The White Castle Slider has been named the ‘most influential burger of all time’ according to Time Magazine reporters who interviewed a team of burger historians and experts. Also included in the list, among others, were the McDonald’s Burger, the In-N-Out Burger, The Burger King Whopper, and the ShackBurger, but what makes the White Castle Slider so iconic?
Now famous for their small, square hamburgers with grilled onions, White Castle was the first hamburger fast food chain, opening in March 1921 in Wichita, Kansas. With the original slider only costing 5 cents, it was the first hamburger chain to sell a million hamburgers and then the first to sell a billion hamburgers. In the age of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, many Americans feared that ground beef was unsanitary and White Castle combated this by using white facilities and letting customers watch the meat being ground through a glass window. The emphasis on cleanliness and sanitation helped make White Castle the first fast food empire and paved the success for America’s burger obsession