August 4, 2026 • 50 mins
Nowadays, ice cream is a pretty popular treat across the planet. In this episode -- at the height of a blistering Atlanta summer -- Ben, Noel and Max learn more ice cream's kissing cousin: the 'soft serve'. Where did it come from? What makes it such a hit? Also... why doesn't it count as actual ice cream?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. That's our super producer. Mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Is here and I am soft and I'm served Max.
Mister Softy Williams.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
There, it is there.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It is known around the world as a delicious lothario.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Is Max.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
They call me Ben Bull and you were Noel Brown.
Oh and no, we were talking off air. We get
a lot of our ideas for future episodes during our
explorations of other talk.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Oh and the world actually in the United States, right,
You and.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I thought, uh, some time ago, what better way to
celebrate summer than to talk a little bit about cool treats?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Cool treats.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Do you remember what Dairy Queen's logo used to be
or they're not logo their their tagline used to be?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Oh, what was it? It was hot eats, cool.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Treat That's right, that's right. Also, shout out to Dairy
Queen for teaching a lot of young kids the word brazier.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Well that's what I was gonna say, Ben. It used
to be did it was stuckies?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Related to dairy Queen, because I swear I would always
see like combination Stuckies and dairy Queen, but then they
would also a deal.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
They must have been a deal, but it was a
long time ago.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
And then that word Brazier referred to the fact that
they made burgers that they they would will meets. But
that seems very antiquated now and I don't think they
have that anymore, except maybe like some of the legacy
rbs that still have the neon hat, there may well
be some Dairy Queen Braziers still out there in the world.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
The franchisees who didn't want to pay extra to update
the signage or you know, want.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
To preserve history. Max. I know you got something to say.
Not really too much about this.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
I mean, it does sound like it could be like
a was it Rallies and Checkers you Gotta Eat, but
like they're regionally named, it could be something.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Like Carls Junior and Harty's.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah yeah, Well, shout out to Brazier and shout out
to our research associate for today's episode, which is none
other than you, mister Brown. You've had something on your
mind for a minute. I've got to ask Noel Max
or you guys, would you call yourselves ice cream fans? Max,
just pretend the condition isn't real for a second.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Well, I mean, oh gosh, yeah, ah, the condition. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
I mean I do enjoy ice cream. Back when I
could eat the back when I could eat ice cream,
I did thoroughly enjoy ice cream.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
It was just like your flavor, what's your go to?
Oh my god, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
I'm not too bad, Hickey. I kind of liked it,
going like, I don't like anything that's like two intensible flavor.
You know, you have those ones like like the quadruple chocolate,
or like the blue one or the one that tastes
like blue and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Well, the one like blue, Yeah, like the very frank
Rid Olds Dandy de Vito I liked. Uh. I was
looking this up me.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
We'll talk about it in a different episode. But if
you guys remember a place called the Spaghetti Factory. They
were to themselves famous. They were self confirmed famous for
an ice cream flavor they I called Spamoni.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Spamoni is a is a very famous just Italian flavor
and that you'll see in a lot of like Italian
Restaurantsre's actually a place in New York and I'm playing.
It's Queen's called or maybe it's the Bronx called Spamoni Gardens,
and it's a very well loved, local, kind of Italian
joint that does Semoni's. I had Spamoni for the very
first time recently, and it's got kind of mixed fruit
(03:55):
in it, like cheriots and pistaschio nuts and.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Strawberry very good.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Those are my favorite nuts, by the way, pistashio and
hazel nut, those two favorite nuts.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Put them together. You got yourself a flavor party. Ben.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
By the way, Stuckey's and Dairy Queen did share a
deep corporate background, and we'll get to that a little
bit later in today's episode about the history of soft store.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
I like weird flavors, unlike Max. I love a blue
I love a double double chocolate trouble. I really, really, though,
quite especially in the summer, love soft serve ice cream.
There's something about the texture and the things you can
do with it. I love a dipped cone, be it
a Dairy Queen one, or even be it I think
McDonald's does a dip cone.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Maybe they did used to, but they don't anymore.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
And I do love a dipped cone that comes from
a truck something about that.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
It's different, right, Yeah, I think it's because it's an
off the book's business so often, but also folks to
get in front of the opprobrium in the outcry, we
are going to be using the phrase soft serve ice
cream pretty often in this episode.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
We are aware that.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
There are some litigious people out there, perhaps pedants, who
might object to that phrase, as we'll see. But look
legal uh, legal specs and requirements aside. We're not going
to be the fun police here just yet. We got
to admit whether you consider yourself a person with a
(05:28):
sweet tooth or not, Like I don't particularly have a
sweet tooth.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
On my own. You got it? Thank you?
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Yeah, I was gonna I was gonna rip off that
Guy Ritchie line as well.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
What is it?
Speaker 1 (05:40):
It's a bricktop right who to his pigs right, bricktop
London gangster in one of the Guy Ritchie films, is
midway through threatening a group of would be thugs and
then he gets he gets some tea and they ask
(06:01):
him if you want sugar, and he's like, that's ike
techish on sweet enough, and then he proceeds as you said,
almost feed people to pigs.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
But what we're.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Saying is, even if you yourself personally don't feel the
call of chilled sweetness, with the ice cream truck and
that that song that programs us all you gotta admit
ice cream and later soft surf, these are amazing inventions
and they're kind of symbol right.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
The food science and just the engineering aspect. And this
is the kind of like a I don't know, a
stroke of genius that led to this becoming such a
booming industry is worth the price of admission alone, and
ben to get ahead of the legal beagles. That to
your point, I'm just going to refer to it as
soft serf because it's fun to say so. Soft serve
does seem like a simple invention. It's a cold, creamy
(06:57):
ice cream treat that comes from that swirls into a
little cone. But the history is actually, like we were saying,
a threefold story, fourfold, fivefold.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Even we've got through science.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Yeah, we've got refrigeration, which is of course a huge
part of the history of being able to like move
things from parts of the country or the world where
they grow to other places without having them spoil.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Huge part of the history of the world.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Roadside attractions and entrepreneurship, the idea of franchises, and of
course marketing. And one thing I think we both find
a little interesting about the story of soft serve, and
this comes into play with a lot of inventions. Is
that parallel thinking factor that you know I love to mention.
We're not quite sure. We can't really point to a
(07:45):
single inventor that led to the creation of the soft
serve industry as we know it today, but we're going
to at least discuss some of the prime candidates.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Absolutely, and folks, just to set the bar here, we
have to make sure everybody knows ice cream itself, the
iced creams, as Nola once called them a few years back,
that concept is a lot older than this thing called
soft serve, because even before modern refrigeration, which was a
(08:19):
game changer, frozen desserts of some kind existed in various forms.
I'm thinking, of course, of things like the Inuit whale
ice cream. But that's because they lived in an environment
that was naturally refrigerated.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Sure, okay, I didn't think about that, And folks, you
may want to go back and visit an episode we
did not two distant past on the history of ice cream.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Trucks, right, yeah, yeah, So there might.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Be some redundant stuff in this, but we are focusing
primarily on soft serve specifically, which is a big part
of that's going to be the Carvel Company, which we'll
get to in just a bit. So to your point, Ben,
we're talking kind of hard serve, right, like hard scooped
ice cream that in order to you know, you churn
it then harden it at very low temperatures, often involving
(09:07):
like salt rock salt, and it does require a scoop
or a spoon to.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Get it out.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
And you know, as we all know, anyone that pulls
a kind of Ben and Jerry's out of the freezer,
you kind of want to let it sit for a second,
or even put it in the microwave for ten seconds
or so. Otherwise it's like, you know, digging into the
frozen tundra.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
It's hard to get purchase.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
So this kind of created a bit of a practical
problem for the folks that were trying to sling this stuff.
The product had to be stored it's such temperatures, such
cold temperatures, in order to keep it firm and serving
it required a bit of effort because you had to
scoop it out. So the development of mechanical refrigeration and
these special ed freezers opened the door to something a
little bit different, a frozen dessert that could be frozen,
(09:50):
air rated and then served right away. Like it's like
all in one stop shop. You're basically making it to order.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
And by the way, folks, I want to shout out
everybody who grew up with one of those homemade ice
cream creation kits. Cranks, yeah, because you have to crank
it in the circular fashion. It's a it's a bonding
experience with your kids, but it does take a while,
and if you are a parent in these very hurried days,
(10:20):
you may have a moment where you think we should
just go to the grocery store.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
But it's fun. It's the experience.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
And also, to be clear, Alaskan ice cream or the
stuff made by traditional First Nations people up north, that
is not what you think of when you think of
ice cream. It does have sweet stuff sometimes like raspberries
and blueberries, but it is made from seal oil, caribou, moose,
or walrus tallow.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
So yeah, meat cream a meat cream.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
I love that you know what, I try it. I'm
not a verse to trying some meat cream. So this
guy named Charles Taylor is an important figure who in
nineteen twenty six came up with this idea to have
an ice cream machine that used prepared ingredients, whipped them
(11:12):
into a smooth consistency, and then dispensed them. Essentially, it
wasn't exactly a soft serve machine, but it was very
very much the predecessor to what we think of as
the you know, the lever you pull and then the
little swirl that comes out. I'm having a hard time
picturing this, and because it is definitely older technology that
(11:34):
isn't his viable anymore. I had a hard time finding
an actual image of one. But I think my understanding
is that is it is more of a mechanized version
of that hand crank machine that you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Ben Ah, Yeah, that absolutely makes sense.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
He did. Taylor.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Taylor's a fascinating character, folks, and he did as we said,
He did appear to be the first to the market
filing a patent for that ice cream machine. And I
think I want to say maybe it was stuff of genius.
