Cheeseburger in Paradise: White Castle CEO on the brand’s real estate strategy

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Cheeseburger in Paradise: White Castle CEO on the brand’s real estate strategy

5.2.2023

Spencer Levy
It's National Hamburger Month. So how about we start the show with a test of your burger literacy? Can you name the oldest fast food restaurant chain in the world? Here's a hint: It's establishments have their own flavors and distinctive architecture, with a connection to food history and pop culture, too. It's a brand that has nothing to do with arches or crowned rulers, but it does evoke a certain sense of royalty. On this episode, the answer to that trivia question as we visit the Columbus, Ohio headquarters of the world's first burger chain, White Castle. 

Spencer Levy
A quick show note before we dig in. I'm always hearing from people about things we got right, things they think we got wrong, topics they want us to do a deeper dive on. So starting today we're making it easier for you to reach out and tell us. We're adding a Talk to Us feature on Weekly Take episode pages. Got a question or comment for me? Visit the episodes at CBRE.com/TheWeeklyTake. Now let's get Cooking. 

Lisa Ingram
As a brand, we need to make sure that we're adapting our stores, our castles, to meet all of those needs. And that's ever changing and something that we continue to focus on how do we make that more enticing and easier access for our customers? 

Spencer Levy 
That's Lisa Ingram, White Castle’s CEO, heir to the throne of this historic burger business, a private company that was founded in Wichita, Kansas by her great grandfather more than a century ago. Coming up, for National Hamburger Month, we have an audience with the queen of sliders, as our guest is affectionately known. A conversation about her family business, how to build, manage and lead a company through changing times and tastes, and a real estate story, the designs and strategies of an enduring brand. White Castle. I'm Spencer Levy and that's right now on The Weekly Take. 

Spencer Levy
Welcome to The Weekly Take. In this week, I'm delighted to be in Columbus, Ohio with Lisa Ingram: the CEO of White Castle. Lisa, thanks so much for joining the show. 

Lisa Ingram
Thank you. I'm honored to be here. 

Spencer Levy
Great to have you. Great to be here. What a cool place. And I say that for a couple of reasons. One, because not only do I love Columbus, but White Castle is a brand that has meaning. It's different than - I'm not saying there are other brands are bad, they're just not the same level of evocativeness as White Castle. But at the same time, I'm sure there are many of our listeners who don't know White Castle is or what White Castle is. Please describe it for our listeners. 

Lisa Ingram
White Castle is a family business, started by my great-grandfather in 1921. And at the time Hamburger was not a well-known product and he had tried it and thought it was really tasty and a great product for every family. So he borrowed $700 from the bank and began his wild experiment in the restaurant business by taking hamburger and rolling it into a ball and then smashing it into onions on a grill. And it turned out a really tasty small, what we call a two by two inch slider. And that's that recipe we have continued for 102 years. And it's been a product that people crave. That people grow up and learn about from their family members are and are introduced from their friends and family and is something that people really want to continue to have in their life. So it's a great product. It's steam grilled on a bed of onions and has these really soft, nice buns that we make. We also make the 100% beef meat patties, and it's something that we're really proud of. 

Spencer Levy
The White Castle Invent the slider? 

Lisa Ingram
So we definitely invented, I think, the small sandwich. I don't know if there's any specific documentation to that, but you know, when you've been around for 102 years, you can have some leeway to claim that you were the first small slider that was invented. So yes, we're very proud of that. Sure. 

Spencer Levy
And I could see the pride and I hope our listeners it's not a visual presentation, but you're wearing a shirt that says “Slider Queen” on it. 

Lisa Ingram
Yes, yes, I actually have - I have a rainbow of colors of this shirt that are made by our friends at Homage, which is a local retail store. So it's wonderful. 

Spencer Levy
So how many stores do you have? 

