▶White Tower restaurants patterned themselves after White Castle. The founders thoroughly investigated White Castle, going so far as to hire a former White Castle operator before opening the first White Tower restaurant. All of this came out over the course of two lawsuits, one of which was brought in 1929 in Minnesota by White Castle against White Tower. White Tower then counter-sued in a Michigan court claiming that they had arrived in Michigan first. The 1930 Minnesota court ruling found in favor of White Castle, forcing White Tower to end all use of their similar name, architecture, and slogans.
▶While White Castle did not force White Tower to change their name as per the ruling, they were required to pay a onetime licensing fee for its use to the tune of eighty-two thousand dollars.
White Tower building moving from Washington Ave to Central Ave in New York on October 23, 1962.
▶White Tower hamburgers weighed one ounce and were served on a two-inch wide roll.
▶The Towerettes were White Tower employees who were dressed as nurses to promote the sanitary motif associated with the “White” in their name.
▶White Tower tested a “Tower-O-Matic” automated restaurant concept during the 1950s and 1960s that proved to be unsuccessful.
▶White Tower locations were slowly sold off, city by city, during the 1980s, until the early 1990s when its parent company left the restaurant business altogether.
▶The Tombrock Corporation, formerly known as the White Tower Management Corporation, still exists as a real estate investment and management company based out of New Canaan, Connecticut.
▶There is one independently owned White Tower restaurant still open in Toledo, Ohio.
Little Tavern
Year Founded: 1927
City Founded: Louisville, Kentucky
Founder: Harry F. Duncan
Number of Locations at the Chain’s Peak: almost 50
Slogan: “Buy ’em by the bag!”
▶During their first few years of operation, the buildings resembled White Castles of the era.
▶The third Little Tavern location in Baltimore opened on January 29, 1931. The Tudor-style building that housed its debut at this location would be the signature look for all future Little Tavern structures.
▶In Laurel, Maryland, you will find the last Little Tavern. It reopened in 2008 as Little Tavern Donuts after having been in operation for sixty-six years, then closing in 2006. The original recipe for the burgers is on the menu.
The Krystal
Year Founded: 1932
City: Chattanooga, Tennessee
Founders: Rody Davenport Jr., J. Glenn Sherrill
Number of Locations at the Chain’s Peak: 420
Original Slogan: “Take Along a Sack Full”
▶Krystal’s first customer was French Jenkins, who spent thirty-five cents on six Krystals (their signature slider) and a cup of coffee.
▶Company lore says that Davenport’s wife suggested the name of crystal with a ‘K’ after having seen a crystal ball lawn ornament. Krystal’s restaurants have often sported a crystal ball on the roof top.
▶The Krystal Square Off was an event sanctioned by the former International Federation of Competitive Eating (now called Major League Eating) held from 2004 to 2009. Contestants had to eat as many Krystal hamburgers in eight minutes as possible. Joey Chestnut set the current world record on October 28, 2007, with 103 Krystal hamburgers.
▶In a 2017 interview, Priscilla Presley mentioned that while in Memphis, Tennessee, Elvis Presley loved to eat Krystal hamburgers.
▶Krystal and White Castle’s locations only overlap in Kentucky (Bowling Green, London, and Somerset) and in Nashville, Tennessee.
▶Krystal currently operates over three hundred sixty restaurants in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
The original Krystal building being built in 1931. It was manufactured in Chicago then brought down to Chattanooga.
Steak ‘n Shake
Year Founded: 1934
City: Normal, Illinois
Founders: Augustus “Gus” Hamilton Belt, Edith L. Belt
Number of Locations at the Chain’s Peak: more than 577
Original Slogan: “In Sight It Must Be Right” and “Tak-Homa-Sak”
▶Gus Belt owned the Shell Inn, a combination gas station and restaurant. He borrowed three hundred dollars against the furniture in his apartment from a bank to fix up the building.
▶“I’m going to start a drive-in. I’m going to have the finest hamburger in the country and a real, honest-to-goodness milkshake. Customers can come up, park, and get waited on in the car. Or they can eat at a counter inside.” Gus said to his friend Hynie Johnson, a sign painter. The going rate for a hamburger at the time was five cents, and he planned to sell his at ten cents.
▶When the first location opened in February 1934, it could serve up to fifty customers inside.
▶It was called “Whitehouse Steak ‘n Shake” after the popular “white house” restaurant style. The Whitehouse surname was dropped since everyone referred to them as Steak n Shake.
▶When Steak ‘n Shake had three locations, Gus Belt had a habit of wheeling in a barrel of T-bone, sirloin, and round steaks and then grinding them up into steakburgers right in front of his customers. The idea was to show them what went into their burgers, hence the slogan “In Sight It Must Be Right.”
▶The Rocky Mountain Hamburger Company from Denver had “Tak-Homa-Sak” on their wall. The president gave Gus Belt permission to use it for Steak ‘n Shake.
▶When World War II caused beef shortages, Gus Belt took it into his own hands to make sure that Steak ‘n Shake would not be affected. He purchased a farm and bootlegged cattle to make sure that his fifteen locations had could serve their steakburgers.
▶The Steak ‘n Shake on Route 66 at Springfield, Missouri, was built in 1962 and made the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.
▶Today, there are 577 Steak ‘n Shakes worldwide in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and outside the US in France, Italy, Kuwait, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi
