The start of soft serve: How an East Moline company has been part of ice cream history for 78 years

For people grabbing a cone at a restaurant or fast-food chain, there's a chance the machine making the treat has a Quad-Cities connection in the East Moline-based company Electro Freeze.

It all started in the early 1930s, when manufacturing in the Quad-Cities was heating up. About that time, Henry Duke of Owensboro, Kentucky, made the move to East Moline looking for work. He ended up at the Troy Laundry Equipment Company repairing washing machines. The company later became a division of AMETEK Inc.

By the end of the decade Duke decided to go into business for himself, building commercial grade washing machines for dry cleaners. By 1945, Duke built up enough business to build his own factory at 623 15th Ave. in East Moline, said John Sacco, the retired director of administration for Electro Freeze.

The yellow, brick building, next to Jaded Java, still has the H.C. Duke name on the front.

About 10 miles to the east in Green River, Illinois, father and son duo J.F. and Alec McCullough began experimenting with a new soft serve creation. To mass produce it, the duo purchased the rights to a custard-type freezer, which relied on ice and salt for the freezing process, from Harry Oltz of Hammond, Indiana. 

With their recipe ready to go, the McCulloughs contacted a good friend and customer, Sherb Noble, and asked him to run an "all you can eat" trial run of their new creation at his Kankakee, Illinois, store on Aug. 4, 1938.

Within two hours Noble served up 1,600 helpings of the then unnamed dessert. 

The group spent the next two years perfecting their recipe and Noble opened their first store on June 22, 1940, in Joliet. J.F. McCullough believed his product was the "queen" of the crop so to speak and named the new store Dairy Queen.

It was an instant success and the McCulloughs built the first drive-in Dairy Queen at 4320 Fourth Ave. in Moline the following year. The blue building is still standing and is now home to Coya's Cafe.

As time progressed, the washing machine business continued to thrive and so did the craze for the new soft-serve treat being served up in the Quad-Cities. In 1946, Duke was contacted by the founders of Dairy Queen and asked if he could help them with a problem.

"They had repairs needed on the machines because the machines were made by another company. Us being in the manufacturing business, we did repairs for them on their ice cream machine," Sacco said. "They came one day to the Dukes and said, 'Do you think you can build an ice cream machine?' "

The Dukes were happy to try, and it was a success. The partners came back and ordered 10 more.

"They never knew if they'd see another order for ice cream machines or not, but from there they continued building ice cream machines for Dairy Queen exclusively," Sacco said.

Success continued and by the 1960s the H.C. Duke & Son company expanded its product line with the invention of a slush machine. The company was ready to expand again in 1967, this time, at its new home at 2116 Eighth Ave. in East Moline, where it stands today.

Two years later the company bought the New York-based company Electro Freeze, which specialized in gravity machines. The dairy mix would be poured into the top of the machine, fall down the barrel and freeze.

The Duke company was creating pressurized machines, where a pump would push the mix in and incorporate the air into the ice cream to create the soft-serve blend people craved.

"We took our technology of pressurized and incorporated it into that line of Electro Freeze equipment and started selling pressurized machines on the open market, and we were one of the first companies to do that," Sacco said.

Soft-serve ice cream needs less air than other batches, Sacco said, but it needs to be controlled. The new technology allowed for a firmer, and higher-quality product and the trend of improvement and innovation continued for decades.

"As a company, since we bought Electro Freeze, we built a lot of new things for the industry," he said. "The pressurized machine was one in 1970, and in 1972 we came out with what was called a cab machine."

The cab allowed the pump to be refrigerated, ensuring the dairy-filled ice cream mix was more sanitary. Before the cab, machine owners would have to clean their machines daily. The refrigeration made sure the product stayed at a safe temperature and the machine only needed to be cleaned once a week.

As the times shifted, so did H.C. Duke & Son, which has since adopted the Electro Freeze name. The company now makes machines for a variety of frozen creations, including cocktails, shakes, slush, water ice and gelato.

Always looking for the latest scoop on the industry, Electro Freeze hit it big in 1984 with the invention of the blizzard machine.

"It increased their sales tremendously and we now sell it on the open market as an Artic Swirl machine," Sacco said.

In 2003, the Duke family sold the company to the Ali Group, an Italian manufacturing firm and one of the largest food service equipment suppliers in the world. The new funding and experience helped Electro Freeze expand its product line and customer base.

"It was huge for us because this company, from when they first bought us to when I retired (in 2021), there was about six to seven times the amount of volume (as before)," Sacco said. "And that was still 10 times the volume from when I started here."

When Sacco began his career in 1975 the company was churning out four to five machines a day, he said. Now the company is making as many as 3,000 in a single year, said President Victoria Campbell.

Even though she grew up in Bettendorf, Campbell had never heard of the H.C. Duke company before a local headhunter inquired with her about the job. Once she made it to the East Moline factory, the decision to come aboard was easy, she said.

"I came over here and was very impressed with the operation. There is a lot of really good people here who care deeply about what we make and the impact we make," she said.

That impact is felt locally with companies like Lagomarcino's and Los Amigos featuring Electro Freeze products in their stores, and also nationally. Major chains like Sonic, Five Guys, Arby's and the ice cream truck Mister Softee all purchase Electro Freeze machines.

Making it all happen, Campbell said, are about 170 employees. When Sacco started in 1975, employment was at about 50 people, he said.

"I really love the people here," Campbell said. "They care. They want to solve problems, they will go out of their way to make the product right, and that's what makes Electro Freeze great is because we're known for that quality and that starts with the people on our floor."

Now, the team has grown and so has the company and what it makes in-house. Everything from the design to testing to service and shipping all takes place in one building, "cross country and across the world," Campbell said.

Electro Freeze is not just a big name in North America — it has 28 distributors in the U.S. and Canada — but also in the United Kingdom and a big presence in Poland. A favorite treat among Europeans is Swiderki, a soft serve style from Poland known for being nearly a foot tall.

The specialty comes in a dairy and fruit variety, but does not have any air in the product making it very dense. Multiple companies have tried to create the machine but could not handle the thick texture. Electro Freeze was able to take the design to the drawing boards and create a machine that would produce it best.

Innovations are a big part of what keeps Electro Freeze growing, Campbell said, and they just keep coming. In 2013, Electro Freeze came out with a machine that has electronic controls, allowing the company to diagnose problems over the internet. The new machines can sense what time of day is typically busier for a company and idle in the down-time, conserving energy.

"We're continuing to improve that and making changes to improve as the technology improves," Campbell said.

It's impossible to name all the machines Electro Freeze makes, she said. At any given time they have about 150 being made and production typically takes about three weeks per machine. There are nearly 800 different combinations of Electro Freeze products from slushie machines to shake machines to the soft-serve that started it all.

At the end of the day, the product going out the door and to customers who will appreciate it is what makes both Campbell and Sacco proud to represent the company. After all, who doesn't love a scoop of soft serve on a hot day?

"I always say nobody has a bad day when they eat ice cream. Everybody walks away with a smile," Sacco said. "Being able to make a product that people sit down and enjoy, that always meant the world to me."