Where we talked a little bit about him, but as
you said, we have many other inventors and entrepreneurs in
(12:14):
the fold here. One of the classic ridiculous history stories
involves another guy, a guy named Tom Carvell. That's a
surname a lot of our ice cream fans will recognize
because he founded the Carvel ice Cream Company, and he's
got a weird he's got a weird story about it
(12:36):
that happens Memorial Day weekend way back in nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
For sure, Ben and Carvell.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
To folks living in our neck of the woods in
the southern part of the US, it's not necessarily going
to be something that you grew up with. I think
maybe maybe Ben, You of course remember things like Baskin
Robbins to a lesser degree. Cold Stone was came along
a little bit later, But we didn't really hoggin did
(13:04):
We didn't really grow up around Carvell. That was more
than North Northeast kind of thing. And that you will
find them. There are some around in Atlanta, as we
will discuss later. Their their stock has fallen considerably and
there are far fewer locations there ever were were. But
in their heyday they were pretty ubiquitous, and they definitely
(13:26):
were much more concentrated in.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
The northeast of the US.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
So what happened was Tom Carvell, during Memorial Day weekend,
as he said been in nineteen thirty four, had an
ice cream truck, and the truck had, you know the
misfortune of suffering a flat tire while roaming around the
streets of Hartsdale, New York, and you know, basically disabled
(13:51):
out in the field like that, he wasn't able to
keep his ice cream properly frozen. But he needed to
sell this stuff, so he started to sell the partially
melted product to folks that were happening by. And the
thing that was surprising to him was that they actually
seemed to like it.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Yeah, because think about it, folks, it's easier to eat.
You don't have to have a high endurance spoon or
scooping mechanism. You can walk around the block of Heartsdale
and just liquor bite to your heart's content until you
get the brain freeze. And Carvell recognized this opportunity. He's
(14:35):
a lot like Percy Spencer, the guy who figured out
microwave ovens when a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
So Carvell, obviously nobody wants a flat tire.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
But Carvell sees.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
The creamy silver lining here and says, I've got an opportunity.
Folks actually liked this ice cream at his temperature softer
it's easier to eat. And what if I made a
business where I just sold this softer ice cream?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Pretty smart, quite an aha moment, and Carvel said about
figuring out a way to do this at scale. He
went on to develop specialized freezing equipment and a formula
for soft served ice cream. By the late thirties and
early forties, he had turned the idea into just that,
a scalable business. Smithsonian does a great job of describing
(15:32):
the equipment.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
That he created.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
It was essentially a batch freezer that later he patented
and converted into a sellable equipment, you know, mass marketed
equipment that he sold to other operations, which helped spread
the technology beyond his own stores. And for a while
that was kind of his main thing, was selling these
(15:55):
machines to other companies. And then I believe he even
had like master classes where he would tea them how
to use it. He was also like the voice of
the company because he was driving around. I think he
heard like a radio ad that was created for his company.
He didn't like it, so he went to the radio
station and asked to redo the ad in his own voice.
So he kind of set the standard for like the
(16:16):
Colonel Sanders's and you know Tom Bowdetts of the world,
Dave Thomas's of the world in being not only the
CEO and the creator behind the brand, but also the
face of the brand. And Fudgi the whale you may know,
again not really something that I grew up with, but
it is like an ice cream cake, and Carvel was
(16:36):
also very important in the mass marketing and you know
proliferation of the ice cream cake. It's literally this like
chocolate whale shaped cake with like whipped cream and ice
cream layers and really really popular for birthdays and Father's days.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
And stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
And there's one spoiler I've got to put in here, fellow, fellow,
ridiculous history. You'll enjoy this, and you'll see where we're
going with it. You could say the difference between soft
serve and ice cream is the same as the difference
between a potato chip and a puffed crisp.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Aha. That's a very good point, Ben.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Is it to do with how like whether it kind
of comes from like real ingredients or like some sort
of is it like a dairy treat, dairy dessert rather
than like a cream you know what I mean? Like
what is it cheese product versus like actual whole milk cheese.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Yeah, let's get into it.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
As we're we're planting that seed there, that soft served
tree is going to grow here momentarily. Nolan, the research
you point out, thanks to soft Serveperth dot com dot
au that there was a there was a growing industry
(18:03):
popping up in different parts of the US. We mentioned
Dairy Queen. We have to let you know, folks that
around the same time that carvel was becoming a legend,
there was another completely unrelated group of folks looking into
what we call soft serve out in the Midwest.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Yep. It's that parallel thinking, man.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
I mean, it's like, you know, people can have an
idea at the same time and not necessarily be stealing
at almost the exact same time. To your point, Ben,
the McCullough family, headed up by John Fremont JF. McCullough,
along with his son Alex, had developed a soft serve
formula of their own. In nineteen thirty eight, they tested
(18:48):
the product at the ice cream shop belonging to a
friend of theirs with a fabulous named Sherb Noble. Is
that nominal determinism there, Ben Sherb, Sherbert Sherberts, how do
you say it?
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I love the concept of nominative determinism. I've been winging about.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
It for years, and I like the idea that maybe
he had some very specific opinions about Sherbert, but Sherbert
might be a little bit outside the scope of softser
is Nola's soft served?
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Is Sherbert soft serve?
Speaker 2 (19:18):
I don't think so. Sherbet does a hard pack ice
cream as well. I think it just has to do
with the cream content once again, right, there are some
then diagrams.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Oh, Sherbert has like one to two percent milk fat,
so way less than.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Ice cream, right, and it tends to be more you know,
fruity flavors. But that's all I really know about Sherbet.
It's never been my go to, although I will say,
when it is presented to me, a nice orange Sherbert
is pretty refreshing and tasty.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, it's I'm not so much on the orange orange flavors,
but I'll.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Tell you it's fine, sure, Sherbert is. Yeah, it's one
of those things.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
I love the fruity flavors, most of them. Sherbert's one
of those things where, like you, if I I'm in
an area and somebody offers it, I'm not going to
get mad at him. But I don't stay up late
at night wondering if I'll ever eat Sherbert again.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Well, it seems to be the general consensus, because I
don't know that I see Sir Sherb Butt. It just
doesn't seem to be nearly as popular as it maybe
once was. But that is just a conjecture on my part.
The test at Sherberdery and ken Kaki, Illinois, was a
smashing success, as you might have imagined, Ben. According to
the Dairy Queen Historian, the customers consumed more than sixteen
(20:33):
hundred servings in just a couple of hours during the
first sales experiment, very day, very first day. Man, this
is a good sign. The McCullough's joined forces with Noble
to subsequently open the very first Dairy Queen brick and
mortar store in Joliette, Illinois. I'm just a year or
just a couple of years later, nineteen forty was open
(20:54):
for business. That's when the company started rapidly expanding through franchising.
And this is all before Ray Kroc and McDonald's. If
I'm not mistaken, Yeah, I believe that's correct.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
And this is also why our question about who invented
soft serve is similar to the story of so many
other inventions. There isn't a simple answer that everyone agrees on. Instead,
there are multiple contenders saying, hey, we were first to
the post. Carvel and dairy Queen for a while are
like our coke and pepsi. You know, they have both
(21:33):
credible claims to pioneering the commercial soft served business and
the machinery and freezing technologies involved. So maybe it's best
for us ridiculous historians to think of soft serve as
an as a techno model that emerged through multiple innovations
(21:56):
starting in the nineteen twenties and thirties and just got
more delicious as we go along.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
But you've got to.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Riddle me this here. And we keep saying the phrase
soft serve, and we talked about the temperature, but what
actually makes soft serve?
Speaker 3 (22:11):
You know, soft?
Speaker 2 (22:13):
That's right, I mean, if you think about it, is
kind of bordering on milkshake consistency. Like maybe think about
if you have a milkshake that's a little too hard
to drink through a straw. That's kind of the consistency
of a soft serve, like a Wendy's frosty, for example.
You could drink that with a straw if it melted
a little bit, but when it comes right out, it's
(22:34):
a little tricky. You gotta eat it with a spoon.
And that is because the soft served machine simultaneously freezes
part of the water in that mixture, whips air into it,
aerrates it, which makes it nice and fluffy and creamy,
and then it keeps the product at a precise temperature
that is warmer than fully hardened ice cream. And the
(22:56):
most important part is that it dispenses it directly into
the cone that has then passed directly off the customer.
And I mean you will notice if you're I was
just hanging out at a park in Queens and got
a soft served cone from a delightful truck and got
it dipped and everything. It starts melting and dripping real
quick if it's a hot day, so you got to
(23:16):
really get right on that. Whereas a hard. You know,
packed ice cream scoop will eventually start melting, but you
got a little time is on your side a little
more when it comes to the melting of that.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
And that's this is why I'm making that earlier. In
comparison to potato chips versus you know, potato puffs or crisp.
The air that goes into your soft serve is called
overrun in the industry, and that creates this light, smooth,
shod a esque texture that makes soft serve different from
(23:48):
those denser scoops. And because it's at a higher temperature,
it it is going to be a different tasting or
consumption experience. But to be clear, soft surf is not
a completely different food. It's a kissing cousin of ice
cream and it uses most of the same basic ingredients
(24:09):
from ice cream. So, like you were saying, Noel, think
of it more as like you know how bell peppers
would be another example. You know how bell peppers in
the US you'll typically get them in like yellow, orange,
and red or green. Those are just different stages of
the peppers development. So we could say that soft serve
(24:31):
in a similar way, is a different stage of development of.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Ice Funny it's funny say that. Not to zero.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
We're talking about food, and I didn't quite know that
thing about peppers. But it does make sense because you'll
even notice, Ben, if you keep a certain pepper long
enough and it doesn't go bad, it will start to
change color. Yep, yep, it's a little darker, but not
like in a bad way. It's like it's literally transitioning
into another phase.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Yeah, it's a natural ripening process. I want to be
clear there since I derailed us. Peppers have an unripe
green state and then they get to a final vibrant
hue that that depends on the genetics and then break
down a chlorophyll. And that's not what we're here to
talk about. We're here to talk about soft serve, oh.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
For sure, Ben.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
But I appreciate the pepper talk because I have been
really enjoying some of those little sweet peppers lately that
you get at the store and like a bag they
got like red, green and yellow, and you can snack
on them, slice them up, put in a salad, just
you know, eat them.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
I grilled some the other day, very very good.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Back to soft serve and back to the nineteen forties
where technology is really turning this into a scalable business,
and a lot of.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
People are jumping on the train.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
It was a crucial time because soft Serve became more
than just an interesting kind of like you know, wave
of the future product.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
It became a repeatable retail system.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Carvel helped popularize those machines and eventually developed the franchise model.
