Dairy Queen

Dairy Queen sells soft serve with a curl on top and burgers off a grill, usually from the same building. Smaller Treat stores skip the grill. Franchisees own almost every restaurant, so the operator behind the counter is a local business rather than head office. Berkshire Hathaway has held the parent company since the nineties.

Dairy Queen History below covers the dairy that worked out the formula, the first store and the estate the chain trades from now. Bloomington, Minnesota holds the head office. Texas carries more restaurants than any other state.

Dairy Queen History

John Fremont McCullough worked out a soft serve formula with his son Alex in 1938. Sherb Noble ran the Illinois ice cream shop that agreed to test it. Dairy Queen opened its first store in Joliet, Illinois in 1940, selling nothing but the frozen product itself. Franchising carried it outward fast, from ten stores in 1941 to a hundred by 1947 and 1,446 by 1950.

Brazier put burgers, hot dogs and fries beside the soft serve from the late fifties onward. That decision is why so many towns know DQ for supper rather than for dessert alone. The Blizzard arrived in 1985 and sold more than a hundred million cups in its first year. Turning the cup upside down before handing it across became the proof that it was thick enough to hold.

Berkshire Hathaway bought International Dairy Queen in 1998 and still owns it, with Troy Bader as president and CEO. More than four thousand of its 7,800-plus franchised restaurants trade across the United States. DQ Coffee Coolers, blended with cold brew, joined the menu in September 2026. Peppermint Bark and the new Peanut Butter Blossom lead the holiday Blizzard lineup from 2 November 2026 to 3 January 2027.

Dairy Queen Menus and Details

Dairy Queen Menus below split five ways, one page each for prices, off-menu builds, allergens, the weekday drink windows and the autumn lineup.

Every Blizzard, Stackburger, basket, cone, sundae and shake priced by size, plus combos, kids’ meals, cakes and breakfast.

Birthday Cake, Puppy Chow, Butterbeer and the rest, with the ingredients to name at the counter.

Which treats and which food declare milk, egg, wheat, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish or sesame, item by item.

The weekday drink windows, which drinks they cover and the regular menu prices behind them.

Pumpkin Pie, Brown Sugar Cookie Dough and the coffee cooler that opens autumn.