In 1938, John Freemont McCullough, Alex McCullough, and Ronald Baker developed the soft serve ice cream formula.  They were able to convince Herb Noble to offer the product in his ice cream store in Kankakee, Illinois.  He sold over 1,600 servings of the new dessert within two hours on the first day alone.  This lead to Noble and McCullough opening the first Dairy Queen in 1940 in Joliet, Illinois.  There are over 5,600 stores now and over 85% of them are in the United States.  They expanded to 10 stores in 1941 and to 100 by 1947.  By 1955 they had over 2,600 stores and they had expanded into Canada as well.  In 1998 Berkshire Hathaway acquired Dairy Queen and they still own the franchise.

Dairy Queen is well-known for more than just their soft serve ice cream.  They also offer many specialty sundaes, banana splits, regular ice cream, and many other food products as well.  Their menu has expanded to include hamburgers, fries, salads, chicken items, hot dogs, and more.  They are a fast food restaurant that specialized in desserts.  They also offer many decorative ice cream cakes and to go desserts that you can enjoy at home.

There are still many Dairy Queen franchise options available for those that have prior retail or foodservice management or ownership experience.  They require that any potential franchisees put together a management plan and that they have the necessary financial resources to develop the restaurant properly.  They also want restaurant franchisees with a passion and appreciation for building the DQ brand.  You just pay the $35,000 franchise fee along with ongoing royalties of 4% of sales.  They also require between 5% and 6% of the sales for marketing and promotions.  The contract is for 20 years with an option to renew the franchise for 10 more years.