These Sonian's archival history of Carvel says that Carvel sold
these freezers to other operators and later became deeply involved
into franchising themselves. Dairy Queen, as we mentioned, did follow
a similar path expanding through franchising. That model was particularly
(26:15):
well suited to Soft Serve because the product could be
made using standardized mixes and specialized machines. So if your
franchisee has the machine and then you send them the
proprietary mixture, you got yourself a repeatable, you know, predictable products, right,
(26:36):
you sure do.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
And you also see the kind of timing that people
cannot predict but can make or break a new invention.
Soft Serve is riding the wave of post World War
two American transformation. These are the halcyon days of you know,
(26:58):
the nuclear family. A car in every garage. Everybody can
afford a home, two point five kids, et cetera, et cetera.
That's a big part of the American myth and obviously
didn't apply to everybody, but it brings in this idea
of a bold new future.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Right.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
And along with this bold due future doesn't just come
the ubiquity of the automobile. We also see the bold
future of ice cream, the soft serve. And when you're
when you're traveling by car, you're taking your kids on
the summer vacation, you know, to the beach or out
to the Grand Canyon. Uh, you are going to see
all these tourist spots. What do they sell soft serve?
(27:39):
You also see it at drive ins, at diners, at
shopping centers because to your point, Noal, once you as
a business get that machine, you're printing money.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Ben, And I love your point about not only the
nuclear family, but like nuclear power and like the nuclear bomb,
and this idea of the age of atom and the
future like automats. You know, even just getting food or
frozen things dispensed from trucks felt vaguely like futuristic, right,
because of refrigeration technology and all of this stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
So soft serve.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Definitely was kind of world's fair material, you know what
I mean. It was like definitely seen as a novelty, right, Yeah,
like Dippin' Dots back in the nineteen nineties one hundred
percent and Dippin' dot you know, it's funny Dippin' dots did.
I wouldn't say it took off like soft serve, but
it's still around, and there are other companies that do
a Dippin' dots type thing, so I'm glad to see
them hanging on, but definitely never reached the same heights
(28:35):
that Soft Serve did. So by the nineteen fifties, soft
serve was becoming a little bit less of that novelty
and it had become mainstreamed into American food culture. Smithsonian
said that by nineteen fifty six, we had around twelve
thousand places in the United States that were offering soft
serve ice cream.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yeah, And one important point we have to make here,
fellow ridiculous historians, is that off serve became mainstreamed in
this world of emergent franchises because it was a predictable treat, right,
because the machines even from competing inventors and manufacturers because
(29:14):
they all used a very similar process. If you were
taking your kiddos out to you know, your dairy queen
or out to another place, you wouldn't have to worry
that mom and pop made the soft serve a different way.
It be predictable for your kids, so they'd always get
the same treat. It's a huge part of the success.
(29:35):
And we're talking about repeatability and predictability. We got to
talk McDonald's.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
We do they kind of crack the code on that.
The afore I mentioned Ray Kroc, who did to be
fair steel bull thing from writers. Check out that film
What's the Founder? I think that's called Yeah, so Michael
Keaton plays Croc. You know, definitely a bit of a
snake in the grass. But oftentimes big, big thinking business
people are I mean, look at Elon Musk. He really
(30:04):
he never met an idea that he didn't want to steal.
That's sort of his whole vibe. And that's true. He
really is excited about making an AI version of the Odyssey.
He's very upset about that. I don't quite get it.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
But you know, what's a heck of a drug. Yeah,
I do hope he's doing well.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
This is important though, Ben McDonald's did usher in the
fast food revolution. McDonald's began offering soft serve in nineteen
fifty six as a compliment to their burgers as a
way of getting dessert, getting everything in one place, right,
You got your meal, your your drink, and then your dessert.
(30:42):
Of course, this was all thanks to machines manufactured by
the first guy we mentioned that, Charles Taylor, who did
go on to develop further evolutions of his original design
that did end up including soft serve machines. So this
really started to mainstream soft serve even further. Fast food
(31:03):
restaurants were that perfect match because they could finish their
burger and their fries and then get themselves a coliner,
a Sunday or a shake all from the same counter.
Because you can make a shake out a softcer, you know,
like all of this stuff. It's like a one stop
for the ingredients that then can be combined with other
ingredients to make different menu items.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
And hang with a creepy clown everybody. Check out our
two part series on McDonald's mascots and check out that
those original versions of Ronald McDonald even like at some locations.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
I haven't seen them in a long time.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
But there used to be like a bench outside where
it was wrong McDonald's statue on it and his arm
and he could put his arm, put his arm around you.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Nothing weird, but it is a It is a brilliant
idea because again it goes back to consistency and predictability. Uh.
We did solve the question, by the way, about why
the McDonald's ice cream machine is always broken in the
modern day check out stuff. They don't want you to
know for that one. But this this.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
So you could blame the tailor company. They still are there.
They're still the company that provides the machine. And I
believe to hint at that a little bit. It had
to do with the fact that right to repair stuff.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Yes, yeah, they have a monopoly on it.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
It's been very good for the tailor company, not that
great for the consumer.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
But I'll point out real quick something that's not in
the doc here, Ben, I was watching a video on
the history of Carvel. Apparently McDonald's came to Carvel first,
and Carvell said he didn't see it.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
I don't see it. I don't see the vision. I
don't see Uh.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
People wanting ice cream after a burger. It just doesn't
make sense to me.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
And Sean Connery almost got to play Dumbledore and Gandolf
and didn't understand the scripts. So everybody has their big
accidental wins and their big accidental misses. McDonald's is amazing
for the consumer because it is inexpensive, it is consistent,
it is reliable. You know what you are going to get,
(33:04):
and part of this results in soft serve and as
you said, the milkshake becoming the kind of the part
of the triumvirent of the meal.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Right.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
You get a sandwich, you get some fries, you get
a drink or a dessert, and this propels soft serve
past the point of mainstream novelty into international ubiquity. That's why,
(33:37):
by the nineteen sixties and the nineteen seventies you see
soft serve or somebody chilling soft serve at pretty much
any public gathering, right like your fares, your malls, your
amusement parks.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
For sure, I mean, and there is you know, there
is a barrier to entry. Anyone can't get in on
the game. You got to have some pretty pricey equipment,
whereas with hard pack ice cream you could make it
yourself at home and then bring it in a cooler
or something like that. But that's absolutely right, Ben, ice
cream parlors, malls, all that stuff, fast food restaurants, schools,
the mobile ice cream trucks that we've also been talking
(34:13):
about that we're going to talk about a little bit more.
The ice cream truck in particular was a really iconic
part of childhoods for generations. I mean ours to a
lesser degree. There's still around, but I think you know,
kids growing up in certain parts of the country at
certain times in history particularly just it was you know,
magical to hear the sound of the ice cream truck
(34:33):
coming down the street. Sauce served was also increasingly beginning
to be paired with other desserts, so instead of just
getting like a cone, they started to offer banana split Sundays,
the dipped cones, and elaborate specialty desserts where you might
mix it with say Italian ice.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
We'll get to that in a minute, but.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Just to give a little bit of history about kind
of the scaling of the ice cream truck model, mister
Softy is something that anyone who spent any time in
the North would would recognize. James Conway started the company.
William and James Conway, the brothers, UH started the company
in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
The idea was bring soft serve ice cream directly to
neighborhoods in a colorful truck. Along with that that little
jingle that let everybody know that a treat was just
around the corner.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
And we all recognized the song, right.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Move kids, get out the way, get out the way,
get out.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Uh, we're doing that because we legally buy that little issues,
that little John song that is ludicrous famous.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
You know, there are three big names in soft Serve.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
It's Carvel, Taylor and obviously Ludicrous Luta.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Indeed, you know it's funny, man.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
I associate the ice cream truck song with a couple
of things. There's bicycle built for two, you know, Dang
Dang Dang Dan, Dana and dang ding. Then there's also
like Dana leaning da ding dy Ding ding ding ding.
So none of them are copy There are all such
public domain old kind of nursery rhymes songs, but they're different,
(36:06):
and I think depending on where you grew up, you
might remember a different one, or it might be that
Mandela effect. Because I couldn't tell you what the mister
Softy jingle was, and maybe there's one that it's always been,
and maybe it's changed over time. But what we do
know is the business grew super fast. Mister Softy became
incredibly popular along the East Coast, where generations of families
began to associate that sound with the feelings of summer
(36:30):
and childhood nostalgic memories.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
It's Pavlovian, it's behavioral programming, and we know that mister
Softy encountered carvel level success. It's become a part of Americana,
part of the zeitgeist and pop culture. They, like other
companies before them, expanded through a franchise model, meaning that
you can be an independent operator, kind of a contractor,
(36:56):
and you can run mister Softy trucks in communities all
across the United States. It's still the basic process we
described even as we record in twenty twenty six. You
hear the jingle, all the kids get excited, and the
adults run out to meet the truck, and you've got
a You've got multiple items you can order, but it's
(37:19):
still gonna be a relatively small menu because they are
on a truck. It's just nostalgia it's the kind of
it's the kind of thing that advertisers love but cannot
create themselves. It's almost lightning in a bottle for sure.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
And speaking of marketing and advertising and lightning in a bottle,
anyone grew who grew up around this, mister Softy stuff
is probably screaming at their podcast device when I said
that the song may have changed over the years, and
then I don't know which one it was.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
It might have been bicycle bill for two, etc. Absolutely not.
