The ice cream soft-serve formula was developed in 1938 by John Fremont McCullough and his son Alex. They believed in their product and managed to successfully convince their friend and loyal customer Sherb Noble to start selling it in his ice cream store in Kankakee, Illinois. In just one day of selling the stuff, Noble dished out more than 1,600 servings of the new dessert within 2 hours.

Looking at the success of this newly launched product, they decided to become business partners and opened the first Dairy Queen store in 1940 in Joliet, Illinois.