I returned to Raffle City Changing to see if the White Castle was open. It is located in the basement (East-B1-19, Raffle City Changing, 1193 Changning Lu; Near Zhongshan Park Metro Line 2, across the street from Line 3 and 4).
White Castle is one of the first restaurants to have standardized methods across a chain of restaurants, while it never franchised, it has over 420 outlets. It developed the concept of an assembly line kitchen and so is given credit as the forerunner of ‘fast food’. Their most famous product are mini hamburgers called sliders which were originally fresh meat, but now are frozen patties, which are thin and have holes in them.
Sadly, they were still closed – but closer to opening up, with staff meetings going on. They allowed me to take a look at their decorated, but unopened store. There is not a particular opening date, but apparently they will open one in their Jing’an location by the weekend and then this location in two weeks.
I was happy to see on the menu that they have decided to opt for a reasonable price for an individual slider burger – at only 13 rmb, it could be the best deal on burgers in Shanghai, provided it is great. Other fast food outlets seem to want to make their restaurants ‘fancy’ in China – keeping a standardized model across all location (inside and outside of China) sounds like a recipe for success. Unfortunately on their menu they advertise their expensive meal packages first, rather than emphasizing and introducing their slider and the price of it, then offering package meals, this may cause cost sensitive people to walk by without a second look.
A sign outside the restaurant offered a QR code for a free slider, sadly the QR code and the website ‘http://www.whitecastlechina.com’ didn’t work. So a bit more work to go before fully operational.