Just look this up.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
They have an iconic song that is a registered sound
trademark and it's efficial titled Jingles and Chimes that was
adapted around nineteen sixty by an ad man from Philly
named Les Wahs, who based the melody on a public
domain piece of music, Arthur Pryor's The Whistler and his Dog.
(38:17):
It is heavily linked to the brand, and it is
a federally registered trademark, and it does have lyrics. Apparently
it's the creamiest, dreamiest soft ice cream you get from
mister Softy. For a freshing, delight supreme look for mister Softy.
My milkshakes and my Sundays and my cones are such
a treat. Listen for my store on wheels, ding a
(38:37):
ling down the street, soft double e, mister softy, And.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
So, of course, you know, mister softy is referring to
the fact that there's soft serve and your ice cream
is not super hard. And over, over the over the
intervening years from then to now, your basic or what
they sometimes call the soft serve cone starts becoming more
(39:05):
than a novelty on its own. It becomes a staple
or a base for these increasingly opulent and delectable creations.
So everybody in the market and consumers at home are
figuring out what other stuff they can add to the
basic soft serve cone. We talked about chocolate dipped cones.
(39:26):
The science behind the the high fat content of the
freezing syrup is fascinating. You get the hard shell right.
But they also it reminds me of how people started
getting really weird with bloody Mary's and putting all sorts
of showing yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not you.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
Know, juice and mustard to those celery.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
For for a while, there was a time where this
definitely I'm sure still happens. Max would know better than us,
but for a long time. I remember there would be
places that had the touted bloody Mary buffets.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Yeah, that's very much the thing.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
You go up there, you make your bloody Marry get,
you get your count of stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Uh yeah, is it an all you can eat bloody
Mary buffet? That seems dangerous. I don't think so.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
I think all it intends to state by state, but like
I know, state of Georgia, like, and all you can
Drink is a special is very much illegal?
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Yeah, it's it's also it's probably a thing where you
can pick any of the accoutrament to your heart's content
in the bloody Mary buffet, but when it comes to
the actual drink, it's different.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (40:46):
And to make this even lamer, the reason why it's
illegal to have an all you can drink in Georgia
is not because they're like, oh, we're so worried that
people are gonna get too drunk. No, No, it's a tax reason.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
It's taxes. It's only taxes.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Well, luckily, the uh, our bloody Marry comparison I was
making is leading us to maybe a different episode in
the future. But no, you see the comparison I'm making here,
Like people had the basic saft serve, and they said,
what other what other sweet or savory things can we
(41:18):
put a top it. The only real rule is that
they don't want a bunch of hot stuff for sure.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
They do sometimes do hot fudge, which requires a specialty
piece of dispensing equipment.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
You know.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
The one that's been most top of mind for me
is a company called Menchies that I believe, you know,
kind of entered the game and gave folks like Carvell
and Dairy Queen a run for their money. They do
all these different rotating sauce surve flavors and sometimes they're
really fun ones like ube and taro and stuff like that.
And you get your sauce served, and then there's like
(41:51):
a little bar with a sneeze guard on it that's
got like you know, boba and cookie dough bites and
you know, fresh straw berries and all kinds of stuff,
and then various cold syrups and compots, and then there's
hot fudge or hot marshmallow fluff or whatever, a lot
of fun. And then they weigh it, which is really smart.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
You know.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
They depending on how much topic you put on it,
they weigh it. So that's sort of the more modern
version of what we're talking about here. But yeah, it
really did blow the doors wide open in terms of nuts, sprinkles, cookies, candy,
fruit brownies, bits of cake. And that paved the way
to the dairy queen blizzard, the McDonald's mcflurry where you
(42:35):
actually mixed the things into a cup kind of version.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Yeah, and we also see here a continuing expansion. Now
soft serve is treated increasingly like as always say, in
a base or an ingredient, a top which other things
are added. The concept spreads as we met across the globe.
(43:01):
In the United Kingdom, in Britain in particular, you'll hear
the name mister Whippi. In other countries, we see regional
identities and serving traditions. It's like the expansion, i would
argue of so many ethnic cuisines. People take it and
they adapt it to what is available to them or
(43:23):
their pre existing cultural taste.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
Right.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
And then you know, maybe because of this branding, like
in the UK, they don't call it soft serve at all,
they call it a whippie.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Yeah, yeah, it became an epononymous trademark for sure.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
And you know, as you know, I'm sure in Japan,
specifically in Hokkaido. They have their own very specialized kind
of regional takes on soft serve. The Hokkaido when in
particular is starting to make its way over here. Now
you're starting to see that in like places like Hipstery, Brooklyn,
and it's like a very high milk fat content Mega
(44:00):
Mega Mega creaming.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Yeah, the butterfat content is the real difference between soft
served gelato and ice cream flavoring. Aside, and I've been
to as you know now, I've been to Hokkaido in winter,
which was not my smartest decision because it's so far north.
The ice cream was awesome. But we also see soft
serve being incredibly famous throughout Japan. And you know how
(44:27):
Japan is really great at doing at making each little
town or community unique. Everybody's got a Yokai based mascot
or a mascot based on you know, their local agriculture,
their turnips or what have you. Their soft serve is
like that too. Every local area is known for its unique,
hard to get flavors that you can't find everywhere else.
(44:51):
You know, you'll see this when we go. I'm sorry
that we're just ships in the night.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
This year, but you'll see it when you go.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
You can fid and this stuff served in shrines and temples.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
It's very it's very.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Not off putting, but it's a very unusual thing, I
think for a lot of us from the West, because
we think of shrines and temples as holy sites, which
they are, and it feels kind of like going to
a Catholic church and buying ice cream inside.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
For sure. But it's my understanding too that they do.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
I mean, this is not the meaning that they're implying
dismissiveness or like, you know, not on they don't let
you take pictures. They're very, very very there are a
lot of social kind of more surrounding visiting a shrine
and like you're not supposed to approach monks, and do
you know, there's just like a lot of like kind
(45:46):
of a social contract stuff that they do expect people
to abide by.
Speaker 3 (45:50):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
We also know that you can combine soft serve or
another cousin frozen customs and Italian ice. This leads us
to what we mentioned earlier, gelato or jilatti. This comes
from Philadelphia and South Jersey in the mid nineteen eighties,
(46:12):
which makes it younger than a lot of people may
have assumed. I think we realized that there's still so
much more on the horizon for soft serve, for ice cream,
for all associated frozen treats. So you, fellow ridiculous historians,
might be the next people to add to the story.
Speaker 3 (46:33):
Exactly. Yeah, Jelatti is our favorite.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Me and the kiddo and their sister their order from
a place in town called Jeremiah's.
Speaker 3 (46:42):
WHOA, my God, it's so good.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
The concept, I believe, was originally popularized in Philly yet
again in the eighties by a Philadelphia firefighter, but it's
made its way here to Georgia, and it's a combination
of delicious, creamy saft serve and different flavors of Italian ice,
and it's aired.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
In such a cool way. I just we love it.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
And yeah, this one's run a little long, but not
quite two part material, so we're gonna end with a
little bit of tangents and trivia. The first one involving
the Iron Lady Margaret Maggie to her friends Thatcher. You
might occasionally hear a claim that miss Thatcher, who later,
of course became Britain's Prime Minister, helped to invent soft serve.
(47:28):
Like many urban legends, there is a kernel of truth
behind the story, but the version that gets kind of
spread around is a bit misleading. I didn't know this, Ben,
but Margaret Thatcher, before her career in politics, was quite
a high level chemist working in food science.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
M Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
And one of the versions of this story you will
hear says that during her time in the food science
labs she researched frozen desserts and the science of in
corporate rating air into ice cream or air rating ice cream.
And this often gets transformed or embellished the way good
(48:08):
stories do. And even now, depending on who you talked
to or whom you talk to in the United Kingdom,
you might hear people of a certain age tell you
with full sincerity and conviction that Margaret Thatcher invented self serve.
That's as misleading you say Al Gore invented the Internet.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
Yeah, as he would have you believe. Yeah, definitely a
bit of a mythnomer.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Thought serve already had multiple commercial pioneers and applications in
the US. By that point, Carvell and Dairy Queen had
already entered the chat Smithsonian does, however, identify the Thatcher
connection as one of several competing origin stories rather than
an established fact of the invention itself. So while Thatcher's
scientific career is fascinating in and of itself and something
(48:55):
that I didn't know about may have intersected with food science,
she definitely should not be considered the sole inventor of
soft sur And we got one more bit of trivia
here that I'm gonna leave out for one of our
listical episodes where we take all the bits that didn't
make it into the episodes and do a whole one
on that.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
What a fun conversation, man, I'm definitely craving a little
bit of iceed cream at this point.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
Tis this season? Yeah, and I'll report back. I'll report
back in advance of our mutual trips to Japan what
the best soft serve we find in our travels. Thank
you for the research here, Noel Big, big thanks to
our super producer Max the Free Train, Williams Big thanks
to aj Bahamas Jacobs, and of course Jonathan Strickland aka
(49:42):
the Quizter, a known ice cream fiend.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
He's sort of like the thenoid for pizza or the
Hamburglar for Burgers only.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
He will come for your soft serve. He will in
the night.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
He gets upset realizing that other people have soft server
like he. He will text me sometimes and say, Ben,
you better not be eating soft served.
