Throughout this eight-minute video, we experience a lot of Dairy Queen’s history. Photos of old stores, happy customers, and even a few more modern restaurants are shown as the narrator explains the history of this American ice cream shop.
The idea of Dairy Queen began in the city of Moline, IL, back in 1938 with a man named John McCullough & his son, Alex. Interestingly, the “Dairy Queen” name was inspired by John, who referred to the cow as the “queen of the dairy business!”
Together, the duo created the soft serve ice cream formula that would become a DQ staple. Eventually, they convinced their friend, Sherb Noble, to sell their soft serve ice cream at his ice cream store.
Within two hours, customers had ordered over 1,600 cones of the soft serve ice cream. Inspired by this success, the first DQ location opened on June 22, 1940, operated by Sherb Noble himself.
The Dairy Queen company ended up paving the road for modern food franchising, expanding operations from a mere 10 stores in 1941 to a whopping 2,600 locations by 1955!
Many people viewed the DQ brand as a symbol of small-town life in the Midwest & the South. This image was further reinforced when DQ began to open their “brazier” locations in 1957, which sold food in addition to ice cream.
28 years later, DQ finally released the iconic “Blizzard.” Unsurprisingly, the “oreo cookie” flavor quickly became the fan favorite. Still, the massive success of Dairy Queen can ultimately be attributed to their soft serve ice cream.
Like most brands, DQ has kept its brand secrets hidden from the public. There is a safe containing the exact formula for the DQ soft serve ice cream, but only a few people worldwide have the key. No one—with the exclusion of a lucky few—knows exactly what’s in it, but there’s one thing we can all agree on: the ice cream is amazing!
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