Scope and Content
The White Castle System, Inc. Records date from 1921 to 1991 and comprise thirty-six cubic feet of materials and nineteen oversized volumes. The collection contains records compiled by the corporation's marketing department over a period of years from various company departments, individual employees, and subsidiary businesses. Although not comprehensive, the collection does offer some insights into the company's first seventy years of operation. The collection is arranged into the fourteen record series described below and listed on page 10. The record series are arranged in alphabetic order by series title. Records within each series are arranged in alphabetical, numerical, or chronological order as dictated by the type of record.
Series I, Advertising/Marketing Department Records, includes correspondence and memoranda, advertising analyses, and an alphabetical subject file. The correspondence files consist of chronologically arranged letters and memoranda of two heads of the department, Maurice F. Benfer, dated 1932 to 1966, and Gail D. Turley, dated 1962 to 1984. The Benfer folder contains both in-coming and out-going correspondence mostly of a routine nature, but does include some significant letters on company plans and policies written in the 1930s by Benfer to Billy Ingram. The Turley folders contain mostly routine business letters, but offer some information on the development of White Castle's advertising campaigns in the early 1980s.
The advertising analysis files contain records of the company's efforts to track the success or failure of its newspaper coupon marketing from the program's 1932 inception to 1960. In addition, these files contain records of a similar effort to track the company's occupant mailing advertising program from 1953 to 1970. These files are arranged in chronological order by type of record.
The alphabetically arranged subject file contains various examples of marketing materials, such as coupons, flyers, bag stuffers, and give-a-away items. Also included are a number of surveys from the 1930s to the 1960s of customers, employees, and management. The files contain a small amount of material on the Julia Joyce hostess program, a company marketing strategy started in the 1930s to change the general public's negative opinion of the hamburger sandwich. Other subjects include files on billboard, radio, television, and motion picture advertising, along with some company news releases and departmental meeting minutes.
Series II, Annual Reports, is arranged in chronological order by type of report. The series contains only a limited number of reports for the Advertising Department, dated 1929 to 1932, from the company's checkers and assistant managers, dated 1929 to 1933, from the company's president, dated 1926 to 1933, and one report, dated 1931, from the White Castle Board of Directors. Although limited in scope, these reports do provide some details about the company's expansion and operations during its first decade.
Series III, Employee Records, includes listings from the 1970s of area managers, biographical sketches of a few company executives and long-time employees, information on White Castle's employee benefit programs and suggestion system, and some employee record books. Files on the White Castle bonus plan date from the company's founding in 1924, to 1980, and are arranged in chronological order. The series contains a company wide ledger of employee discharges, dated 1924 to 1930, with alphabetical lists of employees by geographic location. These lists record date of hire and discharge, along with the reason a employee left the company. The series also contains fourteen time books for Cincinnati area employees, dated 1937 to 1952, that provide a sampling of the company's employment practices during this time period, along with some documentation on the company's reliance on female employees due to the Second World War.
Series IV, Financial and Sales Records, consists mostly of statistics on sales by geographic area from the 1930s to the 1960s. Also included are financial working papers dated during the 1940s that provide information on the effects of the Second World War on White Castle's sales. A general financial ledger, dated 1929, and a daily financial record for the Chicago area, dated 1933, provide samples of company sales and record keeping practices.
Series V, Ingram Foundation Records, dates from 1961 to 1982, though most records pertain to the 1977 to 1982 time period. These records offer a sampling of the type of charitable and not-for-profit organizations to which the foundation awarded funds. The files consist of correspondence, information on organizations seeking funding, and some documentation of the foundation's selection process. Most of this series is arranged in alphabetical order by the name of the organization seeking funding from the foundation. Records pertaining to some organizations are arranged together in four miscellaneous folders.
Series VI, Location/History Files for Restaurants, contains information on each company restaurant or "Castle." The records are arranged in alphabetical order by name of company geographic area, then numerically within each area by Castle number. The files contain various data on each company Castle, such as its opening date, street address, type of building design, and when it was replaced, moved, or closed. Files on older Castles may contain documents and correspondence on location leases, while files on newer Castles may contain location surveys and studies. Additional lease records for some older locations are found in separate folders arranged alphabetically by geographic location, then numerically by Castle number.