Lisa Ingram
So we have 350 locations and we are all company owned with the exception of about five locations in Vegas, which are a license agreement. And we really believe in that model because we want to continue to maintain the - connection with our team members and with our customers. We really believe that that's been a big part of our success and our ability to continue to grow, to continue to be a great place to work, which I'm sure we'll talk about, and to continue to provide the amazing sliders that our customers crave because we're really focused on consistency and quality. 

Spencer Levy
Well, I think there's all that and I'm totally down with it, but I think there's an expression less is more sometimes. So I live in Maryland and there aren't any White Castles. 

Lisa Ingram
There are none in Maryland. 

Spencer Levy
And when I go to Newark Airport, I stop on the way there and on the way back because there's plenty in northern New Jersey. 

Lisa Ingram
Yes, there are.

Spencer Levy
So so maybe the crave is both for the, for the product and also for - sometimes it's scarcity in your market, except for the frozen food section…

Lisa Ingram
Yes

Spencer Levy
Tell us about that part of the business. 

Lisa Ingram
…where I buy it all the time. So that part of the business is 35 years old this year and it was started back in the eighties when my father would go around and visit all of the castles because he was president and CEO at the time, and he noticed that our customers were ordering in sacks of ten. We've always sold them in sacks of ten, so they may order two sacks of ten. So they get 20 burgers and they have four burgers here and then they want to take 16 home and they put them in their freezer. When he would talk to them, they told him they put them in the freezer and then they had this new thing called a microwave oven. You put it in there and heat it up and it was really good. And he recognized that there was a consumer need to - customers that were coming into the restaurants also wanted to have this product in their freezer because, like you said, we don't have stores everywhere. And so having the convenience of having a White Castle burger in their freezer was really appealing to customers. So he went out and talked to a lot of different people, a lot of retailers, a lot of manufacturers to help us make this product. There were some people that told him he was crazy, that people wouldn't want to buy it in the grocery stores, but fortunately he didn't listen to them. We started that business, and that business now has been a huge part of our success. We just recently doubled the size of one of our manufacturing facilities that makes that product, and it continues to be available in all 50 states, and we're really proud of that business. It continues to be a great, great way for our customers to get the product, even if they don't live very close to a castle. 

Spencer Levy
And correct me if I'm wrong, but your manufacturing is here in Ohio, is that correct? 

Lisa Ingram
We have one manufacturing facility here in Ohio and then we have two in Kentucky. 

Spencer Levy
Let's talk real estate for just a moment.

Lisa Ingram
Okay. 

Spencer Levy
And - you have 350 stores…

Lisa Ingram
Yes.

Spencer Levy
…and you got to pick them. And you expand sometimes. 

Lisa Ingram
Yes. Yes.

Spencer Levy
What's an ideal location for a White Castle? 

Lisa Ingram
So we look at a lot of data, just like many of our competitors in in this space. We look at traffic counts, we look at ingress-egress, we look at labor force in the surrounding areas. And we actually have the benefit of having a lot of data from our retail sales to know where customers are buying that product. So that helps us look at where sites might be good for us to go. 

Spencer Levy
Now, the pandemic - changed. We could have a whole show on how a pandemic changed almost everything from a distribution standpoint, but also from the configuration of your stores. The drive-thru, the size of the store. How was that impacted by the pandemic and how does it make you look at your store configuration going forward? 

Lisa Ingram
So our stores are anywhere from 2800 to 3000 square feet typically, and we have always been - very focused on drive-thru because we knew, you know, drive-thrus came around in the 1950s. And so that's been a very important channel for us. The pandemic really expanded the customers desire to have product where they want it, when they want it, and how they want it. So now they may want to come inside, they may want to go through the drive-thru. They may want to pull up curbside. They may want to get it delivered. And so as a brand, we need to make sure that we're adapting our stores, our castles, to meet all of those needs. And that's ever-changing and something that we continue to focus on. How do we make that more enticing, and easier access for our customers? 