Speaker 3 (50:08):
No, no, no no. If he ever listens to these credits, yeah,
we do, we do. We do.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Always remind him that we mentioned him every episode and
I think it warms is a black heart.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
We'll see you next time. Focus.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. That's our super producer. Mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Is here and I am soft and I'm served Max.
Mister Softy Williams.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
There, it is there.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It is known around the world as a delicious lothario.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Is Max.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
They call me Ben Bull and you were Noel Brown.
Oh and no, we were talking off air. We get
a lot of our ideas for future episodes during our
explorations of other talk.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Oh and the world actually in the United States, right,
You and.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I thought, uh, some time ago, what better way to
celebrate summer than to talk a little bit about cool treats?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Cool treats.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Do you remember what Dairy Queen's logo used to be
or they're not logo their their tagline used to be?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Oh, what was it? It was hot eats, cool.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Treat That's right, that's right. Also, shout out to Dairy
Queen for teaching a lot of young kids the word brazier.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Well that's what I was gonna say, Ben. It used
to be did it was stuckies?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Related to dairy Queen, because I swear I would always
see like combination Stuckies and dairy Queen, but then they
would also a deal.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
They must have been a deal, but it was a
long time ago.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
And then that word Brazier referred to the fact that
they made burgers that they they would will meets. But
that seems very antiquated now and I don't think they
have that anymore, except maybe like some of the legacy
rbs that still have the neon hat, there may well
be some Dairy Queen Braziers still out there in the world.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
The franchisees who didn't want to pay extra to update
the signage or you know, want.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
To preserve history. Max. I know you got something to say.
Not really too much about this.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
I mean, it does sound like it could be like
a was it Rallies and Checkers you Gotta Eat, but
like they're regionally named, it could be something.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Like Carls Junior and Harty's.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah yeah, Well, shout out to Brazier and shout out
to our research associate for today's episode, which is none
other than you, mister Brown. You've had something on your
mind for a minute. I've got to ask Noel Max
or you guys, would you call yourselves ice cream fans? Max,
just pretend the condition isn't real for a second.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Well, I mean, oh gosh, yeah, ah, the condition. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
I mean I do enjoy ice cream. Back when I
could eat the back when I could eat ice cream,
I did thoroughly enjoy ice cream.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
It was just like your flavor, what's your go to?
Oh my god, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
I'm not too bad, Hickey. I kind of liked it,
going like, I don't like anything that's like two intensible flavor.
You know, you have those ones like like the quadruple chocolate,
or like the blue one or the one that tastes
like blue and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Well, the one like blue, Yeah, like the very frank
Rid Olds Dandy de Vito I liked. Uh. I was
looking this up me.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
We'll talk about it in a different episode. But if
you guys remember a place called the Spaghetti Factory. They
were to themselves famous. They were self confirmed famous for
an ice cream flavor they I called Spamoni.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Spamoni is a is a very famous just Italian flavor
and that you'll see in a lot of like Italian
Restaurantsre's actually a place in New York and I'm playing.
It's Queen's called or maybe it's the Bronx called Spamoni Gardens,
and it's a very well loved, local, kind of Italian
joint that does Semoni's. I had Spamoni for the very
first time recently, and it's got kind of mixed fruit
(03:55):
in it, like cheriots and pistaschio nuts and.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Strawberry very good.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Those are my favorite nuts, by the way, pistashio and
hazel nut, those two favorite nuts.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Put them together. You got yourself a flavor party. Ben.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
By the way, Stuckey's and Dairy Queen did share a
deep corporate background, and we'll get to that a little
bit later in today's episode about the history of soft store.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
I like weird flavors, unlike Max. I love a blue
I love a double double chocolate trouble. I really, really, though,
quite especially in the summer, love soft serve ice cream.
There's something about the texture and the things you can
do with it. I love a dipped cone, be it
a Dairy Queen one, or even be it I think
McDonald's does a dip cone.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Maybe they did used to, but they don't anymore.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
And I do love a dipped cone that comes from
a truck something about that.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
It's different, right, Yeah, I think it's because it's an
off the book's business so often, but also folks to
get in front of the opprobrium in the outcry, we
are going to be using the phrase soft serve ice
cream pretty often in this episode.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
We are aware that.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
There are some litigious people out there, perhaps pedants, who
might object to that phrase, as we'll see. But look
legal uh, legal specs and requirements aside. We're not going
to be the fun police here just yet. We got
to admit whether you consider yourself a person with a
(05:28):
sweet tooth or not, Like I don't particularly have a
sweet tooth.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
On my own. You got it? Thank you?
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Yeah, I was gonna I was gonna rip off that
Guy Ritchie line as well.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
What is it?
Speaker 1 (05:40):
It's a bricktop right who to his pigs right, bricktop
London gangster in one of the Guy Ritchie films, is
midway through threatening a group of would be thugs and
then he gets he gets some tea and they ask
(06:01):
him if you want sugar, and he's like, that's ike
techish on sweet enough, and then he proceeds as you said,
almost feed people to pigs.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
But what we're.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Saying is, even if you yourself personally don't feel the
call of chilled sweetness, with the ice cream truck and
that that song that programs us all you gotta admit
ice cream and later soft surf, these are amazing inventions
and they're kind of symbol right.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
The food science and just the engineering aspect. And this
is the kind of like a I don't know, a
stroke of genius that led to this becoming such a
booming industry is worth the price of admission alone, and
ben to get ahead of the legal beagles. That to
your point, I'm just going to refer to it as
soft serf because it's fun to say so. Soft serve
does seem like a simple invention. It's a cold, creamy
(06:57):
ice cream treat that comes from that swirls into a
little cone. But the history is actually, like we were saying,
a threefold story, fourfold, fivefold.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Even we've got through science.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Yeah, we've got refrigeration, which is of course a huge
part of the history of being able to like move
things from parts of the country or the world where
they grow to other places without having them spoil.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Huge part of the history of the world.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Roadside attractions and entrepreneurship, the idea of franchises, and of
course marketing. And one thing I think we both find
a little interesting about the story of soft serve, and
this comes into play with a lot of inventions. Is
that parallel thinking factor that you know I love to mention.
We're not quite sure. We can't really point to a
(07:45):
single inventor that led to the creation of the soft
serve industry as we know it today, but we're going
to at least discuss some of the prime candidates.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Absolutely, and folks, just to set the bar here, we
have to make sure everybody knows ice cream itself, the
iced creams, as Nola once called them a few years back,
that concept is a lot older than this thing called
soft serve, because even before modern refrigeration, which was a
(08:19):
game changer, frozen desserts of some kind existed in various forms.
I'm thinking, of course, of things like the Inuit whale
ice cream. But that's because they lived in an environment
that was naturally refrigerated.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Sure, okay, I didn't think about that, And folks, you
may want to go back and visit an episode we
did not two distant past on the history of ice cream.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Trucks, right, yeah, yeah, So there might.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Be some redundant stuff in this, but we are focusing
primarily on soft serve specifically, which is a big part
of that's going to be the Carvel Company, which we'll
get to in just a bit. So to your point, Ben,
we're talking kind of hard serve, right, like hard scooped
ice cream that in order to you know, you churn
it then harden it at very low temperatures, often involving
(09:07):
like salt rock salt, and it does require a scoop
or a spoon to.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Get it out.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
And you know, as we all know, anyone that pulls
a kind of Ben and Jerry's out of the freezer,
you kind of want to let it sit for a second,
or even put it in the microwave for ten seconds
or so. Otherwise it's like, you know, digging into the
frozen tundra.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
It's hard to get purchase.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
So this kind of created a bit of a practical
problem for the folks that were trying to sling this stuff.
The product had to be stored it's such temperatures, such
cold temperatures, in order to keep it firm and serving
it required a bit of effort because you had to
scoop it out. So the development of mechanical refrigeration and
these special ed freezers opened the door to something a
little bit different, a frozen dessert that could be frozen,
(09:50):
air rated and then served right away. Like it's like
all in one stop shop. You're basically making it to order.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
And by the way, folks, I want to shout out
everybody who grew up with one of those homemade ice
cream creation kits. Cranks, yeah, because you have to crank
it in the circular fashion. It's a it's a bonding
experience with your kids, but it does take a while,
and if you are a parent in these very hurried days,
(10:20):
you may have a moment where you think we should
just go to the grocery store.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
But it's fun. It's the experience.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
And also, to be clear, Alaskan ice cream or the
stuff made by traditional First Nations people up north, that
is not what you think of when you think of
ice cream. It does have sweet stuff sometimes like raspberries
and blueberries, but it is made from seal oil, caribou, moose,
or walrus tallow.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
So yeah, meat cream a meat cream.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
I love that you know what, I try it. I'm
not a verse to trying some meat cream. So this
guy named Charles Taylor is an important figure who in
nineteen twenty six came up with this idea to have
an ice cream machine that used prepared ingredients, whipped them
(11:12):
into a smooth consistency, and then dispensed them. Essentially, it
wasn't exactly a soft serve machine, but it was very
very much the predecessor to what we think of as
the you know, the lever you pull and then the
little swirl that comes out. I'm having a hard time
picturing this, and because it is definitely older technology that
(11:34):
isn't his viable anymore. I had a hard time finding
an actual image of one. But I think my understanding
is that is it is more of a mechanized version
of that hand crank machine that you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Ben Ah, Yeah, that absolutely makes sense.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
He did. Taylor.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Taylor's a fascinating character, folks, and he did as we said,
He did appear to be the first to the market
filing a patent for that ice cream machine. And I
think I want to say maybe it was stuff of genius.
