Grandpa’s quest to make the most perfect tasting ice cream actually revolutionized the industry
Now the iconic ice cream shop he created is worth $3.6 billion
In scientific terms, it doesn’t sound very appetizing … liquid particles of fat globules are emulsified in a mixture of water, sugar, and ice, along with a bunch of air bubbles.
But you need a lot of those fat globules, at least 10% … to make it taste so good.
And when mixed just right, you end up with the perfect batch of ice cream.
And girl oh girl … do we love ice cream.
The average American eats roughly 20 pounds of ice cream each year, or about 4 gallons. About 16% of people here in the U.S. prefer chocolate ice cream, which tops the favorite flavor charts.
The second most desired flavor is “cookies and cream” at 13%, followed by vanilla at 12%, “cookie dough” at 11%, and “mint chocolate chip” at 11%.
As for the world over, vanilla ice cream is the most popular flavor.
Although it’s been around forever … dating back to the ancient Greeks in 500 BC, one man made it his quest to create a new kind of “ice cream” … one that wound up revolutionizing the entire industry.
So Good It Numbs Your Tastebuds
In 1927, John Fremont McCullough (better known as Grandpa) with his son Alex, decided to open their own ice cream company, The Homemade Ice Cream Company.
The store was located in their hometown of Davenport, Iowa. And they sold a variety of ice cream products from different flavored ice creams to malts and shakes.
Business was doing so well, Grandpa wanted to expand their operations. So in 1930 he bought a former cheese factory in Green River, which he and Alex turned into their new ice cream mixing plant. Now they could make lots of ice creams and even sell it to commercial customers.
Making ice cream wasn’t an easy process. A combination of butterfat, milk solids, flavoring, and sweeteners, were mixed together and then put into a large batch freezer where the ingredients were allowed to get super cold. You also need air as well. Too little air, and the ice cream becomes rock hard. Too much air, the ice cream becomes frothy and loses its taste.
When the temperature reaches 23 degrees Fahrenheit, a spigot is opened in the freezer and the ice cream, which is soft in texture flows into three-gallon containers. The containers are covered with lids, and then frozen at minus-ten degrees Fahrenheit, and finally delivered to ice cream shops.
Now here’s the thing to keep in mind. The ice cream was frozen solid, not for the pleasure and enjoyment of the customer, but for the convenience of the manufacturer and store owner.
When the store was ready to serve the product, the ice cream was put into a dipping cabinet and the temperature increased by five degrees Fahrenheit. It was no longer rock hard but still solid enough to eat in a cone or bowl.
Yet even though it was warmed up just a few degrees, it was still cold enough to numb your tastebuds, which meant you weren’t really tasting the true flavor of the ice cream.
Dear ole’ Grandpa McCullough realized that if you could serve the ice cream at the same temperature it came out of the freezer (23 degrees Fahrenheit), it would taste so much better. But it would also be soft, easy for licking with your tongue or scooping up with a spoon.
Freezer Fresh Ice Cream
Knowing that softer ice cream taster better, Grandpa came up with an idea of serving soft ice cream to his customers. But in order to do this, he would need an entirely different type of freezer.
And if other ice cream shops wanted to serve the same kind of soft ice cream, they too would have to purchase at least one of these new freezers.
Since this new freezer didn’t exist, if Grandpa was going to have any success serving soft ice cream, he was going to have to improvise.
So he and Alex asked one of their loyal customers, Sherb Noble, if he would arrange a special offering of soft-serve ice cream at his store in Kankakee, Illinois. Sherb agreed.
Together, they wrote a little advertisement, which read “All you can eat ice cream for 10 cents.” And the sale was held in early August of 1938.
Using an ordinary commercial batch freezer, Grandpa and Alex put the softened ice cream into five gallon containers and then hand-dipped it into 16-ounce cups.
It was a huge success. In fact a mob gathered outside Noble’s store. In two hours, Sherb Noble and the McCulloughs dished out over 1,600 servings of the new soft-serve ice cream.
A short time later, Grandpa decided to repeat the sale of his new soft serve ice cream at another shop, Mildred's Ice Cream Shop in Moline. The response was the same as what happened at Sherb’s ice cream shop. Customers couldn’t get enough of this new kind of deliciously soft ice cream.
But now Grandpa had a problem. There’s no way that he and Alex could keep serving the ice cream by hand. They desperately needed a freezer that could dispense the ice cream at just the right temperature.
And thus Dear Reader began the search for the perfect freezer.
If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try Again (and Again)
John and Alex approached two local and well-known manufacturers of dairy equipment and asked if they would be interested in designing a machine that dispensed semi-frozen dairy products into dishes or ice cream cones.
The first manufacturer immediately rejected their request citing it would be impossible to do. The second firm, Stoelting Brothers Company in Kiel, Wisconsin, thought the idea just lacked potential even though they had already tested their idea in two different ice cream shops.