Spencer Levy
I imagine the drive-thru percentage went up significantly. 

Lisa Ingram
Well, part of that - So industry stats say that about 70% of all - customers come through the drive-thru and so we're we're in line with that. Certainly, if you're talking about during the pandemic, there were many stores that were shut down and there were many restaurants that delivery and drive thru were the only options. So it's a little - the data is a little bit skewed on that during the pandemic. 

Spencer Levy
So let's turn to the frozen food side for a moment. What was really disrupted, among other things, was the supply chains. How does that impact your ability to get the frozen foods to the market? 

Lisa Ingram
So one of the benefits for us of being vertically integrated and family owned and operated is that we own our own processing facilities. So we own our own meat plants and we own our own bakeries. So we have three meat processing facilities that make all 100% beef patties that go into the restaurant product and the retail product. We have two bakeries that make all the buns for both of those products, and we have three manufacturing facilities that make the retail products. So while we certainly did have some impact for supply chain, we controlled a lot of our inputs, which helped us tremendously during that time. 

Spencer Levy
So, the customer. Who is the customer and I guess just being very direct about it. There's customers that come in for lunch, dinner and there's some that come in really, really late night. 

Lisa Ingram
Yes.

Spencer Levy
So how do you break it down? 

Lisa Ingram
So we think about our customers sort of in three ways. There's the crave-cautious who may not be interested in White Castle. There's the crave-curious who are intrigued by White Castle and want to learn more. And then there's the crave-committed. And those are our loyal fans who grew up on White Castle, love White Castle and are part of what we call our Craver-Nation, which is our loyalty program for our most diehard fans. And those are the ones that we get really excited about, that love the brand that want to help us create memorable moments every day with our products. So we look at it that way. 

Spencer Levy
Got it. And are most stores open 24 hours? 

Lisa Ingram
Most stores are open 24 hours. 

Spencer Levy
Okay, Okay. And I'm sure that there are differences where people who come there late at night versus during the day. But I bet you - the people who come there during the day, most of them fall into the committed category. 

Lisa Ingram
Yes, Yes. Well, we're always trying to find ways to engage the crave-curious because, we think we have a great product. We've done that in several ways. So our brand was really born on the two by two inch beef slider, but now we have a lot of different sliders that you can get, whether that's the breakfast slider, which is an amazing fresh cracked egg on the grill, which most other restaurants may not do. We also have the impossible slider. My kids love the chicken rings. They love the fruit smoothies. So we have a lot of different products to help the crave curious find a product that fits with them, fits with their appetite and their desires, and make them more crave-committed. 

Spencer Levy
So let's talk about - two elements of that. One is the product offering, how it changes, how you decide which products are going to come in, which not. And then just the brand itself. Right. So let's first talk about the product mix. How do you decide? I know you just added Sloppy Joes relatively recently. 

Lisa Ingram
Yes, Yes.

Spencer Levy
So how do you decide what you're going to add? Tell me about your test kitchen, things like that. 

Lisa Ingram
We have a great test kitchen here in our corporate office, but really our product innovation is driven by our customers. Our chefs may come up with a great idea that they think is a wonderful product, but if it doesn't test well with customers, then it's not something that we're going to add that fits with the brand. So we get a lot of feedback from customers along the way. We also get a lot of feedback from operations. Is it easy to operate? Does it - fit well into our current menu offering, etc., etc.? And so there's a whole process that we go through to determine whether a product is going to be on the menu or not. I get super excited about a lot of our - what we call limited time only items. We have our Sloppy Joe, which is going on right now, and we are about to introduce our Shrimp Nibblers, which is one of my favorites. 

Spencer Levy
Shrimp Nibblers. 

Lisa Ingram
Oh, they're so good. 

Spencer Levy
That sounds, that sounds awesome. 

Lisa Ingram
Yes, they're really really good. 

Spencer Levy
So let's talk about the brand. And and so you used in this interview probably half a dozen times, if not more, the word crave. I've been on your website. It's everywhere. Describe your brand. 