Where we talked a little bit about him, but as
you said, we have many other inventors and entrepreneurs in
(12:14):
the fold here. One of the classic ridiculous history stories
involves another guy, a guy named Tom Carvell. That's a
surname a lot of our ice cream fans will recognize
because he founded the Carvel ice Cream Company, and he's
got a weird he's got a weird story about it
(12:36):
that happens Memorial Day weekend way back in nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
For sure, Ben and Carvell.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
To folks living in our neck of the woods in
the southern part of the US, it's not necessarily going
to be something that you grew up with. I think
maybe maybe Ben, You of course remember things like Baskin
Robbins to a lesser degree. Cold Stone was came along
a little bit later, But we didn't really hoggin did
(13:04):
We didn't really grow up around Carvell. That was more
than North Northeast kind of thing. And that you will
find them. There are some around in Atlanta, as we
will discuss later. Their their stock has fallen considerably and
there are far fewer locations there ever were were. But
in their heyday they were pretty ubiquitous, and they definitely
(13:26):
were much more concentrated in.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
The northeast of the US.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
So what happened was Tom Carvell, during Memorial Day weekend,
as he said been in nineteen thirty four, had an
ice cream truck, and the truck had, you know the
misfortune of suffering a flat tire while roaming around the
streets of Hartsdale, New York, and you know, basically disabled
(13:51):
out in the field like that, he wasn't able to
keep his ice cream properly frozen. But he needed to
sell this stuff, so he started to sell the partially
melted product to folks that were happening by. And the
thing that was surprising to him was that they actually
seemed to like it.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Yeah, because think about it, folks, it's easier to eat.
You don't have to have a high endurance spoon or
scooping mechanism. You can walk around the block of Heartsdale
and just liquor bite to your heart's content until you
get the brain freeze. And Carvell recognized this opportunity. He's
(14:35):
a lot like Percy Spencer, the guy who figured out
microwave ovens when a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
So Carvell, obviously nobody wants a flat tire.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
But Carvell sees.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
The creamy silver lining here and says, I've got an opportunity.
Folks actually liked this ice cream at his temperature softer
it's easier to eat. And what if I made a
business where I just sold this softer ice cream?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Pretty smart, quite an aha moment, and Carvel said about
figuring out a way to do this at scale. He
went on to develop specialized freezing equipment and a formula
for soft served ice cream. By the late thirties and
early forties, he had turned the idea into just that,
a scalable business. Smithsonian does a great job of describing
(15:32):
the equipment.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
That he created.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
It was essentially a batch freezer that later he patented
and converted into a sellable equipment, you know, mass marketed
equipment that he sold to other operations, which helped spread
the technology beyond his own stores. And for a while
that was kind of his main thing, was selling these
(15:55):
machines to other companies. And then I believe he even
had like master classes where he would tea them how
to use it. He was also like the voice of
the company because he was driving around. I think he
heard like a radio ad that was created for his company.
He didn't like it, so he went to the radio
station and asked to redo the ad in his own voice.
So he kind of set the standard for like the
(16:16):
Colonel Sanders's and you know Tom Bowdetts of the world,
Dave Thomas's of the world in being not only the
CEO and the creator behind the brand, but also the
face of the brand. And Fudgi the whale you may know,
again not really something that I grew up with, but
it is like an ice cream cake, and Carvel was
(16:36):
also very important in the mass marketing and you know
proliferation of the ice cream cake. It's literally this like
chocolate whale shaped cake with like whipped cream and ice
cream layers and really really popular for birthdays and Father's days.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
And stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
And there's one spoiler I've got to put in here, fellow, fellow,
ridiculous history. You'll enjoy this, and you'll see where we're
going with it. You could say the difference between soft
serve and ice cream is the same as the difference
between a potato chip and a puffed crisp.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Aha. That's a very good point, Ben.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Is it to do with how like whether it kind
of comes from like real ingredients or like some sort
of is it like a dairy treat, dairy dessert rather
than like a cream you know what I mean? Like
what is it cheese product versus like actual whole milk cheese.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Yeah, let's get into it.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
As we're we're planting that seed there, that soft served
tree is going to grow here momentarily. Nolan, the research
you point out, thanks to soft Serveperth dot com dot
au that there was a there was a growing industry
(18:03):
popping up in different parts of the US. We mentioned
Dairy Queen. We have to let you know, folks that
around the same time that carvel was becoming a legend,
there was another completely unrelated group of folks looking into
what we call soft serve out in the Midwest.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Yep. It's that parallel thinking, man.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
I mean, it's like, you know, people can have an
idea at the same time and not necessarily be stealing
at almost the exact same time. To your point, Ben,
the McCullough family, headed up by John Fremont JF. McCullough,
along with his son Alex, had developed a soft serve
formula of their own. In nineteen thirty eight, they tested
(18:48):
the product at the ice cream shop belonging to a
friend of theirs with a fabulous named Sherb Noble. Is
that nominal determinism there, Ben Sherb, Sherbert Sherberts, how do
you say it?
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I love the concept of nominative determinism. I've been winging about.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
It for years, and I like the idea that maybe
he had some very specific opinions about Sherbert, but Sherbert
might be a little bit outside the scope of softser
is Nola's soft served?
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Is Sherbert soft serve?
Speaker 2 (19:18):
I don't think so. Sherbet does a hard pack ice
cream as well. I think it just has to do
with the cream content once again, right, there are some
then diagrams.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Oh, Sherbert has like one to two percent milk fat,
so way less than.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Ice cream, right, and it tends to be more you know,
fruity flavors. But that's all I really know about Sherbet.
It's never been my go to, although I will say,
when it is presented to me, a nice orange Sherbert
is pretty refreshing and tasty.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, it's I'm not so much on the orange orange flavors,
but I'll.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Tell you it's fine, sure, Sherbert is. Yeah, it's one
of those things.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
I love the fruity flavors, most of them. Sherbert's one
of those things where, like you, if I I'm in
an area and somebody offers it, I'm not going to
get mad at him. But I don't stay up late
at night wondering if I'll ever eat Sherbert again.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Well, it seems to be the general consensus, because I
don't know that I see Sir Sherb Butt. It just
doesn't seem to be nearly as popular as it maybe
once was. But that is just a conjecture on my part.
The test at Sherberdery and ken Kaki, Illinois, was a
smashing success, as you might have imagined, Ben. According to
the Dairy Queen Historian, the customers consumed more than sixteen
(20:33):
hundred servings in just a couple of hours during the
first sales experiment, very day, very first day. Man, this
is a good sign. The McCullough's joined forces with Noble
to subsequently open the very first Dairy Queen brick and
mortar store in Joliette, Illinois. I'm just a year or
just a couple of years later, nineteen forty was open
(20:54):
for business. That's when the company started rapidly expanding through franchising.
And this is all before Ray Kroc and McDonald's. If
I'm not mistaken, Yeah, I believe that's correct.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
And this is also why our question about who invented
soft serve is similar to the story of so many
other inventions. There isn't a simple answer that everyone agrees on. Instead,
there are multiple contenders saying, hey, we were first to
the post. Carvel and dairy Queen for a while are
like our coke and pepsi. You know, they have both
(21:33):
credible claims to pioneering the commercial soft served business and
the machinery and freezing technologies involved. So maybe it's best
for us ridiculous historians to think of soft serve as
an as a techno model that emerged through multiple innovations
(21:56):
starting in the nineteen twenties and thirties and just got
more delicious as we go along.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
But you've got to.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Riddle me this here. And we keep saying the phrase
soft serve, and we talked about the temperature, but what
actually makes soft serve?
Speaker 3 (22:11):
You know, soft?
Speaker 2 (22:13):
That's right, I mean, if you think about it, is
kind of bordering on milkshake consistency. Like maybe think about
if you have a milkshake that's a little too hard
to drink through a straw. That's kind of the consistency
of a soft serve, like a Wendy's frosty, for example.
You could drink that with a straw if it melted
a little bit, but when it comes right out, it's
(22:34):
a little tricky. You gotta eat it with a spoon.
And that is because the soft served machine simultaneously freezes
part of the water in that mixture, whips air into it,
aerrates it, which makes it nice and fluffy and creamy,
and then it keeps the product at a precise temperature
that is warmer than fully hardened ice cream. And the
(22:56):
most important part is that it dispenses it directly into
the cone that has then passed directly off the customer.
And I mean you will notice if you're I was
just hanging out at a park in Queens and got
a soft served cone from a delightful truck and got
it dipped and everything. It starts melting and dripping real
quick if it's a hot day, so you got to
(23:16):
really get right on that. Whereas a hard. You know,
packed ice cream scoop will eventually start melting, but you
got a little time is on your side a little
more when it comes to the melting of that.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
And that's this is why I'm making that earlier. In
comparison to potato chips versus you know, potato puffs or crisp.
The air that goes into your soft serve is called
overrun in the industry, and that creates this light, smooth,
shod a esque texture that makes soft serve different from
(23:48):
those denser scoops. And because it's at a higher temperature,
it it is going to be a different tasting or
consumption experience. But to be clear, soft surf is not
a completely different food. It's a kissing cousin of ice
cream and it uses most of the same basic ingredients
(24:09):
from ice cream. So, like you were saying, Noel, think
of it more as like you know how bell peppers
would be another example. You know how bell peppers in
the US you'll typically get them in like yellow, orange,
and red or green. Those are just different stages of
the peppers development. So we could say that soft serve
(24:31):
in a similar way, is a different stage of development of.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Ice Funny it's funny say that. Not to zero.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
We're talking about food, and I didn't quite know that
thing about peppers. But it does make sense because you'll
even notice, Ben, if you keep a certain pepper long
enough and it doesn't go bad, it will start to
change color. Yep, yep, it's a little darker, but not
like in a bad way. It's like it's literally transitioning
into another phase.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Yeah, it's a natural ripening process. I want to be
clear there since I derailed us. Peppers have an unripe
green state and then they get to a final vibrant
hue that that depends on the genetics and then break
down a chlorophyll. And that's not what we're here to
talk about. We're here to talk about soft serve, oh.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
For sure, Ben.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
But I appreciate the pepper talk because I have been
really enjoying some of those little sweet peppers lately that
you get at the store and like a bag they
got like red, green and yellow, and you can snack
on them, slice them up, put in a salad, just
you know, eat them.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
I grilled some the other day, very very good.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Back to soft serve and back to the nineteen forties
where technology is really turning this into a scalable business,
and a lot of.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
People are jumping on the train.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
It was a crucial time because soft Serve became more
than just an interesting kind of like you know, wave
of the future product.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
It became a repeatable retail system.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Carvel helped popularize those machines and eventually developed the franchise model.
