White Castle is partnering with Murphy USA to put automated burger kiosks inside select gas station locations, a bet that Americans will grab hot sliders alongside a fill-up without ever waiting in a drive-through line.
The deal pairs America's oldest fast-food hamburger chain with one of the country's largest gas station operators. Customers at participating Murphy USA large-format stores will walk up to a touchscreen, place an order, and receive hot White Castle food in roughly two minutes. No counter staff, no kitchen crew, an automated system handles preparation, heating, and delivery inside a self-contained unit.
Neither company has disclosed which cities or states will get the kiosks first, how many locations are in play, or what the rollout timeline looks like. Pricing and the full menu beyond White Castle's signature sliders remain unannounced. What the companies have shared, through a joint announcement covered by The Sun, is corporate optimism and a clear commercial motive.
Scott Woodward, Murphy USA's senior vice president and chief merchandising officer, framed the move as a calculated addition to the company's convenience-store model.
"We're continually evaluating opportunities that create additional value for our customers while building on the strengths that have made Murphy USA successful. This relationship allows us to introduce a new convenience offering informed by customer insights, while maintaining the operational discipline and focus on everyday value."
Woodward added that the company is "encouraged by the opportunity to drive incremental inside sales, traffic and basket growth." In plain terms: Murphy USA wants customers who stop for gas to walk inside, order a burger, and buy something else while they wait those two minutes.
On the White Castle side, Audra Mazzeo, vice president of retail sales, leaned on the chain's history. White Castle created its square slider-style hamburger in 1921 and claims the title of America's first fast-food hamburger chain, a lineage the company clearly wants to leverage as it pushes beyond traditional restaurant walls.
"At White Castle, we've spent more than a century finding innovative ways to bring our Crave to customers wherever they are. This partnership creates a unique opportunity to meet customers during their everyday routines and deliver the White Castle experience in a way that is convenient, fast, and incredibly tasty."
For all the corporate enthusiasm, the announcement is thin on operational detail. No specific launch date has been given. No city or state has been named. The number of Murphy USA locations classified as "large-format stores", the only sites eligible for the kiosks, has not been disclosed. And the technology vendor or system powering the automated units remains unnamed.
Whether the kiosks will serve anything beyond sliders is unclear. So is the price point. For a chain built on value, White Castle sliders have long been among the cheapest fast-food items in America, pricing at a gas station kiosk will matter. Convenience-store markups on prepared food can run steep, and customers accustomed to grabbing a sack of sliders for a few dollars will notice if the automated version costs more.
There is also the exclusivity question. Nothing in the announcement indicates whether Murphy USA is locked into White Castle alone or free to install kiosks from competing brands at other locations. That distinction could shape how aggressively both companies invest in the rollout.
The partnership reflects a straightforward market reality. Gas stations have been trying to become food destinations for years, and automation cuts the labor costs that make hot-food programs expensive to run. A kiosk that needs no cook, no cashier, and no shift schedule solves a staffing problem that has plagued convenience retailers since the pandemic-era labor crunch.
For White Castle, the kiosk model extends the brand's reach without the overhead of a full restaurant buildout. The chain has a smaller national footprint than rivals like McDonald's or Burger King, concentrated heavily in the Midwest and parts of the East Coast. Murphy USA's gas station network could put White Castle products in front of customers in markets where the chain has no brick-and-mortar presence at all.
Two minutes from order to food is the headline promise. If the technology delivers on that consistently, hot, recognizable White Castle sliders, not a reheated afterthought, the kiosks could change how Americans think about gas station food. If it doesn't, the partnership will join a long list of convenience-store food experiments that sounded better in a press release than they tasted at the pump.
The free market will sort it out. Customers who want a fast, cheap slider on the road will either show up or they won't, and no amount of corporate-speak about "basket growth" will substitute for a burger that's actually worth stopping for.