Lisa Ingram
So our brand is really built around two key elements that we think are really important. And the first is the two by two inch slider. That has been part of our ethos since the beginning, 1921. 100% beef, steam grilled on a bed of onions. You can't get that product anywhere else. People have tried to imitate it, but have never been able to duplicate our unique taste. And the second is our team members. So we have team members who have worked for us for 10, 20, 30, even 40 years. Today, we are celebrating our regional director of Columbus and Minneapolis. She's worked for us for 42 years, which is just amazing. And when you have that kind of tenure and that kind of loyalty from our team members, they wake up every day with the mission and the purpose of creating memorable moments for our customers. 

Spencer Levy
Now, this is my second visit to your corporate headquarters. I came here shortly after you opened. I think it was in November of 2019, and there's some pretty cool elements here that the slider and other things. Why don't you describe for our listeners your corporate headquarters, how you made the decisions you did to design it the way you did and how it fits in with the brand? 

Lisa Ingram
Sure. And I can't take all the credit for this design. There were a lot of really amazing team members here, including my cousin John, who helped really bring this building to life. But we went from a building that had served us well for 80 some years, but was very closed off. Lots of hallways, lots of offices. To our building now, which is very open, lots of natural light. There are no offices. I do not have an office. Everybody is in cubicles because we really believe that that's part of our open and fun culture that for you to come out of your office and then engage with people versus being just at your desk and having that engagement sort of happen serendipitously is really a fun thing about our brand. So we have - we have a slide in our building that goes from the second floor down to the first floor. Which is an homage to our retail plants, because in our retail plants are two packs of two sliders go down, go from the spiral freezer up, and then they come down this, this slide into the packaging area. And so that's a fun way. If you're ever having a bad day at the office, you go down the slide, you will smile like a five year old. So that's wonderful. We have a throne because what castle doesn't have a throne? So we have a throne that you can get your picture taken in with the scepter. You know, when you've been around for 102 years, you have a lot of history. And so incorporating that history into the building. So there's a timeline that goes up the main stairwell. There's an interactive electronic board that you can touch, that you can see pictures and read about all of our previous Hall of Famers, which are our most loyal customers. Or the community involvement that we have at White Castle, which is a big focus for us or the history of the company over the hundred and two years. And then we also have in our old building, we had a lot of wood paneling and we have this beautiful mahogany desk that was my great-grandfather's, my, my grandfather's, and my father's. And it's a beautiful centerpiece in our open lobby area. 

Spencer Levy
Well, by the way, you should know, I did go down the slider first time I was here. I will be going it down again today. 

Lisa Ingram
Nice, it's always a good time. 

Spencer Levy
It's always a good day at the office. 

Lisa Ingram
Always, yes. 

Spencer Levy
So I'm not going to ask you the question that you get ask in all these interviews. Harold and Kumar, go to White Castle. 

Lisa Ingram
Yes.

Spencer Levy
Tell us about how that. Came about. And for our listeners, that was a movie that came on. Then they had a subsequent movie… 

Lisa Ingram
Yes.

Spencer Levy
…about ten years ago. How did it come about and how did it impact the brand? 

Lisa Ingram
So Harold and Kumar was written by two guys from Jersey by the name of Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Salzberg. They are the very successful creators of the series now, Cobra Kai. But - a few years ago they wrote a screenplay about two guys, Harold and Kumar, that wanted to go to White Castle. Which is a wonderful tribute to our brand and a story that we hear a lot about the lengths that our customers will go to to get the product that they crave. So when New Line Cinema decided that they wanted to produce this screenplay, they came to White Castle because they needed our permission to do that, obviously. And Jamie Richardson, who is a family member and was in charge of marketing at that time, had the fun job of going in to see my father, who was president and CEO at the time, and asked him if this would be okay for us to do. And if you've seen the movie, you know that there are some things in that that we may not, as a conservative family business, we may not totally endorse. But my father asked two really important questions. Does the movie make fun of our products? And if you've seen the movie, you know that. No, they don't. They actually love our products. And do they make fun of our team members? And again, the answer is no. And so for a regional brand to be able to have a nationally released movie with your name in it, it was a great opportunity. And fortunately, my dad told me to go ahead and do it and we ran with it. And it's a cult classic, one that we think was snubbed by the Oscars. But it's a great thing and we're very, very, very proud to be a part of it. 

