Still Sweet At 70: Dairy Queen Celebrates With 10-Cent Cups

The Daily Journal:

They say you can’t go back again.

But folks at the local Dairy Queen stores say you can. And to prove it, they’re going to sell ice cream for 10 cents a cup come Monday night. That’s the price for which Sherwood “Sherb” Noble, of Kankakee, sold the country’s first soft-serve ice cream 70 years ago on Aug. 4, 1938.

The limited-time sales price was a market test, created to see whether the public would take to mushy ice cream that one day would swirl into cones, its peak topped off with a flourish — the tip curling back upon itself.

“On that night, he wanted to see if it was a viable product,” said Dairy Queen spokesman Jeff Webster.

It was. Noble sold 1,600 portions of ice cream in an hour and a half.

Sherb’s Ice Cream store was located on West Avenue in Kankakee. Noble made his ice cream with a special mix he bought from J.F. McCullough, of Green River. McCullough thought the ice cream tasted better in its creamy state before it froze, so he developed a machine to produce soft-serve ice cream. But he didn’t have a marketing vehicle. That’s where Sherb came in.

Together, the two men advertised the new product’s 1938 debut as “all-you-can-eat for 10 cents.”

Based on the public’s reaction, the creamy confectionery was a success, Webster said.

McCullough, who thought of the heifer as the “queen of dairy,” named his new product Dairy Queen. Two years later, the country’s first Dairy Queen store opened in Joliet.

“We take our history and our heritage a little more seriously … because the stores are still owned by the family,” Webster said.