White Castle is once again disrupting how customers transport its famous Sliders. The restaurant is adding yet another unique container—the Crave Clutch—to its lineup of iconic packaging. The colorful clutch makes its debut Monday in all White Castle restaurants and will be available for a limited time. It’s the first new package since White Castle introduced the 100-count Crave Crate in 2004.
Holding 20 Sliders of any variety, the Crave Clutch sits nicely between the classic 10 Sack and the 30-Slider Crave Case, making it the perfect choice for family meals and small gatherings. That’s especially helpful now as people spend more time at home or outdoors in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The Crave Clutch has been something we’ve been working on behind the ‘Castle walls’ for a while. Faced with the pandemic, we decided that now is an ideal time to introduce this new size of Slider packaging,” says Jamie Richardson, vice president at White Castle. “We’ll be here for Cravers when they need to feed a crowd, but today this is about taking care of their own family and close friends.”
The easy-to-carry Crave Clutch stands out from other White Castle packaging. It has a faux leather stitched cardboard handle, and one side looks like an old-school boombox, complete with an image of a blank cassette tape where customers can write their favorite songs. White Castle will introduce a campaign on Instagram to coincide with the release of the Crave Clutch, asking customers to share the title of the song they most like to listen to when enjoying White Castle. White Castle will add these “snack tracks” to the boombox and repost the image on Instagram.
White Castle has long been known for its innovative packaging, dating all the way back to 1927 when founder Billy Ingram came up with the concept of carryout food and created a bag so customers could buy Sliders by the sack. In 1931, White Castle started using individual boxes to package its steam-grilled goodness on a bun. Seventy years later, in 2001, White Castle introduced the Crave Case, a box of 30 Sliders to feed a hungry crowd. The Crave Crate came along in 2004, holding 100 hot and tasty Sliders and providing an easy way to transport and share them. White Castle fans have always engaged with the packaging. Slider boxes, for example, double as stackable blocks, and the Crave Case has been used as carry-on luggage.
The Crave Clutch bundle (Share-A-Meal #9) includes 20 Original Sliders and four small fries. It’s a great value at just $19.99 ($18.79 in the Louisville and Nashville markets and $21.99 in the New York/New Jersey region).
“As a family-owned business for 99 years, we have stayed relevant by finding the optimal balance between tradition and innovation,” Richardson says. “The Crave Clutch is both a nod to past and the embodiment of Crave Culture entering its second century. Long live Sliders.”