Spencer Levy
Did you see any bump from business after afterwards? 

Lisa Ingram
You know, as I said, we're a regional brand. And so to have your name released in a national movie, we definitely did see some increase in sales from that. It's certainly not something that we planned on or not. The reason why we did it, we just thought it was a great way to honor a story that is very familiar to us of to customers going to great lengths to get their sliders. 

Spencer Levy
There you go. So I think it's unusual, a company that's 100 plus years old and I'm sure you've had the opportunity to look at options to become a public company or other private equity or other types of options like that. I'm sure you get approached every day. But you're private and you've been for over 100 plus years.

Lisa Ingram
Yes. 

Spencer Levy
Tell us about your decision - there in terms of corporate structure. 

Lisa Ingram
So I have worked at a lot of different places; publicly traded companies, private companies, family businesses, and there are pros and cons to any business model. What I like about being private is we have the opportunity to continue to take the long view, and that allows us to make really, hopefully thoughtful and caring decisions about our team members. It allows us to think about the long term impacts to our brand and where we want to go with the brand in a manner that is consistent with the family who owns it, but also the brand itself. And I really enjoy being - working for a private company. 

Spencer Levy
What do you say to potential franchisees? 

Lisa Ingram
We certainly get a lot of people that are very interested in franchising our brand and we really - we have never had the aspirations of being the biggest. We have always had the aspirations of being the most connected and to be the most connected. We really believe that our business model of being company owned and operated is the best way to do that because it allows us to have a direct connection with our team members in the castles and a direct connection with our customers in those communities. And so as long as that is our goal and our mission, because we want to feed the souls of Craver generations everywhere, and we do that by creating memorable moments, we believe that the best way to do that is to remain company owned and operated. 

Spencer Levy
Let's talk about you for a moment if you don't mind. What do you do every day and what would you say to people who want to be you? 

Lisa Ingram
Yeah, my kids ask me that question a lot of like, what do you do every day? And my answer is, well, I'm in a lot of meetings. You know, I wake up every day and I'm just really honored to be leading a 102-year-old company that was founded by my great-grandfather and that has team members who want to work here for 10, 20, 30 years. A culture that has allowed us to win the best places to work for two years in a row and a brand that when customers who love us talk about it, their face lights up and they get a big smile on their face and they remember times with their friends or family that also had White Castle in it. And so I feel very honored to lead this brand and to continue to build on the legacies that were created by generations prior to me and hopefully make sure that we're continuing to have a lot more crave-committed customers that love White Castle in the future. 

Spencer Levy
As a CEO, you could certainly never leave these four walls and do a great job managing the business. But do you get out into the field? And if you do, what do you do? 

Lisa Ingram
So I definitely get out in the field and that has been a tradition that has been carried on since my great-grandfather, my grandfather, and my father. So I visit every single region every year, and every plant every year. And-and what do I do? I go and I visit the castles. I talk to the general managers. If they're busy at lunch, I'll hop on the grill and help make some sliders, because that is a place that I still can add value and really secretly enjoy a lot is making the sliders. And so I do that a lot. And I think for anybody that is in my role, finding ways so that you get out and interact with your frontline team members is super critically important to you having a good sense of what's really going on in your organization. 

Spencer Levy
Have you ever been to the store on Queens Boulevard? 

Lisa Ingram
I'm sure that I have, yes.

