Quick Service Restaurants, Franchising, and Multi-Unit Chain Management

Francis A Kwansa, H.G. Parsa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317956211
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Negocios en general

Learn about new strategies to improve service, quality, and profitability for quick service restaurants!Quick Service Restaurants, Franchising, and Multi-Unit Chain Management examines a variety of issues pertaining to quick service restaurants. Quick-service restaurants (QSR) are the dominant sector of the foodservice industry and a one-hundred-billion-dollar industry. Since their inception in the 1920s, quick-service restaurants have become one of the cultural icons of America. This informative book contains vital information on:

• growth, change and strategy in the international foodservice industry
• food safety as an international problem and the formation of outreach committees to combat the challenges faced globally
• food consumption patterns and the driving forces that influence consumer food preferences
• the differences between mature and younger customers' expectations and experiences in QSRs, casual, and fine dining restaurants
• consumer attitudes toward airline food
• adding quick-service meals to airplane menus
• factors influencing parental patronage of QSRs
• a case study on how Billy Ingram, founder of White Castle restaurants, made the hamburger a staple on American menus

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A REVIEW ARTICLE

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White Castle: How Billy Ingram Made Hamburger “The America’s Choice”

Dave Hogan

SUMMARY. Billy Ingram is the acknowledged father of American fast food. This article describes how, through White Castle system, Ingram created a whole new industry, an industry that employs millions of workers and accounts for billions in sales. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <[email protected]> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> © 2001 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]

KEYWORDS. White Castle, fast food, entrepreneur, Billy Ingram

Extraordinary innovators and entrepreneurs are not necessarily true inventors or originators. More often, the significant entrepreneur takes existing ideas, perfects them, and then creatively applies them to a specific venture or a purpose. Business history is full of such successes, individuals who honed an existing idea and converted it into a fortune. Henry Ford did not invent either automobiles or the assembly line and young Mrs. Fields certainly did not bake the first chocolate chip cookie. Even the revered Edison, popularly credited with boundless originality, often synthesized earlier ideas and inventions into practical and marketable machines. Innovators in virtually every industry seized upon unformed or unexploited ideas and concepts and transformed them into gold. In the restaurant industry, one such innovator was Billy Ingram.

THE EARLY BEGINNINGS OF HAMBURGER

Edgar Waldo “Billy” Ingram is the acknowledged father of American fast food. He single-handedly did more to advance this industry than all the Krocs (McDonald’s), Sanders (KFC), Thomases (Wendy’s), and Carneys (Pizza Hut) who would later follow. Ingram successfully sold his hamburger to America, effectively convincing the consuming public to buy both the product and the concept of fast food. Prior to his creation of the White Castle System in 1921, hamburger meat was held in very low regard by most Americans, and was rarely eaten while eating in public places. Ground beef was often referred to as “the poor man’s steak.” In fact, during the early 20th Century many meat processors were selling high quality beef to retailers and restaurants and lower quality beef to food processors for making ground beef. This practice has its roots in Western Europe where old meat was often processed and sold as ground beef before it is spoiled. Since it is less than prime quality it is sold at discounted prices and often bought by poor people. Consequently, ground beef became a cultural symbol of lower classes and resented by the upper classes. Since the cultural roots of the American society extend into the traditions of Western Europe, many Americans during the early 20th century were less than enthusiastic about consuming ground beef products while dining out.

Ingram the Innovator

But within a decade, Ingram magically transformed the lowly hamburger into the most popular food item of America, spreading his chain of restaurants from Wichita, Kansas to New York City. His initial success in the 1920s spawned countless other entrepreneurs in the hamburger business, who quickly spread this humble sandwich to every city corner and small town in the nation. Though the founder of fast food, Billy Ingram did not invent either the hamburger or the fast food concept. His true genius lay in adapting and combining existing products, concepts, and marketing techniques into a successful restaurant chain, which served as the prototype for the industry. Similar to Ford, Ingram converted undeveloped ideas into profitable ones, building a thriving organization, a substantial personal fortune and a place in business history.

Creating a successful restaurant chain, founding a major American industry, introducing a new style of eating and introduction of a single most popular restaurant menu item is each historically significant in itself. Most entrepreneurs certainly never accomplish even one of these goals, much less all four. During his forty-five years in the hamburger business, Billy Ingram did succeed in all of these areas and much more. The historical focus of this essay, however, is not to extol Ingram’s many remarkable achievements, but rather to analyze how he achieved these feats.

By blending imitation, true invention, and a creative synthesis of both, Mr. Ingram built a burger chain, which transformed American culture. He opened his first White Castle restaurant in Wichita, Kansas in 1920 and built a restaurant empire, the oldest restaurant chain in America. A shrewd businessman, Ingram initially invested all of his capital in a dubious product that he wholeheartedly believed in, but most others still scoffed at. He packaged his restaurants to represent positive virtues, both in name and appearance, refining and combining proven ways to instill customer confidence. Ingram proudly borrowed many of his most effective marketing strategies from more established industries, such as newspaper coupons used by grocery stores and corporate hostesses employed by food manufacturers. As a result of his resourcefulness, White Castle survived the peaks and valleys of recent history, continuing to thrive through the economic hardships of the Great Depression, the severe commodity shortages of World War II, and the intense fast food competition in postwar America.

