How The Invention Of Soft-Serve Ice Cream Transformed Fast Food Desserts

It all started back in the 1930s. Two men, a Greek immigrant named Tom Carvel and a dairy farmer, John Freemont "Grandpa" McCullough, both came up with a soft-serve ice cream machine around the same time. Exactly who got their first is still a hotly debated issue, but either way, the world was introduced to the perfect frozen confection with a creamy and smooth texture. This delicious treat transformed fast food desserts and the industry itself. In 1926, Charles Taylor of Buffalo, New York, filed a patent for an automatic ice cream maker, commonly known as the counter freezer, that used pre-made ingredients and whipped them into a smooth and consistent texture, helping pave the way for future soft-serve machines.

By the 1950s, thanks to Carvel and Dairy Queen, soft serve ice cream became immensely popular, helped along by a new business system called franchising, which both companies adopted early on. But there was another big player in fast food forming on the horizon. A small restaurant out of California called McDonald's started by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald began franchising in 1952, which was later super-charged by Ray Kroc. Once McDonald's — which is now one of the biggest fast food chains in the world and sells a mind-bending 75 burgers a second – began offering soft-serve ice cream, it helped bring the sweet treat to a global audience.

After John McCullough and his son Alex perfected their soft serve formula and machine around 1938, they opened their first Dairy Queen two years later with their friend Sherb Noble. The company's soft serve, which still uses the same ingredients as it did from the beginning, isn't considered ice cream by the federal government since it doesn't have enough milk fat to meet the official definition. Similarly, McDonald's doesn't call its shakes milk shakes for similar legal reasons. While Carvel, founded by Tom Carvel in 1936 after he'd invented a soft-serve machine, claims it was the first to franchise a retail ice cream shop in 1947, Dairy Queen had begun franchising in 1944. 

There had been some early franchising successes before World War II, including Howard Johnson's, but the system took off in the post war period spurred on by returning veterans looking for new opportunities. Dairy Queen was one of the first wildly successful franchise businesses and not only helped to spread the popularity of soft serve, but also kicked off a franchise stampede in the fast food industry. McDonald's was one company to benefit from franchising in a big way. When the company began offering soft serve in 1956, it used machines made by Charles Taylor's company (known as Taylor Freezer and now Taylor Company). Not long after, soft serve became the go-to fast food dessert.