By Steve Beard
One year ago, White Castle opened its first restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona. Selling more than 4.2 million sliders in the last 12 months, it has become the #1 location of the 360 White Castle restaurants in more than a dozen states. At more than 4,500 square feet, the Scottsdale Castle is the largest White Castle location on Earth.
Uniquely, the Scottsdale location also pays homage to rock musician and Arizona resident Alice Cooper, a long-time White Castle fan and a member of the “Cravers Hall of Fame,” with a large portrait of Cooper hanging in the restaurant.
The legendary shock rocker actually attended the groundbreaking for the lone Arizona location last year. “Being inducted into the ‘Cravers Hall of Fame’ will go down as one of my all-time favorite honors,” said Cooper. “They promised me a Castle close by, but I never thought they would do it! This is going to be epic.”
Raised on sliders as a young boy in Detroit, Cooper is said to have chosen tour locations based on proximity to White Castle restaurants. “It’s probably one of the most all-American things that there is, White Castles,” Cooper told reporters in 2014 at the induction ceremony while visiting the restaurant’s headquarters in Columbus, Ohio. “So I feel like it’s the one product that hasn’t changed over all the years. … White Castle tastes exactly the same. It’s great.”
The hamburger chain crowned Cooper in the “Craver in Extremis” category – recognizing public figures who have expressed their love for White Castle.
“We didn’t grow up on McDonald’s, we didn’t grow up on anything [else], we grew up on White Castle,” Cooper told reporters. “I never lost the craving for them… We played Detroit every Halloween, and I would always take the latest flight out back to Phoenix. I would have the guy stop, get a bag of White Castles, get on the airplane, and everybody on the airplane would go ‘I’d give you $5 for one of those’.”
White Castle, a 99-year-old family-owned business. The Scottsdale Castle is the first company-owned site west of the Mississippi. Much to the delight of fans, it is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.