INGRAM AND ANDERSON–“THE HAMBURGER TEAM”

Ingram’s initial entry into the hamburger business was the most dramatic example of how he improved on an existing idea. In 1916, a fry cook and self-described “ne’er do well” Walt Anderson opened a makeshift food stand on a Wichita street corner. Selling borrowed ground beef on his first day in business, Anderson used a flat piece of iron as a griddle, and hawked his hamburger sandwiches up and down the sidewalk, proclaiming them to be “just a nickel a piece.” Rather than offering a round meatball on a slice of bread, which was the popular norm of the era, Anderson broke with tradition and served a flat patty between two halves of a roll. Legend claims that he came upon this new serving twist in a rather unexpected manner, simply by one day growing impatient with the cooking time of a meatball, and exasperated, finally smashing the patty flat with his spatula. Regardless of his sandwich’s precise origin, Anderson’s new version of the hamburger was an immediate hit on the streets of Wichita. It was very affordable at five cents each, and easy to hold in the hand and eat. In fact, Anderson’s hamburger sandwich proved so popular that he soon expanded his operation, adding three more food stands in other Wichita neighborhoods. Each of these new stands similarly thrived, allowing Walt Anderson to purchase a handsome house in 1920, located in an affluent section of the city. Despite his financial success, however, Anderson’s street-corner operations were still only patronized by hungry working-class customers, and generally held in contempt by Wichita’s middle class. As Prohibition was getting underway, much of the public believed a popular notion that “food joints” were often front operations for bootleggers selling illicit spirits. Thus, in 1921 when Anderson sought to rent space to open a new restaurant in a more affluent district of the city, the dentist who owned the building was very reluctant about granting him a lease. For assistance in securing the lease, Anderson turned to his fellow Rotarian, real estate and insurance agent Billy Ingram. The dentist relented when Ingram, an established and respected member of Wichita’s business community, agreed to co-sign Anderson’s lease.

In the process of these negotiations, Ingram learned the details of Walt Anderson’s burger business, became impressed by his rapid financial success, and envisioned ideas for even greater profit potential. Though still very profitable, Anderson’s existing operation already saturated Wichita’s working class market, and its profit growth potential appeared to be stagnant. Ingram realized immediately that Anderson’s good idea just needed new management style and innovation. The two men agreed to form a new company, with Anderson as the titular president. Ingram, the risk taker and entrepreneur, quickly sold his other interests and invested these proceeds into his new enterprise. From the beginning of their new company, Ingram primarily guided the growth and direction of the business. Anderson remained on board until 1933, but he only supervised day-to-day operations, with little real input into marketing strategies and territorial expansion.

The First Fast Food Restaurant Chain: White Castle

Billy Ingram’s first decision was to reorganize and recreate the entire business. He saw the potential for business expansion beyond Wichita. In fact, from the very beginning of their new company, Ingram professed his very optimistic goal of creating “a national institution.” With this goal in mind, Ingram set out to build his new business from the ground up, beginning with the actual buildings. It was obvious that many potential buyers objected to the questionable appearance and image of the street-corner stands and especially distrusting the cleanliness and quality of the food. In 1921 many people in America still remembered the lurid details of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which depicted the unsanitary conditions in the meat industry. Compounding these popular doubts was the common belief during that era that ground meat was the old, and sometimes spoiled remnants from the butcher’s display case, ground up and mixed with chemicals for prolonged salability. Though the working-class public of Wichita was warming to the idea of hamburgers by 1921, the rest of the country ate them only sparingly, if at all. This distrust of the meat product was further heightened by the fact that most hamburger stands appeared to be unhygienic and temporary operations, often housed in either ramshackle buildings or portable stands on street corners.

To counter what he referred to as “the prejudice against ground meat,” Ingram planned a campaign to legitimize both the burger and the business. In fact, Ingram was thoroughly convinced that Anderson’s little hamburger sandwich could easily become a gold mine, if only marketed more effectively. First, he wanted a name for the company name that could communicate clearly to its customers in a positive way. Ingram chose the name “White Castle” for the company banner to convey the dual image of high level of cleanliness (“White”) and permanence (“Castle”) (not another street corner vendor). To give greater meaning to the new name of the company, White Castle, he constructed sturdy buildings in a castle motif with a crenelated tower and roof reflecting the intended strength and stability message. Consistent with his theme, Ingram even whitewashed his new mini-castles and installed gleaming stainless steel fixtures for a clean, hygienic appearance. Setting a precedent for his future management decisions, Ingram borrowed the whitewashed facade concepts from leading luncheonettes of the day and the castle motif from nothing less than the famed Chicago Water Tower. Though neither concept was new, combining towers and white paint together into a small hamburger restaurant was quite original. Interestingly, however, this somewhat hokey, and certainly unorthodox combination...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• The Restaurant Revolution—Growth, Change and Strategy in the International Foodservice Industry
• Food Safety: A Public Crime
• Changing Food Consumption Patterns and Their Impact on the Quick Service Restaurant Industry
• Understanding Mature Customers in the Restaurant Business: Inferences from a Nationwide Survey
• Consumer Attitude Toward Adding Quick-Service Foods to In-Flight Meals
• A Study of Factors Influencing Parental Patronage of Quick Service Restaurants
• A Review Article
• Research Notes
• Index