White Castle is the company credited with opening the first fast-food hamburger chain in 1921.
The chain began in Wichita, Kansas, through the partnership of cook Walter Anderson and businessman Billy Ingram. Anderson had already been selling hamburgers from food stands since 1916, but Ingram supplied the business expertise and helped turn the idea into a standardized restaurant chain.
White Castle emphasized speed, cleanliness, uniform portions and consistent preparation. Its small square hamburgers, later nicknamed “sliders,” were sold for five cents and helped make the hamburger seem reliable and respectable at a time when ground beef still had a poor reputation among many Americans.
A common mix-up is crediting McDonald’s with inventing the fast-food hamburger chain. McDonald’s later transformed the industry through franchising and large-scale expansion, but White Castle pioneered the standardized, multi-location hamburger model decades earlier. The original Wichita restaurant no longer operates, and Kansas has no current White Castle location.