of a relationship.
SPEAKER_12: So he had heard about this Valentine's Day tradition at White Castle, but he'd never gone. And he figured this is what I'll do. But he decided to keep it a surprise.
SPEAKER_03: And I said, we're comfortable clothes, which is a red flag immediately in a romantic date situation.
Oh, I don't know.
SPEAKER_18:
This is any sort of surprises make me nervous. Romantic style surprises make me extremely nervous. It really. So I'm very worried about this.
SPEAKER_12: I also hate surprises. And it's also worth pointing out that this woman is a food writer. So like she went to culinary school. So it was maybe a bit of a gamble for Adam to take her to a fast food restaurant in the first place, let alone for this extremely romantic occasion. But his rationale was that it was almost like a litmus test.
SPEAKER_03: So the idea that I would be able to take a date to a White Castle and have a good time seemed like for the right person, an excellent experience.
And for the wrong person, maybe it would tell me something about my relationship. I'll grant him that. It will tell you something about your relationship, depending on how that goes.
SPEAKER_18: But I still am not sure if it's the best idea to do this on Valentine's Day. So what happened?
SPEAKER_12: Well, they get there to this White Castle in Brooklyn.
And it is no longer a normal White Castle.
It is now for one night of the year, declaring itself the Love Castle.
SPEAKER_18: Oh, my God. OK. Love Castle. It's perfect. OK. Keep going.
SPEAKER_12: So just picture it. The whole restaurant is decked out with like paper hearts and red streamers and paper backgrounds with kisses on it.
There's this romantic playlist coming out of the speakers. The candles on the tables. I mentioned earlier, I'll be at like LED candles, but still. And the hostess shows Adam and his date to their reserved table, gives them a menu, which is, of course, Valentine's Day themed.
SPEAKER_18: OK, tell me more about this, because I can't imagine what romantic dishes await them on the White Castle's Valentine's Day menu.
SPEAKER_12: I know, right? Well, I don't know exactly what they serve that time, but this year the Love Castle will be serving the Love Clutch Collection, which is a White Castle meal for two. Last year, they offered a special Sprite Love Castle potion, which is like this cherry vanilla version of Sprite. Another year, they debuted a strawberry swirl cheesecake on a stick, and that one actually ended up staying on the regular menu. So very classy.
And on top of that, they have White Castle Valentine's Day merch, too. So we've got a White Castle scented candle, red heart shaped Love Castle sunglasses. And there's also my personal favorite, the Love Castle robe, which is this maroon satin kimono style robe with drawings of cupid and sliders all over it.
Oh, my. OK, I think I see what they're going for.
SPEAKER_18: It's like a little cheesy, a little over the top. And they just seem to be able to balance it all with a really good sense of humor.
SPEAKER_12: That's a good way to put it. And that is why when Adam arrived at the Love Castle with his date and he sees all of this, being the fast food fan that he is, he was immediately charmed by the spectacle.
SPEAKER_03: The environment there can't be beat. Everyone's having a good time. And it just takes all the expectations away from what is normally, I think, an over-pressured, over-hyped, unnecessarily stressful event.
SPEAKER_18: Well, you know, the fast food writer with a dog named Arby likes it. No doubt about that. But like, you know, what did this date think?
She also liked it.
SPEAKER_18:
OK, thank God.
SPEAKER_12: In fact, it was such a success that his date is actually now his fiance.
SPEAKER_12:
And they have had White Castle for Valentine's Day every year since.
SPEAKER_18: That is the cutest thing I've ever heard. That's amazing.
SPEAKER_12: And since this episode comes out the day before Valentine's Day and they are, of course, doing it again this year, tomorrow will be their 10th time.
SPEAKER_18: That's so sweet. That'll be their 10th White Castle anniversary. Well, Mazel tov tov tov tov.
SPEAKER_12: It's a very beautiful thing. And it turns out that a lot of other people have also made this an annual tradition. One story that Adam told me that stuck out the most was this group of five women in Minnesota who are all widows. And they go every year to reminisce about their late husbands.
SPEAKER_03: And I think that that again kind of speaks to what it means to have places that are accessible and affordable and democratic that are welcoming to anyone on a day like Valentine's Day, which can be isolating and lonely. There's not a lot of that left, I think, in American life. There aren't a lot of meeting places and third places where you see all kind of swaths of humanity uniting, especially over something as intimate as a meal.
