Hamburgers, metal, and mettle--Metal fabrication meets the burger business

摘要

The alive today, Billy would be proud of his family's metal fabrication company. That's what everybody called him: Billy, not sir, not Mr. Ingram, and certainly not his full name, Mr. Edgar Waldo Ingram. He demanded no such formalities, only a job done well—systematically. Ingram was fanatical about systems. Detail-oriented probably would have been an understatement. He liked systems so much that he made it part of his company's name: White Castle System. Yes, White Castle, home of the 5-cent hamburger (see Figure 1). At least that was the going rate in 1934, when the iconic restaurant chain opened a metal fabrication company on its 10-acre home office campus on West Goodale Street in Columbus, Ohio. From the road you can see White Castle's corporate office, its entryway adorned with the familiar porcelain facade inspired by the castle-like Chicago Water Tower.