Dairy Queen

International Dairy Queen, Inc. (DQ) is an American multinational fast food chain founded in 1940. It is currently headquartered in Bloomington, Minnesota, United States. The first Dairy Queen was owned and operated by Sherb Noble and first opened on June 22, 1940, in Joliet, Illinois. It serves a variety of hot and fried food, as well as original frozen dairy products that vary from location to location. History The soft-serve formula was first developed in 1938 by John Fremont "J.F." McCullough and his son Alex. They convinced friend and loyal customer Sherb Noble to offer the product in his ice cream store in Kankakee, Illinois. On the first day of sales, Noble sold more than 1,600 servings of the new dessert within two hours. Noble and the McCulloughs went on to open the first Dairy Queen store in 1940 in Joliet, Illinois. It closed in the 1950s, but the 501 N Chicago Street building is a city-designated landmark. Since 1940, the chain has used a franchise system to expand its operations globally. The first ten stores in 1941 grew to 100 by 1947, 1,446 in 1950, and 2,600 in 1955. The first store in Canada opened in Melville, Saskatchewan in 1953. In the US, the state with the most Dairy Queen restaurants is Texas. Using the 2010 census, the state with the most Dairy Queen restaurants per person is Minnesota. In the 1990s, investors bought Dairy Queen stores that were individually owned, intending to increase profitability through economies of scale. Vasari, LLC became the second-largest Dairy Queen operator in the country and operated 70 Dairy Queens across Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. When stores were not profitable, the firm closed them. On October 30, 2017, Vasari LLC filed for bankruptcy and announced it was closing 29 DQ stores, including ten in the Texas Panhandle.