History
When Grandpa McCullough partnered with Sherb Noble to open the first soft-serve store, he created the name “Dairy Queen” because he believed his soft serve was a “queen” among dairy products and the epitome of freshness and wholeness. The first Dairy Queen officially opened on June 22, 1940, in Joliet, Illinois, and America’s love affair with soft-serve ice cream began.
Food franchising was all but unheard of in the 1940s, but this new product’s potential made it a natural for such a system. Dairy Queen’s Harry Axene is credited with creating the company’s present franchising system by distributing the rights to use a system freezer and a name — Dairy Queen — and collecting royalties for those rights. Dairy Queen grew from fewer than 10 stores in 1941, to 100 in 1947, to 1,446 in 1950, and then to 2,600 in 1955. Today, there are more than 5,700 DQ locations worldwide.