The series contains one folder of general information on all company Castles, which also includes some correspondence and memorandum on expansion plans into new areas. Also included in the series are two scrapbooks of newspaper clippings pertaining to Chicago area locations, along with five folders of records on historic preservation efforts on behalf of porcelain/enamel/steel building in general and on specific older Castles located in Columbus, Minneapolis, and St. Louis.
Series VII, Managers Meeting Minutes, contains the records of the annual meetings of White Castle area managers and heads of company departments. Arranged in chronological order, the series includes minutes from the meetings held in 1928 through 1974, and the 1980 and the 1981 meetings. Also included in the series are three pages of historical data on the annual meetings compiled by the company in 1966, along with a few samples of the minutes of various business meetings held in six company areas from 1938 to 1950. The managers meeting minutes contain the best record of corporate decision making within the collection. The minutes for meetings in the company's early years are similar to a company manual on the efficient and standardized operation of a company hamburger stand. Through the years these meetings gradually evolve to include broader discussions on various topics affecting the company, such as union activities, the employment of women, expansion into other markets, and political issues.
Series VIII, Meat Records, contains a variety of files pertaining to the hamburger used in White Castle restaurants, including company correspondence, reports, and memorandum, research files, meat testing, and files on wholesale meat packing companies. The company correspondence, reports, and memorandum, which date from 1950 to 1976, and the files on wholesale meat packing companies, which date from 1953 to 1981, are fairly routine in nature. These records focus on the company's efforts to obtain high quality meat products at the best price from a variety of meat packing companies, including Armour and Company, Swift and Company, Dixie Freezer, Inc., and the Travis Meat and Seafood Company. The research files contain records of the company's experimentation with various types of sandwiches, such as turkey, steak, and sausage. These files also help document the company's early (1930s) involvement in the use of frozen hamburger products. The meat testing records date from 1963 to 1991 and contain reports on the fat content and aerobic plate count of samples of White Castle hamburger sent to various laboratories. These records are arranged by company geographic area. All other records in this series are arranged in chronological order.
Series IX, Newsletters, Manuals, and Handbooks, contains various company publications printed primarily for internal, company use. Issues dating from 1927 to 1970 of the White Castle House Organ, a publication for both company and public use, are located in the printed materials collection of the Library.
Most of this series is comprised of two company newsletters, the General Letter, printed for company executives and area managers, and the Home Front, printed for employees of the corporate headquarters in Columbus, Ohio. Issues of the General Letter in the collection date 1935, from 1938 through 1982, and January through April 1990. This monthly newsletter contains information from the corporate headquarters on such topics as sales averages, management hires and promotions, and some news on company plans and policy. Also included are news notes from each company geographic area and department written by the respective area manager or department head.
The Home Front newsletters date from 1964 through 1984, July through December 1986, and February through July 1990. This monthly newsletter contains news of employees, such as transfers, hires, and retirements, along with notices concerning company benefits, sponsored events, and sports teams. Included with some issues is various literature, such as the newsletter of the Better Business Bureau of Central Ohio, Inc., the company distributed with the newsletter.
Also included in the series are a few issues of newsletters that pre-date (Hot Hamburger, 1926) and post-date (The Round Table, 1979-1983) the White Castle House Organ, along with scattered issues of the Accounting Letter, for 1972 to 1979, and Getting-A-Head for and with Paperlynen, for 1974.
This series contains a number of company manuals and handbooks, including a manager's handbook, dated 1932, along with the 1948, 1956, and 1963 editions of the White Castle employee manual. Also included is an information packet compiled in 1963 by company executives and sent to Castle managers in response to racial and civil rights incidents at White Castle locations in New York City.
Series X, Paperlynen Company Files, contains only a small sample of records, dated 1933 to 1973, of this corporate subsidiary. Most of the records in the series pertain to advertising and sales, but does include some patent records and a file on union relations during the 1969 to 1973 time period. The series also contains one folder and a scrapbook of newspaper and magazine clippings dating from 1933 to 1973.