These Sonian's archival history of Carvel says that Carvel sold
these freezers to other operators and later became deeply involved
into franchising themselves. Dairy Queen, as we mentioned, did follow
a similar path expanding through franchising. That model was particularly
(26:15):
well suited to Soft Serve because the product could be
made using standardized mixes and specialized machines. So if your
franchisee has the machine and then you send them the
proprietary mixture, you got yourself a repeatable, you know, predictable products, right,
(26:36):
you sure do.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
And you also see the kind of timing that people
cannot predict but can make or break a new invention.
Soft Serve is riding the wave of post World War
two American transformation. These are the halcyon days of you know,
(26:58):
the nuclear family. A car in every garage. Everybody can
afford a home, two point five kids, et cetera, et cetera.
That's a big part of the American myth and obviously
didn't apply to everybody, but it brings in this idea
of a bold new future.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Right.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
And along with this bold due future doesn't just come
the ubiquity of the automobile. We also see the bold
future of ice cream, the soft serve. And when you're
when you're traveling by car, you're taking your kids on
the summer vacation, you know, to the beach or out
to the Grand Canyon. Uh, you are going to see
all these tourist spots. What do they sell soft serve?
(27:39):
You also see it at drive ins, at diners, at
shopping centers because to your point, Noal, once you as
a business get that machine, you're printing money.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Ben, And I love your point about not only the
nuclear family, but like nuclear power and like the nuclear bomb,
and this idea of the age of atom and the
future like automats. You know, even just getting food or
frozen things dispensed from trucks felt vaguely like futuristic, right,
because of refrigeration technology and all of this stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
So soft serve.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Definitely was kind of world's fair material, you know what
I mean. It was like definitely seen as a novelty, right, Yeah,
like Dippin' Dots back in the nineteen nineties one hundred
percent and Dippin' dot you know, it's funny Dippin' dots did.
I wouldn't say it took off like soft serve, but
it's still around, and there are other companies that do
a Dippin' dots type thing, so I'm glad to see
them hanging on, but definitely never reached the same heights
(28:35):
that Soft Serve did. So by the nineteen fifties, soft
serve was becoming a little bit less of that novelty
and it had become mainstreamed into American food culture. Smithsonian
said that by nineteen fifty six, we had around twelve
thousand places in the United States that were offering soft
serve ice cream.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yeah, And one important point we have to make here,
fellow ridiculous historians, is that off serve became mainstreamed in
this world of emergent franchises because it was a predictable treat, right,
because the machines even from competing inventors and manufacturers because
(29:14):
they all used a very similar process. If you were
taking your kiddos out to you know, your dairy queen
or out to another place, you wouldn't have to worry
that mom and pop made the soft serve a different way.
It be predictable for your kids, so they'd always get
the same treat. It's a huge part of the success.
(29:35):
And we're talking about repeatability and predictability. We got to
talk McDonald's.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
We do they kind of crack the code on that.
The afore I mentioned Ray Kroc, who did to be
fair steel bull thing from writers. Check out that film
What's the Founder? I think that's called Yeah, so Michael
Keaton plays Croc. You know, definitely a bit of a
snake in the grass. But oftentimes big, big thinking business
people are I mean, look at Elon Musk. He really
(30:04):
he never met an idea that he didn't want to steal.
That's sort of his whole vibe. And that's true. He
really is excited about making an AI version of the Odyssey.
He's very upset about that. I don't quite get it.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
But you know, what's a heck of a drug. Yeah,
I do hope he's doing well.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
This is important though, Ben McDonald's did usher in the
fast food revolution. McDonald's began offering soft serve in nineteen
fifty six as a compliment to their burgers as a
way of getting dessert, getting everything in one place, right,
You got your meal, your your drink, and then your dessert.
(30:42):
Of course, this was all thanks to machines manufactured by
the first guy we mentioned that, Charles Taylor, who did
go on to develop further evolutions of his original design
that did end up including soft serve machines. So this
really started to mainstream soft serve even further. Fast food
(31:03):
restaurants were that perfect match because they could finish their
burger and their fries and then get themselves a coliner,
a Sunday or a shake all from the same counter.
Because you can make a shake out a softcer, you know,
like all of this stuff. It's like a one stop
for the ingredients that then can be combined with other
ingredients to make different menu items.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
And hang with a creepy clown everybody. Check out our
two part series on McDonald's mascots and check out that
those original versions of Ronald McDonald even like at some locations.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
I haven't seen them in a long time.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
But there used to be like a bench outside where
it was wrong McDonald's statue on it and his arm
and he could put his arm, put his arm around you.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Nothing weird, but it is a It is a brilliant
idea because again it goes back to consistency and predictability. Uh.
We did solve the question, by the way, about why
the McDonald's ice cream machine is always broken in the
modern day check out stuff. They don't want you to
know for that one. But this this.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
So you could blame the tailor company. They still are there.
They're still the company that provides the machine. And I
believe to hint at that a little bit. It had
to do with the fact that right to repair stuff.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Yes, yeah, they have a monopoly on it.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
It's been very good for the tailor company, not that
great for the consumer.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
But I'll point out real quick something that's not in
the doc here, Ben, I was watching a video on
the history of Carvel. Apparently McDonald's came to Carvel first,
and Carvell said he didn't see it.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
I don't see it. I don't see the vision. I
don't see Uh.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
People wanting ice cream after a burger. It just doesn't
make sense to me.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
And Sean Connery almost got to play Dumbledore and Gandolf
and didn't understand the scripts. So everybody has their big
accidental wins and their big accidental misses. McDonald's is amazing
for the consumer because it is inexpensive, it is consistent,
it is reliable. You know what you are going to get,
(33:04):
and part of this results in soft serve and as
you said, the milkshake becoming the kind of the part
of the triumvirent of the meal.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Right.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
You get a sandwich, you get some fries, you get
a drink or a dessert, and this propels soft serve
past the point of mainstream novelty into international ubiquity. That's why,
(33:37):
by the nineteen sixties and the nineteen seventies you see
soft serve or somebody chilling soft serve at pretty much
any public gathering, right like your fares, your malls, your
amusement parks.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
For sure, I mean, and there is you know, there
is a barrier to entry. Anyone can't get in on
the game. You got to have some pretty pricey equipment,
whereas with hard pack ice cream you could make it
yourself at home and then bring it in a cooler
or something like that. But that's absolutely right, Ben, ice
cream parlors, malls, all that stuff, fast food restaurants, schools,
the mobile ice cream trucks that we've also been talking
(34:13):
about that we're going to talk about a little bit more.
The ice cream truck in particular was a really iconic
part of childhoods for generations. I mean ours to a
lesser degree. There's still around, but I think you know,
kids growing up in certain parts of the country at
certain times in history particularly just it was you know,
magical to hear the sound of the ice cream truck
(34:33):
coming down the street. Sauce served was also increasingly beginning
to be paired with other desserts, so instead of just
getting like a cone, they started to offer banana split Sundays,
the dipped cones, and elaborate specialty desserts where you might
mix it with say Italian ice.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
We'll get to that in a minute, but.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Just to give a little bit of history about kind
of the scaling of the ice cream truck model, mister
Softy is something that anyone who spent any time in
the North would would recognize. James Conway started the company.
William and James Conway, the brothers, UH started the company
in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
The idea was bring soft serve ice cream directly to
neighborhoods in a colorful truck. Along with that that little
jingle that let everybody know that a treat was just
around the corner.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
And we all recognized the song, right.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Move kids, get out the way, get out the way,
get out.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Uh, we're doing that because we legally buy that little issues,
that little John song that is ludicrous famous.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
You know, there are three big names in soft Serve.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
It's Carvel, Taylor and obviously Ludicrous Luta.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Indeed, you know it's funny, man.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
I associate the ice cream truck song with a couple
of things. There's bicycle built for two, you know, Dang
Dang Dang Dan, Dana and dang ding. Then there's also
like Dana leaning da ding dy Ding ding ding ding.
So none of them are copy There are all such
public domain old kind of nursery rhymes songs, but they're different,
(36:06):
and I think depending on where you grew up, you
might remember a different one, or it might be that
Mandela effect. Because I couldn't tell you what the mister
Softy jingle was, and maybe there's one that it's always been,
and maybe it's changed over time. But what we do
know is the business grew super fast. Mister Softy became
incredibly popular along the East Coast, where generations of families
began to associate that sound with the feelings of summer
(36:30):
and childhood nostalgic memories.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
It's Pavlovian, it's behavioral programming, and we know that mister
Softy encountered carvel level success. It's become a part of Americana,
part of the zeitgeist and pop culture. They, like other
companies before them, expanded through a franchise model, meaning that
you can be an independent operator, kind of a contractor,
(36:56):
and you can run mister Softy trucks in communities all
across the United States. It's still the basic process we
described even as we record in twenty twenty six. You
hear the jingle, all the kids get excited, and the
adults run out to meet the truck, and you've got
a You've got multiple items you can order, but it's
(37:19):
still gonna be a relatively small menu because they are
on a truck. It's just nostalgia it's the kind of
it's the kind of thing that advertisers love but cannot
create themselves. It's almost lightning in a bottle for sure.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
And speaking of marketing and advertising and lightning in a bottle,
anyone grew who grew up around this, mister Softy stuff
is probably screaming at their podcast device when I said
that the song may have changed over the years, and
then I don't know which one it was.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
It might have been bicycle bill for two, etc. Absolutely not.