Spencer Levy
Yes. 

Lisa Ingram
Yes.

Spencer Levy
In the Bronx. Those are my favorites. 

Lisa Ingram
Okay, Yes.

Spencer Levy
Because I have to get them on the way to my mom's house… 

Lisa Ingram
Yes, yes.

Spencer Levy
…you know where they are. 

Lisa Ingram
I know them by numbers. Have you told me that number? I would know them. 

Spencer Levy
Yes. 

Lisa Ingram
But, yes, we have great locations in New York that do a good amount of business. And we have a lot of loyal customers from New York that love the product. So, yes, we have-we have a great business in New York. 

Spencer Levy
If you were going to sit right down in the White Castle right now with you and your family, what would you order? 

Lisa Ingram
So I would order a double cheese slider, bottoms up with - now that we have the 1921 slider, which is a new slider, we have lettuce and tomato in the castles. And so my favorite is to get a double cheese slider with a tomato. And that's my go to. If it's not that, then it's the breakfast slider with the fresh cracked egg. 

Spencer Levy
Okay, and I know your kids you mentioned like the chicken rings. My kids love the chicken rings too. What? It must be something about those chicken rings? 

Lisa Ingram
Yeah, the chicken rings are really good. My kids love those. They love the breakfast sliders, They love the original sliders, and they love the fruit smoothies too. That's the other thing that they really enjoy. 

Spencer Levy
From a real estate perspective. Let's talk about an issue now that we ask all of our guests about, which is the impact of ESG: environmental, social governance issues, which is impacting all of the real estate business, impacting all retailers. How is White Castle approaching it? 

Lisa Ingram
We have always been focused on all of those things from a sustainability standpoint. We have a sustainability manager. It happens to be my sister. She does a great job at looking at all the opportunities that we have to improve our sustainability with - in each of the areas that we are. So with our eight manufacturing plants, we've done a lot to make sure that we're focusing on reducing our waste, reducing our - or increasing our recycling, etc., etc.. I'll give you one example. So we send our buns out in boxes to our castles and we reduce those boxes several times. And that's been a big part of our process. So that's just one example of some of the things that we continue to look at to make sure that we are good to the communities but also good to the environment as well. 

Spencer Levy
Great. So you've been CEO now for six years? 

Lisa Ingram
Yes. 

Spencer Levy
Six years? 

Lisa Ingram
Yes. 

Spencer Levy
So what do you see as the next 6 to 10 years of White Castle? How does it change? How is it going to stay the same? 

Lisa Ingram
We believe that there's a lot of opportunity for us to continue to expand. And we also think there's a lot of opportunity for expansion with our retail products. And we want to continue to grow in both of those areas. We want to continue to be a great place to work. We're really proud of that. And we want to sort of stand out, continue to stand out in our industry as being a great place for team members that feel valued, that feel challenged, that feel like we have great benefits, etc. And we'll continue to look for ways to grow and continue to look for ways to - be a great place to work and to feed the souls of Craver generations. 

Spencer Levy
What about merchandising? 

Lisa Ingram
Yes, so we have done some really cool, fun partnerships. The one that comes to mind is Puma. So in 2021, we did a partnership with Puma where we had three shoes, tennis shoes that were White Castle designed. I have - I have two of the three. My favorite is our cheeseburger shoes, which actually look like cheeseburgers that are orange. Part of the tongue is green for the pickle. They are great. We got a lot of wonderful PR on that. We did a partnership with DGK, which my sons were very excited about because they are skateboarders. That's a brand that's very connected to the skateboarding community, so we have these cool White Castle skateboards. We always are looking for ways to expand our brand in a way that's relevant and connects with the communities that we think we have Cravers in. And so we will always continue to do that and look for those opportunities. 

Spencer Levy
So. You've been in business now - White Castle has been in business for over 100 years. It's obviously working quite well. 

Lisa Ingram
Yes.