Series XI, Patent Records, contains a small amount of records pertaining to patents, mostly dating in the 1930s, White Castle obtained for innovations it created. Significant records in this series include folders on the cap forming machine that lead to the formation of the Paperlynen Company and folders pertaining to various patents associated with building designs and construction of porcelain steel buildings. Included in the series is a scrapbook containing examples of company logos compiled in 1942 for the U.S. Patent Office.
Series XII, Porcelain Steel Building Company Records, contains some specifications and drawings for the various models of White Castle buildings developed in the 1930s and 1940s, along with records for other types of buildings, such as automobile service stations and a five room house, the company marketed during this time period. Complementing these records are "New Idea" files containing technical designs for fastening together the components of a porcelain steel building. A complement to this series are the detailed sets of engineering and architectural drawings for various White Castle building designs located in the White Castle Audiovisual Collection.
The series also includes one general folder containing company marketing items and miscellaneous materials pertaining to the company's history, along with one scrapbook of magazine and newspaper clippings from the 1930s.
Series XIII, Subject Files, contains records of a general or miscellaneous nature not directly related to the other record series within the collection. Arranged alphabetically by file name, these records include files on various food items, such as baked beans, caramel corn, coffee, cooking oil, and onions, along with formulas for hamburger meat and buns. The series contains one general folder on White Castle history and two folders on the company's history compiled during the 1970s. Other significant records in the series include one folder on a diet experiment conducted in 1930 during which a volunteer university student ate nothing but White Castle food for three months, two folders and one scrapbook on racial and civil rights incidents at New York area locations in 1963, and six folders of records pertaining to meat and other commodity rationing during the Second World War.
In addition, this series contains thirteen folders pertaining to E.W. "Billy" Ingram, including general biographical materials, his personal account ledger dating from 1927 to 1939, and copies of the Bulletin he wrote from 1957 to 1965 while he traveled to company locations or was on vacation. Other materials written by Billy Ingram found within in the series include copies of editorials he wrote for the White Castle House Organ, a copy of his The Offensive and Defensive in Business written in 1957, and his speech to the Newcomen Society in 1964.
Series XIV, Scrapbooks and Newspaper Clippings, consists of thirteen scrapbooks and four cubic feet of loose newspaper and magazine clippings, dated 1921 to 1989, compiled by either White Castle employees or a hired clippings service. Also included in this series are various books, magazines, and other printed materials containing some reference to White Castle. Loose clippings within the series have been photocopied onto archival quality paper for preservation purposes.
The scrapbooks date from 1921 to 1977 and are arranged in chronological order as listed in the inventory. Clippings in these scrapbooks are limited to news stories about White Castle and its subsidiary businesses.
The loose clippings are arranged by type into three categories, "White Castle in the News," general articles on White Castle, and subject files. The "White Castle in the News" clippings are comprised of articles about White Castle selected by company employees from various national magazines and newspapers. These articles were photocopied and distributed within the corporation from 1976 through 1985 under the heading, "White Castle in the News." The general articles on White Castle date from 1973 to 1989 and continue the type of clippings found in the scrapbooks listed above. These clippings were compiled by a clipping service, so contain not only articles about White Castle, but also articles in which White Castle is simply referred to in passing.
The third category of clippings, subject files, dates from 1933 to 1989, but most clippings are of articles published during the 1970s and 1980s. Clippings within the subject files have been photocopied and are arranged alphabetically by file name, then chronologically within each subject heading. The clippings contain articles about many other restaurant companies besides White Castle on such topics as nutrition in fast food, burger wars, frozen food, zoning for fast food locations, and fast food in general. The files also contain clippings of articles about specific events, such as the shipment of large numbers of White Castle hamburgers to U.S. Marines stationed in Beirut, Lebanon, and other large shipments to various cities in the western United States. Other topics include the closing of specific, older Castles in Columbus and Indianapolis, companies selling imitations of the White Castle hamburger, and expansion into the Cleveland and Philadelphia areas.