The White Castle restaurant in Wichita, Kansas is credited with being the first fast food restaurant, even though the term "fast food" was not used when the restaurant opened in 1921. Hamburgers themselves were not even commonly eaten as they were considered poor quality and even unsafe. Billy Ingram and J. Walter Anderson, the founders of White Castle, created a market demand for burgers and started many of the concepts and conventions still used in the fast food industry today.

Before White Castle and "fast food," hamburgers were sold mostly at fairs and circuses and the public thought of them as cheap food made from scraps of meats that were often improperly cooked. Ingram, along with Anderson, a short-order cook who, in 1916, came up with the hamburger.

Their methods changed public opinion of hamburgers by letting customers watch the burgers being made. They came up with the "5 hole" concept in which 5 holes were formed in each patty to ensure thoroughly cooking of the meat. The attention to safety did help convince the customers to try the burgers. Ingram and Anderson claimed the 5 holes also improved flavor.

The first White Castle burgers had onions in the meat and as they were small in size, it was common to eat more than one. White Castle was not only the first restaurant to serve fast food, but also the first to come up with a marketing slogan for fast food: "Buy 'em by the sack." It was also the first fast food business to use coupons to attract new customers.

Ingram and Anderson wanted families to dine at their restaurants, so they put coupons in the local newspapers to attract them and it worked. The White Castle name and emphasis on cleanliness also helped the public to change their past views of hamburgers as unclean and undesirable.