Just look this up.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
They have an iconic song that is a registered sound
trademark and it's efficial titled Jingles and Chimes that was
adapted around nineteen sixty by an ad man from Philly
named Les Wahs, who based the melody on a public
domain piece of music, Arthur Pryor's The Whistler and his Dog.
(38:17):
It is heavily linked to the brand, and it is
a federally registered trademark, and it does have lyrics. Apparently
it's the creamiest, dreamiest soft ice cream you get from
mister Softy. For a freshing, delight supreme look for mister Softy.
My milkshakes and my Sundays and my cones are such
a treat. Listen for my store on wheels, ding a
(38:37):
ling down the street, soft double e, mister softy, And.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
So, of course, you know, mister softy is referring to
the fact that there's soft serve and your ice cream
is not super hard. And over, over the over the
intervening years from then to now, your basic or what
they sometimes call the soft serve cone starts becoming more
(39:05):
than a novelty on its own. It becomes a staple
or a base for these increasingly opulent and delectable creations.
So everybody in the market and consumers at home are
figuring out what other stuff they can add to the
basic soft serve cone. We talked about chocolate dipped cones.
(39:26):
The science behind the the high fat content of the
freezing syrup is fascinating. You get the hard shell right.
But they also it reminds me of how people started
getting really weird with bloody Mary's and putting all sorts
of showing yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not you.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
Know, juice and mustard to those celery.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
For for a while, there was a time where this
definitely I'm sure still happens. Max would know better than us,
but for a long time. I remember there would be
places that had the touted bloody Mary buffets.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Yeah, that's very much the thing.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
You go up there, you make your bloody Marry get,
you get your count of stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Uh yeah, is it an all you can eat bloody
Mary buffet? That seems dangerous. I don't think so.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
I think all it intends to state by state, but like
I know, state of Georgia, like, and all you can
Drink is a special is very much illegal?
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Yeah, it's it's also it's probably a thing where you
can pick any of the accoutrament to your heart's content
in the bloody Mary buffet, but when it comes to
the actual drink, it's different.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (40:46):
And to make this even lamer, the reason why it's
illegal to have an all you can drink in Georgia
is not because they're like, oh, we're so worried that
people are gonna get too drunk. No, No, it's a tax reason.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
It's taxes. It's only taxes.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Well, luckily, the uh, our bloody Marry comparison I was
making is leading us to maybe a different episode in
the future. But no, you see the comparison I'm making here,
Like people had the basic saft serve, and they said,
what other what other sweet or savory things can we
(41:18):
put a top it. The only real rule is that
they don't want a bunch of hot stuff for sure.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
They do sometimes do hot fudge, which requires a specialty
piece of dispensing equipment.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
You know.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
The one that's been most top of mind for me
is a company called Menchies that I believe, you know,
kind of entered the game and gave folks like Carvell
and Dairy Queen a run for their money. They do
all these different rotating sauce surve flavors and sometimes they're
really fun ones like ube and taro and stuff like that.
And you get your sauce served, and then there's like
(41:51):
a little bar with a sneeze guard on it that's
got like you know, boba and cookie dough bites and
you know, fresh straw berries and all kinds of stuff,
and then various cold syrups and compots, and then there's
hot fudge or hot marshmallow fluff or whatever, a lot
of fun. And then they weigh it, which is really smart.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
You know.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
They depending on how much topic you put on it,
they weigh it. So that's sort of the more modern
version of what we're talking about here. But yeah, it
really did blow the doors wide open in terms of nuts, sprinkles, cookies, candy,
fruit brownies, bits of cake. And that paved the way
to the dairy queen blizzard, the McDonald's mcflurry where you
(42:35):
actually mixed the things into a cup kind of version.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Yeah, and we also see here a continuing expansion. Now
soft serve is treated increasingly like as always say, in
a base or an ingredient, a top which other things
are added. The concept spreads as we met across the globe.
(43:01):
In the United Kingdom, in Britain in particular, you'll hear
the name mister Whippi. In other countries, we see regional
identities and serving traditions. It's like the expansion, i would
argue of so many ethnic cuisines. People take it and
they adapt it to what is available to them or
(43:23):
their pre existing cultural taste.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
Right.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
And then you know, maybe because of this branding, like
in the UK, they don't call it soft serve at all,
they call it a whippie.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Yeah, yeah, it became an epononymous trademark for sure.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
And you know, as you know, I'm sure in Japan,
specifically in Hokkaido. They have their own very specialized kind
of regional takes on soft serve. The Hokkaido when in
particular is starting to make its way over here. Now
you're starting to see that in like places like Hipstery, Brooklyn,
and it's like a very high milk fat content Mega
(44:00):
Mega Mega creaming.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Yeah, the butterfat content is the real difference between soft
served gelato and ice cream flavoring. Aside, and I've been
to as you know now, I've been to Hokkaido in winter,
which was not my smartest decision because it's so far north.
The ice cream was awesome. But we also see soft
serve being incredibly famous throughout Japan. And you know how
(44:27):
Japan is really great at doing at making each little
town or community unique. Everybody's got a Yokai based mascot
or a mascot based on you know, their local agriculture,
their turnips or what have you. Their soft serve is
like that too. Every local area is known for its unique,
hard to get flavors that you can't find everywhere else.
(44:51):
You know, you'll see this when we go. I'm sorry
that we're just ships in the night.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
This year, but you'll see it when you go.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
You can fid and this stuff served in shrines and temples.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
It's very it's very.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Not off putting, but it's a very unusual thing, I
think for a lot of us from the West, because
we think of shrines and temples as holy sites, which
they are, and it feels kind of like going to
a Catholic church and buying ice cream inside.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
For sure. But it's my understanding too that they do.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
I mean, this is not the meaning that they're implying
dismissiveness or like, you know, not on they don't let
you take pictures. They're very, very very there are a
lot of social kind of more surrounding visiting a shrine
and like you're not supposed to approach monks, and do
you know, there's just like a lot of like kind
(45:46):
of a social contract stuff that they do expect people
to abide by.
Speaker 3 (45:50):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
We also know that you can combine soft serve or
another cousin frozen customs and Italian ice. This leads us
to what we mentioned earlier, gelato or jilatti. This comes
from Philadelphia and South Jersey in the mid nineteen eighties,
(46:12):
which makes it younger than a lot of people may
have assumed. I think we realized that there's still so
much more on the horizon for soft serve, for ice cream,
for all associated frozen treats. So you, fellow ridiculous historians,
might be the next people to add to the story.
Speaker 3 (46:33):
Exactly. Yeah, Jelatti is our favorite.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Me and the kiddo and their sister their order from
a place in town called Jeremiah's.
Speaker 3 (46:42):
WHOA, my God, it's so good.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
The concept, I believe, was originally popularized in Philly yet
again in the eighties by a Philadelphia firefighter, but it's
made its way here to Georgia, and it's a combination
of delicious, creamy saft serve and different flavors of Italian ice,
and it's aired.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
In such a cool way. I just we love it.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
And yeah, this one's run a little long, but not
quite two part material, so we're gonna end with a
little bit of tangents and trivia. The first one involving
the Iron Lady Margaret Maggie to her friends Thatcher. You
might occasionally hear a claim that miss Thatcher, who later,
of course became Britain's Prime Minister, helped to invent soft serve.
(47:28):
Like many urban legends, there is a kernel of truth
behind the story, but the version that gets kind of
spread around is a bit misleading. I didn't know this, Ben,
but Margaret Thatcher, before her career in politics, was quite
a high level chemist working in food science.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
M Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
And one of the versions of this story you will
hear says that during her time in the food science
labs she researched frozen desserts and the science of in
corporate rating air into ice cream or air rating ice cream.
And this often gets transformed or embellished the way good
(48:08):
stories do. And even now, depending on who you talked
to or whom you talk to in the United Kingdom,
you might hear people of a certain age tell you
with full sincerity and conviction that Margaret Thatcher invented self serve.
That's as misleading you say Al Gore invented the Internet.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
Yeah, as he would have you believe. Yeah, definitely a
bit of a mythnomer.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Thought serve already had multiple commercial pioneers and applications in
the US. By that point, Carvell and Dairy Queen had
already entered the chat Smithsonian does, however, identify the Thatcher
connection as one of several competing origin stories rather than
an established fact of the invention itself. So while Thatcher's
scientific career is fascinating in and of itself and something
(48:55):
that I didn't know about may have intersected with food science,
she definitely should not be considered the sole inventor of
soft sur And we got one more bit of trivia
here that I'm gonna leave out for one of our
listical episodes where we take all the bits that didn't
make it into the episodes and do a whole one
on that.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
What a fun conversation, man, I'm definitely craving a little
bit of iceed cream at this point.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
Tis this season? Yeah, and I'll report back. I'll report
back in advance of our mutual trips to Japan what
the best soft serve we find in our travels. Thank
you for the research here, Noel Big, big thanks to
our super producer Max the Free Train, Williams Big thanks
to aj Bahamas Jacobs, and of course Jonathan Strickland aka
(49:42):
the Quizter, a known ice cream fiend.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
He's sort of like the thenoid for pizza or the
Hamburglar for Burgers only.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
He will come for your soft serve. He will in
the night.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
He gets upset realizing that other people have soft server
like he. He will text me sometimes and say, Ben,
you better not be eating soft served.
Speaker 3 (50:08):
No, no, no no. If he ever listens to these credits, yeah,
we do, we do. We do.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Always remind him that we mentioned him every episode and
I think it warms is a black heart.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
We'll see you next time. Focus.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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