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A Ridiculous History of 'Soft Serve' · Ridiculous History

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