In a sea of fast food restaurants that focus on bringing you hot food, mostly hamburgers,
Dairy Queen has stood as the cold option that also happens to sell...
Hamburgers.
Despite their near omnipresence, there's not a ton that is known about Dairy Queen, at
least when compared to other fast food restaurants like McDonald's that have had movies made
about them.
So, let's delve into the world of ice cream headaches and break down the Top 10 things
you might not know about Dairy Queen.
The Most Dairy Queen Locations Per Capita Happen to be in Minnesota
If there's one state that you'd think wouldn't need that many Dairy Queens it'd have to be
Minnesota, the state with the coldest temperatures (for a major city in Minneapolis), especially
as ice cream and ice hockey don't really go hand and hand.
However, it's Minnesota that has the most Dairy Queen restaurants per person and that
may be due to the fact that Dairy Queen's international headquarters are located there
or because Scandinavians love their ice cream - either way if you're going to visit Minnesota
and are looking forward to getting your favorite kind of blizzard or dilly barkeep in mind
that because of the frigid temperatures, their Dairy Queens are only open during the late
spring to Summer months.
So, even with the ever-increasing amount of warm products that Dairy Queen has added to
its menu in recent years, you're really only able to get any Dairy Queen product in Minneapolis
from late May to early October.
Which means for the rest of the year people in the northernmost state must be forced to
eat their Reese’s Peanut Butter cups and Heath Bars without ice cream, oh, the horror!
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Texas has the most Dairy Queen Locations Total
While Minnesota may not seem like the top per capita place for a Dairy Queen, what might
not be a huge surprise is that Texas is the state that has the most restaurants total.
With over 600 locations, Texas tops the list as the state with the most Dairy Queens and
that makes a lot of sense as Texas is where red-hot heat and palpable humidity meet, and
unlike other large states like California, the people there are all worked up about eating
healthy and living into their 60's.
That's not to say that California doesn't have a lot of Dairy Queens as well, it's just
that the Lone Star State is number one, which makes even more sense when you think about
all the barbecue and spice that they eat, because nothing goes better with BBQ than
a soft-serve cone or drink like a mister misty, as long as it's not the healthier option like
the failed "Breeze".
Speaking of which…
Dairy Queen’s Healthier Options Failed
In 2018 most fast food restaurants have introduced healthier options mostly out of necessity
as people became increasingly aware of just how bad the food in fast food was for them.
While you'd think that an ice cream restaurant wouldn't have to worry about such things as
people aren't eating ice cream for every meal or really more than once or twice a week,
the people at Dairy Queen decided to ride the health craze that enveloped the early
aughts and introduced their first low-calorie dessert option.
Dubbed the "Breeze", it was actually ahead of it's time as it launched in 1990, which
is probably why it didn't succeed (or at least one of the reasons it didn't).
The Breeze was a low calories version of the iconic blizzard, made with frozen yogurt instead
of ice cream and while it actually lasted for a full decade before the (frozen) brains
at DQ International pulled the plug on it, it is looked back upon as an abject failure.
People go to ice cream restaurants to eat, you guessed it, ice cream and so it might
not surprise you to hear that so few people were ordering the Breeze that Dairy Queen
locations often had to throw away the yogurt before they could sell it because it was past
its expiration date.
That's surprising though as frozen yogurt can taste a lot like ice cream, but it's probably
just the mental aspect of eating yogurt instead of ice cream - but then again if you're mixing
candy into frozen yogurt it probably defeats the purpose of it being healthy to begin with,
which is probably another reason why this didn't work and when you have more than one
fatal flaw to your product then it's safe to say that someone was fired over the disaster
that was the Breeze.
The Blizzard was only Introduced in 1985
If you were to poll 100 people on the street and ask them what the most iconic item on
Dairy Queen's menu is, it's safe to assume that the vast majority of them would choose
the Blizzard.
Made of soft serve and crushed up name brand candy like Reese’s Pieces, Heath, M&M's
or Butterfinger, it's probably the most delicious thing on any fast food menu anywhere.
So, it may surprise you to hear that the Blizzard has only been on Dairy Queen's menus since
1985, nearly a half-century after the first store was opened in 1940 in Joliet, Illinois.
The Blizzard was an immediate hit, with nearly 200 million being sold in the first year alone.
Considering how iconic and intertwined the Blizzard is with Dairy Queens' image it's
hard to imagine it took them that long to think up something so vital.
I mean, what did they sell before?
Dilly Bars?
Ice cream WITHOUT candy in it?
Talk about a Depression!
Dairy Queen also Owns Orange Julius, Both Are Owned by Warren Buffett
If you've been to one of the remaining malls in the world you'll probably have come across
a Dairy Queen or Orange Julius and while you may have thought that the two have teamed
up to pay the ridiculous rent that malls at least used to be able to charge, it actually
turns out that Dairy Queen owns Orange Julius, which if you're a millennial is like the grandfather
to Jamba Juice.
Surprisingly Orange Julius actually predates the company that ended up purchasing it in
1987, with the first Orange Julius growing out of an Orange stand in Los Angeles California
in 1926.
The owner of Orange Julius was named Julius in the shocker of the century, and he came
up with his famous concoction alongside his realtor: a juice that was easier on the stomach
by making the orange less acidic.