Spencer Levy
But over those years, I'm sure there's things that haven't worked. 

Lisa Ingram
Sure.

Spencer Levy
And so what do you say to people that build a business? Tell us what it means to try new things and maybe if it doesn't work. 

Lisa Ingram
Yes, we certainly have had lots of successes over 102 years, but we have had other - we certainly had some failures. And I think the biggest thing with failures is what do you learn from them? An example would be we had three brands that we launched. We call them the brand and brands, and they didn't end up being successful, but we learned a lot through that process, whether it was collaboration here in the home office, whether it was new menu items that we might use in White Castle, whether it's decor items that we might use in our new redesigns, all of those things. While that project was a failure, we learned a tremendous amount through that process and were able to apply some key learnings to help us be successful in the future. 

Spencer Levy
But even with that long track record of success and things that didn't work out, when you put out a new product, there is a whole testing of that. Tell us about that. Or maybe let's pick a product, Sloppy Joes. 

Lisa Ingram
Mhm.

Spencer Levy
I didn't even know you had them. 

Lisa Ingram
Yeah.

Spencer Levy
And now I do. So how did you roll out Sloppy Joes? Just tell the process that you went through for that. 

Lisa Ingram
So we have chefs that create products that they think will fit into our brand, and we test that with customers and we test it with operations to make sure that, one, customers enjoy it and two, that our operations team can handle. And we do that with a small group of castles, and then we'll expand that further and maybe do it in a region and see how it does. And then if that goes well, then we'll do it with some marketing behind it, maybe a system-wide rollout. So there is a whole stage gating process that our product development, team operations, marketing, purchasing all work really closely together to make sure that we're picking the right products that have been customer-tested and team member-tested to ensure that we will have success when we launch it. 

Spencer Levy
Great. So, Lisa, any final thoughts you'd like our listeners to know about White Castle, about being CEO of a 100-year-old business, and what the future looks like for folks like you or people who want to be you? 

Lisa Ingram
Two things. Actually, So May is National Hamburger Month, and we really believe that - celebrating the slider is an important thing. And the other thing that we do during National Hamburger Month is that everybody in this office, we encourage them to go and work in a castle or in a plant. Again, allowing our team members here in the home Office to really get out in the front lines, interact with our teams there and create memorable moments for each other. So that's something that we're really proud of and we think is a best practice. The other thing that I will mention is our Craver’s Hall of Fame, which is a way that we honor our most loyal customers. So every year we ask our Cravers to submit stories and we get we get a thousand, a couple thousand of them. We pick like ten a year to induct into our Craver’s Hall of Fame. Their stories are wonderful of lengths that they will go or traditions that they have that involve White Castle with their friends and family. They're really, really moving, and they always make us smile and feel really proud of White Castle and the brand that we have. And so figuring out ways that your companies can honor your most loyal customers, I think is a really relevant strategy that will help make you successful in the future. 

Spencer Levy
So on behalf of The Weekly Take, I really want to thank Lisa Ingram, CEO of White Castle, for joining us today in their fantastic headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, to spend a few minutes talking about White Castle. Lisa, thank you. 

Lisa Ingram
Of course. Thank you. 

Spencer Levy
If this episode made you hungry for more from The Weekly Take, please visit our website CBRE.com/TheWeeklyTake. As I mentioned at the top, we've added a new feature that makes it easier to connect with me and the Weekly Take team. You can share the show, of course, as well as subscribe rate and review us wherever you listen. And now on our landing page, you can talk to us using the button marked Talk to Us. We want you to send questions, comments or requests, and perhaps you'll even hear your feedback or a follow up on future episodes. We'd love to hear from you. Meanwhile, we're cooking up more from the world of commercial real estate, including a visit to Mexico City for a conversation about a place that's emerging on the investment radar. That's on tap for next week. For now, I'm Spencer Levy. Be smart. Be safe. Be well. And here's to a happy Hamburger Month!