George and Ruth Culver, a husband and wife team from Sauk City, opened their first A&W location on Philips Boulevard. They bought The Farm Kitchen, a resort-style restaurant in Devil’s Lake, in 1968. Craig Culver, their son, began working for a local McDonald’s after graduating from college in 1973.

On July 18, 1984, George, Ruth, Craig, and his ex-wife Lea opened the first Culver’s Frozen Custard and ButterBurgers after selling their restaurant and quitting their jobs. Craig has led the company since its inception until 2015. Culver’s sold a minority stake to Roark Capital Group, an Atlanta-based private equity firm, in October 2017. The Culver family still owns the majority of the company.

The Culver family was approached in 1988 about franchising a restaurant in nearby Richland Center. The family agreed, and franchisees were given a loose licensing agreement with no fees or royalties. Because the franchisee had put so little of his own money into the business, it was simple for him to leave a year later when he finally agreed he no longer wanted to be in the restaurants.

After that, the Culver family developed a set of standard franchise procedures that served as the foundation for the franchise procedures used by the Culver Franchising System today. Three years later, they tried again in Baraboo, and business more than doubled. Soon after, the increased recognition gained by the second store for this small-town chain prompted expansion into the Middleton, Madison, and Milwaukee areas.

Culver’s was still a small local chain in 1993, with only 14 locations in southern Wisconsin. Outside of Wisconsin, the first Culver’s restaurants opened in Buffalo, Minnesota, in September 1995, in Roscoe, Illinois, in December 1995, and in Dubuque, Iowa, in November 1997. Culver’s opened its first location outside the Midwest in Texas in February 1998.

The current franchise plan is to open approximately 40 new stores per year. In 2005, the chain expanded to Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Cheyenne, Wyoming, and in July 2006, it opened in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Culver’s began to focus on expanding into markets outside of the Midwest.

The Metro-98 prototype, developed in 2006 and first built in Fort Dodge, Iowa, is significantly smaller than the traditional 120-seaters built through Culver’s many expansions. Although Metro-98 has fewer seats to offer guests, it also reduces the amount of land needed for construction by approximately 20%.

Culver’s expanded to the Phoenix metropolitan area in 2008. Arizona had 26 locations as of July 2017. A new location in Bullhead City could signal a future expansion into Las Vegas. Culver’s had 445 locations in 19 states as of the end of 2011. Culver’s first opened in South Carolina in 2012, followed by Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee[11] in 2014, and North Carolina in 2015. Culver’s announced the opening of a location in Alabama on June 28, 2018. Culver’s will open a location in Arkansas in January 2022.

Culver’s Blue Spoon Cafe debuted as Blue Spoon Creamery Cafe in Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin, in 2000. The color of the spoons used in Culver’s fast food restaurants inspired the name, Blue Spoon. Middleton, Wisconsin, had a second location for two years before closing in August 2010. During the COVID-19 outbreak in May 2020, the Prairie du Sac location closed.