Dippin’ Dots
5101 Charter Oak Dr, Paducah, KY 42001-5209
Approximately 95-100% of the Dippin’ Dots restaurant locations are linked in the Atlas Research Platform.
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(US & CAN)
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Cuisines
1 of 1 shownStates & Provinces
3 of 34 shownSummary
Dippin' Dots is a Paducah, Kentucky quick serve ice cream franchisor headquartered at 5101 Charter Oak Dr. Microbiologist Curt Jones invented the brand's flash-frozen beaded ice cream in 1988 by applying cryogenic freezing know-how to his love of ice cream, and the following year a Nashville amusement park became the first to serve it. A dealer network for fairs, festivals and retail followed in 1991, a new production facility opened in Paducah in 1995 as international licensing began in Japan, and Dippin' Dots Franchising was established in 2000. After a 2012 acquisition by private investment group Fischer Enterprises, the company joined J&J Snack Foods in 2022, extending its reach into grocery, convenience and online channels. Franchised stores are almost entirely run by independent owners, and many operators also take the treat mobile with carts, kiosks and trucks at fairs and festivals, while the cups of tiny frozen beads remain a fixture at theme parks, ballparks and family attractions. Stores serve ice cream, sherbet and flavored ice through the lunch and dinner hours, along with sundaes, shakes and rotating seasonal flavors. Typical shops are compact, with roughly 10 seats in about 500 square feet.
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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 Certain sales and location totals are presented as estimates when companies do not publish a single current figure.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Certain sales and location totals are presented as estimates when companies do not publish single current figures.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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