By Mark Bennett
TERRE HAUTE — A White Castle hamburger costs 61 cents. Hauteans used to drive 70 miles just to eat them.
So, if you calculate the per-mile value of the tiny, square sandwiches, multiplied by the obsession-to-satisfaction ratio, what is the end result of that equation? I don’t know, but I do know this: White Castle has done the math and finally opened a location in Terre Haute. It’s a match made in fast-food heaven.
“When the Lord put his hand on the White Castle” hamburger, said smiling customer Terry Shattuck, “nobody had one like the White Castle. They’re the best.”
Hundreds, maybe thousands of local folks share that affection. (The quaint chain of eateries calls those people “cravers.”)
When the new Terre Haute restaurant at 4340 U.S. Highway 41 South opened Sunday, cravers bought 30,000 White Castle burgers in its first 24 hours. On Monday, the nine grills cranked out another 29,000 of the distinctly oniony, pickle-topped sandwiches.
White Castle operates more than 390 restaurants in 11 states, and Indianapolis regional director David Dore has presided over several start-ups. Terre Haute, though, impressed Dore, a veteran of 43 years with White Castle.
“When you measure it against all other openings, we’re hitting it out of the ballpark” in Terre Haute, he said Tuesday morning, with a grin.
His distance-based analogy is appropriate. Until Sunday, Terre Haute cravers would drive to the nearest White Castle, 70 miles away in Plainfield. That quest for Slyders — fans’ now-trademarked term for the slippery burgers — included Army servicemen Larry Shields and Joshua Moore, who stood in line Tuesday inside Terre Haute’s new shop. “I’m just glad — no more trips to Plainfield,” said Shields, a member of the 438th Chemical Company in Terre Haute.
Shattuck’s Terre Haute family made that burger pilgrimage, too. “We used to run over to Plainfield three times a month,” he said. Now, Terre Haute “is our No. 1 [stop] — breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
At lunchtime Tuesday, Shattuck and his sons, Brandon, 14, and Skylar, 9, carried a cardboard “suitcase” of White Castles to their table.
It’s odd that Terre Haute had to maintain a long-distance love affair with White Castle. The nation’s first fast-food hamburger chain began in 1921 (27 years before McDonald’s) at Wichita, Kan., and just six years later put its first Hoosier location in Indianapolis. The faux-medieval stone diners cropped up around the state as the decades passed. There were 40 in Central Indiana, alone, before Terre Haute’s opened Sunday.
Putting a White Castle in this blue-collar city seems like a no-brainer, especially right now. In a town with a 10-percent unemployment rate, the prices at this place — officially Castle 57 — are recession friendly. A regular hamburger costs 61 cents for one, or $18.30 for a “Crave Case” of 30. Cheeseburgers run 74 cents each, or $22.20 a case. The most expensive single menu item is a chicken-breast sandwich at $1.64.
Dore conceded, “We should’ve been here years ago.” When he transferred from Chicago to Indianapolis in 2004, adding a Haute restaurant became a high priority for Dore. He saw cards and letters from Terre Hauteans. When Dore made rounds to the Plainfield shop, “there would always be somebody who said, ‘When are you coming to Terre Haute?’”
But White Castle isn’t like McDonald’s or Burger King or Starbucks. All 390-plus White Castle restaurants are company-owned, while McDonald’s — with its 13,000 outlets — also operates franchises. The descendants of co-founder Billy Ingram still run White Castle. In fact, John Kelley, a fourth-generation Ingram and a vice president, worked inside the Terre Haute shop Sunday and Monday.
Joke about White Castle indigestion, if you want, but this company is a model of conservative American business. They’ve grown slowly, wisely and, thus, profitably, avoiding debt.
“Our company believes that if you owe no money, you cannot go broke, and therefore you won’t go out of business,” Dore said. “We’ve been through every recession and depression. There’s not many people who can say that.”
Dore started with White Castle as a 16-year-old. From a family of 12 kids, he just needed a job, and didn’t intend to make it his career. But he stayed with the company, put himself through college, married, raised a family, put two children through college, and now directs operations for 41 Central Indiana White Castles.
At one point, a buddy offered Dore a factory job paying twice his then-$2.10-an-hour wage at White Castle. That same friend spent most of his time venting to Dore about the factory bosses, the working conditions, and his hours. “I told him, ‘Eddie, I like who I work with, and I’m having fun,’” Dore said.
As Dore told that story Tuesday, his area supervisor, Shawna Jones, nodded in agreement. She started with White Castle at 17, also never intending to stay. That was 32 years ago. “It’s just not your regular, quick-service restaurant,” she said, smiling.
That seems to explain the long lines at its long-awaited Castle in Terre Haute, where restaurant competition is thick.
“We have a cult following, and we have a taste that you can’t get anywhere else,” Dore said, sipping White Castle’s equally distinct coffee.
Then he hopped up, and politely repositioned a growing queue of customers eyeing the burger menu.
Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.
