Meat+Poultry - September 2021 - 24

COVER STORY
White Castle's Zanesville,
Ohio, plant is one of three
meat processing facilities the
company utilizes to supply
beef patties for its restaurants
and retail customers.
Slider spinoffs
Integration used to be a bigger part of White
Castle's strategy, until the principals decided to take
advantage of outsourcing certain operations. Starting
in about 1934, the company manufactured its own
stainless-steel countertops and other surface-based
furnishings for its restaurants.
The Porcelain-Steel Buildings Co. (PSB) division,
employed about 38 people and supplied custommade
steel for appliance makers and automobile
manufacturers. The business was sold in 2015.
Another offshoot company that sprouted from Billy
Ingram's efforts supplied White Castle's restaurants
with disposable hats. Jamie Richardson, vice
president of marketing and public relations, said
Ingram was so focused on cleanliness he came up
with a solution for employees who struggled to keep
their uniform hats clean by making the hats in-house,
which spawned another subsidiary, the Paperlynen
Co. After discovering the offshoot company could
supply White Castle locations with enough hats for
an entire year in just one week, the company began
making paper hats for other fast-food companies.
" In the '50s and '60s that paper hat was a fixture in
fast-food restaurants, " Richardson said.
Eventually, like PSB, Paperlynen Co. was also sold.
" We made a tough decision and realized we're
really pretty good at food and we're not necessarily
great at this part of our business, " Richardson said.
24 MEAT+POULTRY | 09.21 | www.meatpoultry.com
plants - we're starting to call them our 'slider
provider' meat plants - has been huge. "
One of those plants, in Zanesville, Ohio,
is celebrating its 20th year in operation, the
newest of the company's three meat-processing
facilities including one in Lebanon, Ind., and
the other in Orleans, Ind. In keeping with the
company's tradition of maintaining operational
control of its manufacturing, White Castle runs
three frozen retail plants in Covington and
Louisville, Ky., as well as one in Vandalia, Ohio,
in addition to two bakeries where it makes
buns, in Cincinnati and Rensselaer, Ind.
TRY, TRY AGAIN
When discussing innovation within the
company, whether it's a new menu item or a
new corporate initiative or policy, Richardson
said the mindset is to try anything within
reason and to learn from what works and
what doesn't work. That empowerment is a
priority of Lisa Ingram, great-grandaughter
of the founder who now serves as president
and chief executive officer and holds
the distinctive title of " Slider Queen. "
" We've tried a lot of things and not all of
them have worked, but a lot of them have, "
Richardson said. " And Lisa has really led us
down a path of 'let's try a lot of things, but not
everything.' It really is our Slider Queen who
gets all the credit for doing all these things in
the spirit that her dad and her grandfather and
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