SPEAKER_18: You know, Adam's making a really good point here, because I think it's pretty easy to look at the extreme commodification of food in this way and feel like this mass produced food is made for mass produced people who have mass produced feelings and it's all the same. And, you know, the food is treated like a product. You're kind of treated like a product. However, I have been in a car with a bunch of kids in the back chanting nuggets, nuggets, nuggets.
SPEAKER_18:
And it's like a joyful experience that they can all have this thing and we can have fun with it and enjoy it. And it's just kind of great. And fast food can be both those things at once. Yeah, I feel like fast food is kind of all of the worst things and all the best things about America packed into one 10 sack of sliders.
SPEAKER_18: I still think 10 sliders just seems like too much.
SPEAKER_12: It's really not. Now, I do need to point out that White Castle isn't the only fast food establishment that pulls out extra stops for Valentine's Day.
Maybe you've seen this around as well, Roman.
There are reports of individual McDonald's locations doing something like this. Always wanted to take a leaf out of White Castle's playbook. But these chains have had mixed results. Like notoriously, pizza places like Papa John's and Pizza Hut tried to sell heart shaped pizzas back in 2017 and got a lot of social media hate when customers received horribly misfigured pizzas or ones that only became heart shaped because they showed up with a slice missing. So this is one area where Adam says White Castle continues to dominate. Well, that makes sense to me.
SPEAKER_18: Like if you're going to do Valentine's Day associate with a fast food restaurant, White Castle sounds like the safest bet. And also kind of the perfect amount of like kitchen style that they seem to have perfected over the decades.
SPEAKER_12: Totally.
But Adam did warn me that Valentine's Day is now in under 24 hours. So if you haven't planned ahead, don't think you can just waltz into a White Castle tomorrow night and expect to be seated.
SPEAKER_03: You have to book early.
I booked like three or four weeks in advance sometimes ahead of time because it sells out. The times sell out. I'm not joking. This is a hot ticket.
SPEAKER_18: So have you booked your reserve seats for Valentine's Day this year?
SPEAKER_12: Definitely not. Because you may remember when I started reporting this episode, I had never actually been to a White Castle at all. That's right. But like since then, have you have you gone?
SPEAKER_12: I have. I'm happy to report that I recently rectified this. When I finished all the reporting for this episode, I had to see what the fuss was about, you know. So this past November, I finally had my first non-Frozen in-person White Castle experience.
I am going to get two 1921 sliders.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah. And I'm also going to get the original cheese slider.
SPEAKER_18: OK. So what was the verdict? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Are you now a Craver? Are you potentially going to be in the Craver Hall of Fame?
SPEAKER_12: It was awesome. Like I get it now. That's great. I think these are way better in real life. I think the bun's way better.
SPEAKER_12: The pickle is really good, too.
SPEAKER_18: Well, this is awesome. I'm so glad that you could do this whole story and then find in the end that you actually enjoyed the burger because that would be such a disaster if you didn't. Thank you so much for bringing this story. It was just great. It was great working with you, too.
SPEAKER_11: Thanks, Roman.
SPEAKER_18: 99% Invisible was reported this week by Mackenzie Martin, produced by Jacob Maldonado Medina and edited by Joe Rosenberg, mixed and sound designed by Martine Gonzalez, music by Swan Real, with additional music by Jenny Conley, Nate Creary and John Neufeld. Fact checking by Graham Hacia. Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Colstead is the digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Jason De Leon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Lay, Lasha Madon, Gabriella Gladney, Kelly Prime, Nina Potok, Sarah Bake and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the Stitcher and Sirius XM podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building in beautiful uptown Oakland, California.
A different version of the story first aired on the KCUR Studios podcast of People's History of Kansas City and was lovingly edited by Gabe Rosenberg and Suzanne Hogan. People's History has got a ton of fascinating stories, all from Kansas City's peculiar corner of the Midwest. We highly recommend that you check it out. Adam Chandler's book about America's fast food kingdom is called Drive Thru Dreams. And for even more about White Castle, you can check out Selling Them by the Sack by Dave Hogan. Find them wherever you find your books. You can find us on all the usual social media sites, as well as our very own Discord server.
We have a link to that on our website, as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99PI.org.
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SPEAKER_00: Hi, it's Levar Burton. I've got a brand new podcast called Sound Detectives. It's a comedy adventure about the magic and mystery of sound, and it's fun for the whole family. In this world, sounds have gone mysteriously missing. Follow Detective Hunch and his sidekick, Audie, the ear, as they track them down and find the nefarious sound swindler, all with a little help from me, Levar Burton. You can listen to Sound Detectives on Sirius XM, Pandora or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to follow the show so you never miss an episode.
Sound good to you? Sounds great to me.