Getting more and more discouraged they’d never find the kind of freezer needed to serve their ice cream, both Alex and John were about to give up on their idea altogether.
Call it luck of the Irish, but one day while Grandpa McCullough was casually paging through the want ads in the Chicago Tribune, he saw an advertisement for a continuous freezer that was capable of dispensing soft ice cream.
The ad had been placed in the newspaper by Harry M. Oltz. Harry was the owner of a hamburger stand in Hammond, Indiana, who claimed to have invented a continuous freezer … one that he used in his own shop.
In fact he had applied for and received a patent for his invention.
As you can imagine, seeing that ad got Grandpa McCullough all excited. This could be the very freezer needed to serve his ice cream. So in the summer of 1939, Alex and Grandpa McCullough set up a meeting with Harry.
They asked Harry if he could make a prototype freezer that could work for the type of ice cream they intended to sell to customers … ice cream served 23 degrees Fahrenheit.
In his first attempt of making the prototype freezer, the soft serve mix was agitated and frozen in a bowl that sat in a galvanized iron trough filled with ice and salt.
Two men on ladders had to shovel large quantities of ice around the bowl to maintain the ice cream at the right consistency. While it did produce soft-serve ice cream it wasn’t practical to have men climbing on ladders while shoveling ice.
So they’d have to change the way they went about making the ice cream. With the McCullough’s help, Harry modified his design so that the men on ladders weren’t needed and the freezer itself could maintain the perfect temperature of 23 degree Fahrenheit.
Once the adapted prototype was completed, the three men struck a deal. The McCullough’s retained rights for exclusive use of the machines in Illinois, Wisconsin, and the states west of the Mississippi River.
Harry Oltz was given rights for using the freezer in the East. And in addition, he would receive continuous royalties based on the number of gallons of soft serve ice cream processed through all the dispensing freezers produced under his patent.
I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Dairy Queen
In June 1940, Alex and John McCullough debuted their soft serve ice cream freezer to the world at their new shop, which was located at 501 N. Chicago Street.
And the name they picked for the new ice cream shop … Dairy Queen.
Why that name?
John McCullough had always referred to the cow as “the queen of the dairy business,” and that’s why he picked that name.
Dairy Queen was a remarkable success. Everyone was coming to taste this new soft-serve ice cream.
While business was beginning to take off, and word was spreading about this new Dairy Queen ice cream shop … the McCullough’s success would be put on a temporary hold.
That’s because Germany had invaded Poland, which was the start of World War II. That basically halted economic production around the world. No equipment was being built unless it was essential to the war effort.
However as the war began to wind down, the McCullough’s business rebounded.
Seems everyone wanted to own and operate a Dairy Queen. So Alex and John turned this business into a franchise. Soon after that Dairy Queen expanded across the country, growing from just 10 stores in 1940 to 1,446 stores by the end of 1950.
When I say everyone wanted a soft serve ice cream, I mean it too … even famous people. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson delighted Topsham, ME, residents when he stopped his motorcade on his way to an event in nearby Lewiston to grab a Dairy Queen ice cream for himself and Mrs. Johnson.
The ice creamery became a popular hangout for teenagers in the '80s, especially after the introduction of the Blizzard. The soft serve treat made with mix-in toppings sparked a national craze and the chain sold over 175 millions of them that year. The treat is so famously thick that it has become a novelty to show that it won't spill when turned upside down.
Over the years, Dairy Queen has been the place where small towns across America gather for events and enjoy a great tasting ice cream. But not everyone wants ice cream all of the time. In 1995, they started selling other products aside from ice creams such as the DQ Treatzza Pizza and Crispy Chicken Salad.
The McCullough’s success caught the attention of Warren Buffett. And in 1997, his company Berkshire Hathaway acquired International Dairy Queen (IDQ) for $585 million in cash and stock.
By 2010 the company had more than 6,000 Dairy Queen stores in the United States, Canada, and many other countries in Europe, Central America, Asia, and the Middle East.
In 2014, Dairy Queen ranked 16th amongst all restaurant franchises, according to Franchise Times.
Today Dairy Queen’s revenues are $3.6 billion annually.
And to this day, every ice cream cone is still served with Alex and John’s signature curlicue on top, which is referred to as "the Q" by employees.
If John McCullough had not been so persistent in finding the perfect freezer, there’d be no Dairy Queen. And if there is no Dairy Queen, we’d never know the taste of delicious, soft-served ice cream.
Awesome Quotes by Awesome People
“A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.”— Elbert Hubbard
I'm reading this on an atypically hot morning in May, in the Kansas City region, wishing I could have ice cream RIGHT NOW!!! Thanks for this chillingly good story about persistence!