Double celebrations for award-winning company White Castle Roofing, as it reaches an impressive 40-year anniversary
Having started out as a general construction company in Nebraska in the early 1980s, White Castle Roofing’s (White Castle) move into the roofing industry was triggered by a hailstorm in Lincoln in 1985. Repairing the resulting roofing damage focused the business on this sector, and over the ensuing years, it has evolved into the specialty service company it is today. White Castle’s experienced team now delivers various roofing services and solutions, including full roof replacements, small repairs and upgrades, and boasts expertise in metal roofing installations for homes and businesses in Nebraska, Colorado, South Dakota and Iowa.
The son of White Castle’s founder, CEO Dane Hansen, has been an integral part of the company for the past 20 years and explains how he followed in his father’s footsteps: “After his partner passed away, my Dad became the sole owner of White Castle – I graduated high school in 2005 and a couple of years later I began 
working for the company, alongside my brothers Luke and Jake. I’m now in charge of White Castle with Jake, who runs operations for us. We also started CompanyCam in 2014, which is a photo app for contractors, and Luke took that business on full time.”
Spanning four states, White Castle maintains efficiency by having standardized work procedures and rigid processes in place across its multiple locations. According to Dane, these universal services are key to its success. “With everybody following the same core principles, it’s just a case of putting the right people in the right place,” he says. “Whether you’re in Colorado or Nebraska, everybody is on the same page – from building a roof, to estimating or servicing. No matter the job or the location, we all have the same guidance and resources, and it’s easy to help each other out.”
White Castle recently had its hard work recognized after being awarded a prize in the 2025 Rocky Mountain Snow Guards Contest. This achievement shines a light on one of its projects in Lincoln for ‘Outstanding Residential Snow Retention.’ “It was for a house that had a combination of standing seam metal and DaVinci slate shingles on the roof,” explains Dane. “We used a Rocky Mountain Snow Guard bar to trap snow, alongside the pad snow guards on the DaVinci roof. Rocky Mountain makes great snow guards. They look good and function well – the last thing you want is an avalanche off somebody’s house because the snow guards were fitted incorrectly! The company provides the right design to prevent that from happening.”
Continuing with the snow theme, in Spring 2025 White Castle completed work on a ski lodge in Crested Butte, Colorado. Dane says this was a particularly notable project: “This was really cool – it was another DaVinci multi-width slate project on the West Wall Lodge at the base of the mountain. The scenery around there is fantastic, and those DaVinci shake shingles, combined with the Western states rust-look corrugated metal, just looked great. It was a fun project to be a part of.”
Not only has the company been celebrating its recent award, but it has also hit a key milestone of 40 years in operation. Dane credits this longevity to the company’s dedication to providing excellent customer service and building a great reputation among its clients, leading to multiple repeat customers and plenty of referrals. He adds: “It’s also important to hire good people who share the same values. And finally, overall consistency is key in making sure the business can survive over the long run. We’re having a birthday party to celebrate and appreciate the people that work here – we normally have a company party each year, but this one will be even bigger!”
In addition, technology has made it exponentially easier to manage the business across multiple locations. One of the brothers’ other startups, CompanyCam, has been crucial in running White Castle more efficiently, as Dane reveals: “We can use CompanyCam to document any job and get photos or videos back to the office in real time where somebody will be able to jump in and provide guidance or answer any questions quickly.
“Another big development is the creation of our ERP software. We created this internally to streamline our business from start to finish. It handles our opportunity management, takeoff and estimating, project management, scheduling, and job costing all in one place in real-time, without any duplicate steps. This has made our business a lot easier to manage and ensures far more consistency across locations.”
Utilizing these innovative systems internally has been a success for White Castle, and it’s now extending the use of technological advancements out to its customer base. “We currently use a phone system called ZyraTalk that answers incoming calls out of hours and we’re looking to integrate that further, but we want to make sure we find the most positive way of communicating with our clients. We generally try to talk with customers ourselves and we use RingCentral to gather all the relevant information and convey everything in the way we want. I think there are some apps that are getting close to that, but we haven’t explored them fully yet. It’s on the horizon though.”
Dane reveals there is plenty more in the pipeline for White Castle too. Regarding its priorities for next year, he says: “Our focus is on growing the existing markets that we’re in, making sure we’re searching for the right customers and finding the right projects for us – we’re hoping to integrate some technology that should help us to identify those better.
“We are yet to acquire other businesses. We’ve investigated it and it’s certainly a possibility but we’re generally more comfortable ‘green fielding’ it, so it would be involvement in new operations without buying a company. It can be tricky, as it seems there are a lot of private equity groups trying to buy companies, but we like to keep our options open and look for any opportunities that come along.”
With exciting plans to open three more locations in the next three to five years, White Castle is on track to expand its footprint and continue delivering expert roofing solutions across the Midwest for years to come.