Dairy Queen, often abbreviated DQ, is a chain of soft serve and fast food restaurants owned by International Dairy Queen, Inc, which also owns Orange Julius and Karmelkorn. As of 2010, Dairy Queen had more than 5,700 stores in 19 countries, including 652 locations outside the United States and Canada. The largest Dairy Queen in the United States is located in Bloomington, Illinois. The name "Brazier" originated in 1957, when one of the company's franchisee Clayton Lundine worked to develop a food system, the first drive through, that would work for all Dairy Queen restaurants.
Dairy Queen's one hundred Japanese stores offered hamburgers, but competition from McDonald's made the chain switch to pita sandwiches. The majority of Dairy Queen locations serve Coca-Cola products, but unlike most other restaurants such contracts are not mandated onto the franchisee, and as a result some locations serve Pepsi products instead. A popular Dairy Queen item is the Blizzard, which is soft-serve mechanically blended with mix-in ingredients such as sundae toppings and/or pieces of cookies, brownies, or candy. The original Dairy Queen logo was simply a stylized text sign with a soft serve cone at one end. The very first Dairy Queen logo from 1940–1960, still in use at a small number of locations.
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