White Castle, the oldest fast food restaurant in the U.S., has announced a big addition to its menu: the debut of a brand new veggie slider, using vegetarian patties made in collaboration with Dr. Praeger’s.Founded in 1921, the fast-food restaurant has largely avoided big shakeups to its menu over the years. While plenty of fast food restaurant trends have come and gone, White Castle has focused on its core competencies for most of its history.White Castle co-founder J. Walter Anderson started cooking hamburgers (at the time a new concept) in the early 1900s. In 1921, he joined up with Billy Ingram and founded White Castle.White Castle came with the promise that you could see the food being made right in front of you, an implicit promise to the consumer that the burger you’re eating is made from clean ingredients that you can see with your own eyes.White Castle sliders haven’t changed much over the years; in 1954, the company made changes to how it cooks them, adding five holes to the patty allowing steam to go through.But these days, most people going to White Castle aren’t lured in by the promise of fresh, healthy ingredients — by 2004, when Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle came out, the restaurant’s biggest appeal for many was the simple satisfaction of eating far too many sliders.White Castle made a previous foray into veggie burgers with Impossible FoodsIn 2018, White Castle debuted the Impossible Slider, a collaboration with Impossible Foods. The new product was met with rave reviews, with Eater calling it “one of the country’s best fast-food burgers.”The appeal of the Impossible Slider was largely that it tastes the same as any other cheap burger. Eater notes that the Impossible Slider “doesn’t taste like a whole heck of a lot at all,” but that it successfully imitates the highly processed, neutral flavor you might expect from fast food.More Restaurants 30 year old restaurant has closed all restaurantsAfter bankruptcy, Hooters closes restaurants, fights for survivalIconic Las Vegas Strip restaurant closes without warningWhite Castle removed the Impossible Slider from its menu in late 2025 without much warning, but promised that it was working on a replacement.That replacement is finally here, and with the new veggie burger, the company is moving in a different direction: This time, the company is firmly leaning into the more traditional veggie burger flavors.
White Castle has been serving hamburgers for more than 100 years. Drew Angerer / Getty Images
The veggies are the most important part of White Castle’s new veggie sliderIn 2018, when White Castle announced the Impossible Slider, it didn’t mention the actual ingredients that went into the sliders at all, choosing instead to emphasize just that they were “plant-based.”With the new Southwest Veggie Slider, the company is far more upfront about what goes into the patty: “a crispy brown rice crust and a savory blend of six vegetables — sweet potatoes, black beans, corn, red bell peppers, onions and carrots.”Chief marketing officer Jamie Richardson says that customers wanted an “alternative” to the company’s meat-based offerings. That’s pretty clearly what the company is offering.White Castle still isn’t claiming that its sliders are a healthy alternative, just that they’re a truly different, unique flavor. In one sense, it represents a continued departure from the company’s 1921 origins as a place for clean, healthy ingredients. In another sense, though, it represents the company striving to keep doing what it does best.Related: White Castle takes on KFC and Popeyes with new menu item