Five American food chains trace their roots to a 25-year stretch between 1916 and 1940: Nathan’s Famous, White Castle, Howard Johnson’s, Krispy Kreme and Dairy Queen. Each began with one small idea, a nickel hot dog, a square burger, a soda fountain, a hot doughnut or a soft-serve cone.
Here is how each one started, in order of opening.
Nathan’s Famous, 1916: A Nickel Hot Dog on Coney Island
Nathan Handwerker opened his hot dog stand in 1916 at Surf and Stillwell avenues in the Coney Island neighborhood of Brooklyn. According to Wikipedia’s company entry, he and his wife, Ida, put in their $300 savings, and the hot dog sold for five cents, half the price charged by his former employer, Feltman’s.
The same account notes that the original stand still sits on its 1916 corner. It later closed after Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 and reopened in May 2013.
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White Castle, 1921: Small Square Burgers in Wichita
White Castle dates to September 13, 1921, when cook Walter Anderson and insurance and real-estate man Billy Ingram opened a hamburger restaurant in Wichita, Kansas. The menu centered on small, square hamburgers at five cents each, according to Wikipedia.
The historical society’s account adds that Anderson borrowed $80 to open a stand with three stools, and that the castle-style building suggested purity and strength. Pie, coffee and Coke sat beside the burgers, and the slogan told customers to buy them by the sack.
For a different kind of restaurant lore, see these stories from history people keep getting wrong. The chain built steel-lined restaurants and kept staff in spotless uniforms to ease public worries about ground beef. By 1930, it ran 116 restaurants in 12 major cities, and the company is still held by the Ingram family.
Howard Johnson’s, 1925: A Pharmacy Soda Fountain in Quincy
Howard Deering Johnson borrowed $2,000 in 1925 to buy a small pharmacy in the Wollaston neighborhood of Quincy, Massachusetts. The soda fountain he installed became its busiest corner, and he sold ice cream with roughly double the usual butterfat in 28 flavors, as Wikipedia recounts.
Home cooks who enjoy mid-century style can browse mid-century furniture designs still seen in living rooms. The first restaurant followed in 1929 and served New England dishes such as roast turkey, chicken pot pie, baked beans and baked macaroni and cheese. A second restaurant, opened in Orleans, Massachusetts, in 1935, was run as a franchise, one of the earliest in the country. By 1954 there were 400 restaurants in 32 states.
Diners of a certain age may recall the foods boomers loved with a passion, and orange-roofed dining rooms belong in that memory. The restaurants are gone now. The last one, in Lake George, New York, closed in March 2022. The Howard Johnson name lives on as a hotel brand, listed today on Wyndham’s website.
Krispy Kreme, 1937: Doughnuts Sold From a Winston-Salem Shop
Vernon Rudolph opened the first Krispy Kreme in a rented building on South Main Street in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on July 13, 1937. Wikipedia notes that he sold mostly to grocery and convenience stores, and that neighbors soon came to the door for hot doughnuts between midnight and 4 a.m.
The recipe’s exact origin is partly a mystery. One account says Rudolph bought a yeast-raised recipe from a New Orleans chef, while another points to an Ohio River barge cook known for light potato doughnuts.
The company’s own about page still dates the brand to 1937 and a small Winston-Salem shop. It names the Original Glazed doughnut, served warm right after it is made, as the product that started everything.
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Dairy Queen, 1940: Soft Serve in Joliet, Illinois
Dairy Queen’s soft-serve formula was developed in 1938 by J.F. McCullough and his son Alex, per Wikipedia. They talked their friend Sherb Noble into selling it at his ice cream shop in Kankakee, Illinois. Noble sold more than 1,600 servings in two hours on the first day.
A report from Northern Public Radio adds that Noble offered the soft serve as a 10-cent unlimited special. He then opened the first Dairy Queen on June 22, 1940, at 501 N. Chicago Street in Joliet. The name came from McCullough’s remark that the cow was the queen of the dairy business.
The Joliet store closed in the 1950s, but the building is a city-designated landmark. Franchising took off quickly. The radio report says the chain reached 10 stores within a year and 2,600 by 1955, and now has more than 7,000 locations in over 20 countries.
What the Five Have in Common
Looking across the five, a few patterns stand out. Every one started small and local, with a single product sold cheaply. Nathan’s and White Castle both charged a nickel. Dairy Queen’s first special was a dime for as much soft serve as a customer wanted.
Several also leaned on trust. White Castle used stainless steel and clean uniforms to answer doubts about ground beef, and Nathan’s founder reportedly had men in surgeon’s smocks eat at the stand to reassure the crowd, according to Wikipedia.
Franchising carried others far beyond their first corner. Howard Johnson’s licensed its second restaurant in 1935, and Dairy Queen’s early franchise growth reached 2,600 stores by 1955. White Castle went the opposite way, keeping its restaurants company-owned.
The fates differ as well. Howard Johnson’s restaurants have closed, while Nathan’s, White Castle, Krispy Kreme and Dairy Queen are all still serving customers. For anyone planning a food-history road trip, the Coney Island corner and the Joliet building both remain standing and can be visited today.
The years also show how much of the American restaurant landscape was set before 1941: a fast burger in 1921, a franchise in 1935, a soft-serve cone in 1940. Many of today’s menus and business models still follow those early templates.
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: MichaellaaRubio – CC BY 4.0/Wikimedia Commons