People soon were shouting "Give me an Orange, Julius!" and the name was born, only to be
purchased by Dairy Queen in 1987 to combine their efforts and also offer something a bit
healthier than a Blizzard and a bit more delicious than the Breeze.
Now both are actually a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, which is the company owned by famed
Billionaire Warren Buffett, probably because he just likes ice cream and consistent quarter-to-quarter
profits.
Why Dairy Queen Turns the Blizzard Upside Down
Outside of how delicious the Blizzard is, the other thing that probably comes to mind
when you think of it is the fact that the employees turn it upside down before serving
it to you.
While there have been a lot of theories as to why they do that, with some people thinking
that they're hoping to make the candy settle, if that makes any sense, the reality is that
it's a branding tool.
You see, Dairy Queen really wants to hammer home how great their product is and by turning
the Blizzard upside down they're showing you how thick and delicious the ice cream that
comprises it is, and it's something that they actually borrowed from the frozen custard
industry, namely a restaurant in St. Louis named Ted Drewes, which serves it's frozen
custard with mix-in's called concretes.
So, while it's about salesmanship and thus selling you something you already purchased,
some locations take this very seriously and have run promotions where if an employee forgets
to turn your Blizzard upside down, you get to eat it for free!
So the next time you're waiting for your delicious Blizzard keep an eye on the employee making
it, and while you might not get it for free you'll at least know whether or not your product
is up to snuff as if it falls on the floor it means the machine is broken or that you're
probably dreaming...
Talk about a nightmare.
The Dairy Queen Recipe for their Soft Serve is Top Secret
While some things in business are guarded for no reason (like the next entry in this
video), there are other things that are obviously extremely important and thus are guarded with
extreme care by those who know the exact recipe or code.
While the most famous example of this is the secret to Coca-Cola, which is said to only
be known by a handful of people at any given time, to the secret herbs and spices behind
Kentucky Fried Chicken, it turns out that Dairy Queen also protects the recipe for its
soft serve as if it were the recipe for the atom bomb in the 1940's.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the first Dairy Queen opened in 1940 and was founded by the
same man who perfected the scientific process for creating soft serve and while they made
sure to expand as quickly as possible to lessen the chances that another restaurant would
steal their idea or do it better, it turns out that they also covered their bases by
only letting a few people know the recipe behind soft serve.
According to what chief branding officer Michael Keller told ABC News, "[The formula] is kept,
and there are only a few keys to it.”
The Dairy Queen Swirl is Trademarked
Outside of deliciousness and Blizzards, the main thing that people may think of when they
think of Dairy Queen is that iconic swirl that comes atop a lot of their frozen treats.
It turns out like many things in business, that swirl is actually a trademark of Dairy
Queen International.
How do they trademark a swirl, you ask?
Well, it's really how the swirl is discussed and shown in the media.
Referred to internally as a "Q", thanks to its similarities to the letter, there's a
reason why Dairy Queen is the only ice cream location that focuses on the swirl and that's
because they have the trademark to market it that way (it also doesn't hurt that they
really don't have a ton of competition in terms of soft serve or the Q, but that's not
a coincidence and while you may laugh at the fact that they've trademarked something so
silly, it clearly is working for them).
So while you may not refer to as a Q, it's about as iconic to Dairy Queen as the Golden
Arches are to McDonald's, and at least the Q has something to do with the food you're
getting whereas the Golden Arches are just random (which the movie "The Founder" about
the founding of McDonald's doesn't shy away from).
Dairy Queen is from Illinois
Some people have to slave for years for their dream to become a reality, but the fellas
behind Dairy Queen (and it's first of a kind soft serve ice cream) knew within the first
hour or two that they had a hit on their hands.
However, it took two years for them to get everything set up for their first location
which was located on 501 N Chicago Street in Joliet, Illinois and while that location
no longer hosts a Dairy Queen the original building is still there.
If that location hadn't succeeded then we wouldn't have the nearly 6,500 locations around
the world and a decent amount of people probably wouldn't have diabetes.
As we've learned elsewhere in this video, Dairy Queen was one of the pioneers of the
franchising system of restaurant ownership and they started franchising the same year
that they launched, 1940, which goes to show you that they knew that they had a good thing
and that they needed to get it in front of as many people as possible before someone
else usurped their soft serve idea and established a foothold in the ice cream restaurant industry
(we're looking at you, Baskin Robbins).
Dairy Queen Basically Invented Soft Serve Ice Cream
These days you can get soft serve ice cream at basically every fast food joint, but back
before World War II the only ice cream that you could get anywhere was the semi-hard kind
that makes up most ice cream cones or store-bought ice cream.
As it turns out, John Fremont McCullogh, one of the founders of Dairy Queen, helped pioneer
the science behind soft serve ice cream with his son Bradley back in 1938 (two years before
the first Dairy Queen opened).
After perfecting their recipe and system, they partnered with a friend of theirs who
just so happened to own an ice cream shop, Sherb Noble, and together they started selling
what is now called soft serve on August, 4th 1938, a day that will live forever in the
hearts of those who love ice cream headaches.
It was an immediate hit, as they sold over 1,600 servings in the first two hours of their
business alone!
Talk about word of mouth!
They clearly knew they had a hit on their hands and in two years opened their first
location in Joliet, Illinois.
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