Dairy Queen
8331 Norman Center Dr, Ste 700, Bloomington, MN 55437
Approximately 95-100% of the Dairy Queen restaurant locations are linked in the Atlas Research Platform.
Enterprise Snapshot
(US & CAN)
Public profile metrics.
Cuisines
3 of 3 shownStates & Provinces
3 of 59 shownSummary
Dairy Queen began on June 22, 1940, when Sherb Noble started the first restaurant in Joliet, Illinois, using a soft-serve formula developed by John Fremont McCullough and his son Bradley. The first Canadian restaurant began in 1953. International Dairy Queen was formed in 1962, acquired Orange Julius in 1988 and became a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary in 1998. Dairy Queen is headquartered at 8331 Norman Center Drive in Bloomington, Minnesota. More than 90% of the restaurants are franchised. Operators range from single-location franchisees to multi-unit organizations. Dairy Queen has locations in 49 states and ten Canadian provinces. It operates as quick serve, with lunch and dinner as its main meal periods. Its primary cuisines are Ice Cream/Yogurt, Burgers and Chicken. A typical location has about 40 seats and occupies about 1,250 square feet. Formats vary. Treat-only stores and mall locations may be smaller or have no dedicated seating, while Grill & Chill restaurants can have larger dining rooms and menus.
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Ownership & Concepts
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Contacts & Leadership
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Locations & Markets
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How This Profile Is Built
RestaurantData combines corporate disclosures, franchise documentation, public filings, company websites, location research, and proprietary verification. Parent-level figures may aggregate linked concepts. Certain sales and location totals are presented as estimates when companies do not publish a single current figure.
About This Enterprise Profile
Research Notes
2025 FDDs in process. Units will be updated periodically as available.
The Restaurant Enterprise Index is RestaurantData’s research framework for organizing major restaurant enterprises, including franchisors, franchisees, multi-concept operators, and parent organizations.
Certain sales and location totals are presented as estimates when companies do not publish single current figures.
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The Restaurant Enterprise Index focuses primarily on companies with a substantial role in restaurant operations. Investment firms, financial sponsors, and other ownership partners are generally not included unless they also play a meaningful operating role; an otherwise qualifying entity may also be omitted when sufficient reliable information is unavailable.
The ownership hierarchy follows the entity structure from the bottom up, showing the profiled entity in relation to its parent organizations, including its ultimate parent. When the entity owns or operates concepts beneath it, up to three are displayed.
Verify Our Data Methodology
- Foundation: Active state business registries form the primary backbone of every record.
- Sources: Publicly available filings throughout, including public Franchise Disclosure Documents (FDDs).
- Integrity: Zero proprietary third-party databases utilized.
- Verification: Entity/concept records are validated at the source by our in-house research team.
Leveraging Human-Verified Connections
- Collection: Filings and public records are gathered through intake procedures.
- Verification: In-house researchers review every record before it enters the database.
- Ownership Chain: Where relationships can be established, researchers work upward from a concept headquarters or single concept through parent, grandparent, and ultimate parent, resolving operators into one connected structure.
Maintaining the Longitudinal Record
- Duration: Continuous tracking since 1997. Twenty-nine years of unit-level history.
- Method: Same methodology applied across the full period so year-over-year comparisons hold.
- Change Tracking: Openings, closures, ownership transfers, and operator consolidation are recorded as they occur, not backfilled.
- Result: Expansion and contraction trends visible over decades, not snapshots.
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