Righting the shipĭairy Queen began as a retailer of soft-serve-a style of ice cream in which air is added during the freezing process to make it creamier and lighter.
And those roots have been, and continue to be, key to its longevity. If IDQ looks set to last for another 75 years, it’s because in the past 15 years, it has undergone a reinvention while remaining true to its roots. alone, DQ ranked 19th, according to QSR Magazine’s August 2014 Top 50 report. Globally, IDQ ranked 16th among all restaurant franchisors, based on Franchise Times’ 2014 numbers in the U.S. This year, it’s starting a national television advertising campaign that for the first time will run for all 12 months, as the company positions itself as a franchisor of year-round dining establishments, not just a warm-weather ice-cream destination. With the effects of the recession finally subsiding, IDQ is pushing into new markets both in the U.S. But the Edina-based franchisor celebrates its 75th anniversary this year on solid footing and steady growth, thanks to a sharpened focus and a new restaurant concept called Grill & Chill. Disgruntled franchisees were suing parent company International Dairy Queen (IDQ), and Dairy Queen’s future appeared cloudy. Twenty years ago, it wasn’t at all certain that this DQ and its comrades would still be in business. After being closed for three winter months, this old store has already opened for its 69th season, dispensing cones, shakes, Dilly Bars and a variety of the chain’s famous Blizzards to patrons who, whatever their ages, think of DQ as the essential flavor of their childhood summers. It may be the oldest, though that’s a matter of some debate: Both this location and a Rochester franchise started in 1947, seven years after the first Dairy Queen opened in Joliet, Ill. It’s one of Minnesota’s oldest DQ franchises.
Atop it all is an old-style Dairy Queen sign, complete with the angled cone topped with swirly soft-serve.
There’s a pop panache to it, with its upwardly slanted glass exterior panels and its bright-red flat roof. On Lexington Avenue in Roseville, just a little north of Larpenteur Avenue, is a remarkable little building sitting in a strip-mall parking lot.
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