White Castle Breaks Ground on First Texas Restaurant at Grandscape in The Colony

THE COLONY, Texas, June 2, 2026 — White Castle held a groundbreaking ceremony Monday at 4520 Destination Drive in The Colony, marking the first time in the chain's 105-year history that it has broken ground on a Texas restaurant. The ceremony, held at the Grandscape mixed-use development north of Dallas, featured spatula shovels and a symbolic sprinkling of onions on the future site of the grill a nod to the steamed-onion cooking method that has defined the chain's signature square sliders since its founding in Wichita, Kansas, in 1921. White Castle leadership, fourth-generation members of the founding Ingram family, elected officials, development partners and longtime fans of the brand attended the event.

The 3,430-square-foot standalone restaurant, registered with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation under project number TABS2026007986, carries an estimated construction cost of $2.1 million. State records list an April 1 construction start date and a September 1 projected completion, with the company publicly targeting a late summer 2026 opening for what will become White Castle's seventh restaurant outside the Midwest.

White Castle's First Texas Location Targets Summer 2026 Opening at Grandscape

White Castle CEO Lisa Ingram framed the Texas debut as a milestone the company has approached with care. "White Castle has been creating memorable moments with our iconic hot and tasty Sliders for more than a century, and today, we are reaching a new milestone as we prepare to bring that Crave to Texas for the very first time," Ingram said. "We couldn't imagine a more fitting location than Grandscape in The Colony for our debut in the Lone Star State, and we can't wait to welcome new Cravers into the White Castle family."

The Grandscape location will feature a double drive-thru with canopy and patio seating a format suited to North Texas traffic patterns and the development's draw from across the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. White Castle said it expects to hire between 80 and 100 team members for the new restaurant, making the opening one of the more significant single-location job creation events in The Colony's recent hospitality history.

White Castle leadership attending the groundbreaking included Chief Marketing Officer Jamie Richardson, Chief People Officer John Kelley and Corporate Relations Manager Erin Shannon, alongside the fourth-generation family members whose presence underscored the privately held chain's identity as a family business now preparing to enter its 10th decade of operations.

North Texas Population Growth Drew White Castle to the Dallas-Fort Worth Market

White Castle's decision to enter Texas reflects a calculation about population movement that Richardson articulated when the Texas expansion was first announced in August 2025. "As a family-owned business, when we look at where we're going to go next, it's a lot about understanding where the population is coming from," Richardson said at the time. "There's a great group of people here who moved to Texas" a reference to the wave of Midwestern and Northeastern transplants who have relocated to the Dallas-Fort Worth area in recent years and who arrived already familiar with White Castle from their home markets.

The Midwest-to-Texas pipeline at Grandscape has become a recognisable pattern. Portillo's, the Chicago-based hot dog and beef sandwich chain, opened its first Texas location at Grandscape in 2023 and has since expanded across the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. White Castle's arrival places another beloved Midwestern name at the same development, reinforcing Grandscape's positioning as a destination where regional brands from outside Texas find a concentrated, receptive audience for their first local test.

Grandscape itself is associated with Nebraska billionaire Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway owns Nebraska Furniture Mart, the anchor tenant around which the broader Grandscape mixed-use development was built. The development draws visitors from across North Texas and offers the large-format retail and restaurant sites that expanding national chains favour for high-visibility market entry.

White Castle's 105-Year History Meets Texas for the First Time

White Castle was founded in 1921 in Wichita, Kansas, by Billy Ingram and Walter Anderson making it widely credited as the first fast-food hamburger chain in the United States. The chain pioneered the concept of small, uniform burgers produced at volume and sold cheaply, establishing a model that later defined the entire quick-service restaurant industry. Its square sliders, steamed over a bed of diced onions on a pierced patty, have remained essentially unchanged since the chain's founding.

Despite its place in American fast-food history, White Castle has maintained a deliberately concentrated geographic footprint. The chain operates primarily in the Midwest and along the East Coast, with a small number of locations in Florida and Arizona representing its previous ventures beyond the Midwest. The Colony location will become the chain's seventh restaurant outside the Midwest a figure that reflects how selectively the privately held, family-owned company has expanded over more than a century.

For Texans who have known White Castle only through frozen slider boxes in grocery store freezer aisles a retail product the chain has sold nationally for decades the groundbreaking represents the arrival of something that has existed in the cultural imagination of relocated Midwesterners and pop culture references for years without a local address. Films including Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and television appearances have made the brand nationally recognisable far beyond the markets where its restaurants actually operate, building a latent demand in cities like Dallas that the company is now preparing to serve directly for the first time.

The Colony Location Sits Adjacent to Scheels and Across From Gas Monkey Icehouse

The White Castle at 4520 Destination Drive sits within Grandscape's restaurant and retail corridor, across the street from Gas Monkey Icehouse and a short walk from Scheels, the sporting goods retailer whose arrival at Grandscape drew significant regional attention. The address places White Castle within easy reach of the development's hotel, entertainment venues and the Nebraska Furniture Mart complex, giving the restaurant access to multiple visitor streams across different times of day.

The Colony approved the site plan earlier in 2026, with the city council's certification of the ordinance removing the final municipal obstacle to construction. The approval moved quickly after White Castle confirmed the Grandscape address a reflection of both the city's interest in attracting the opening and the straightforward nature of the single-tenant, purpose-built restaurant format White Castle selected for its Texas debut.

A grand opening date has not been formally announced. White Castle updates are available at whitecastle.com.

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