In addition to the meals that we packed, IDQ made a donation to Feed My Starving Children to help defray the cost of ingredients and packaging of the food. It was a great experience and so rewarding to know what a difference a few hours of our time can mean to children and families in Haiti and other countries!

If you are interested in learning more about Feed My Starving Children, visit their website at http://www.fmsc.org or check out their Facebook page.

We have a strong Community Service Team here at the Dairy Queen corporate headquarter in Minneapolis, and in addition to the year-round work IDQ does on behalf of Children’s Miracle Network, we are always looking for new opportunities to serve in our community. In fact, “Service” and “Supporting our Community” are two values the entire IDQ team holds dear.

What are you and your families, or the companies you work for, doing to make a difference? I know that there are more good deeds happening than are ever noted in the media!

Many people may not know that a lot of DQ locations make their own cakes from start to finish.  The cake decorator begins with DQ vanilla and chocolate soft serve, and adds layers of cold fudge and cookie crunch, before finally “combing” the cake to give it a distinctive appearance. Next, they return the cake to a blast freezer to chill it below zero, before taking it out the next day to decorate.

Our DQ cake decorators take a great deal of pride in producing professional looking cakes. Sometimes the decorator uses pre-determined designs, but, many of our decorators are also talented enough to come up with their own designs to help make a unique cake for a special celebration. As they make, design and decorate a cake, they know that it is going to be an important part of a birthday, anniversary, graduation or holiday celebration.

The cake decorator knows that when a DQ customer displays a cake for their family and friends, it is important to them. The decorator wants the customer to feel the same pride in sharing it as they did in creating the cake. They recognize that celebrations bring families and friends together to share many special stories. And it is their desire, as the customer and their guests reminisce about the good times, that their design and the DQ cake they made especially for the occasion will be a part of those happy memories. This holiday season, if you’re looking for a special treat to take along to your holiday dinner, a DQ cake is sure to sweeten the day and add to the joy of the season.

Happy Holidays!!

Ms. McBride isn’t the only notable former DQ employee.  January Jones, who plays Betty Draper on the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning HBO series Mad Men, learned to make Blizzard Treats as a Sioux Falls, SD, high-school student.  “I loved my after-school job at the Dairy Queen, though I’m sworn to secrecy about their recipes,” she said.

In 1977, Bonnie Hunt worked part time in the DQ location on West Irving Park Road in Chicago, IL.  She moved on to hosting a TV talk show and starring in movies with Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks.  The photo below was taken during a 1995 visit to the store where she worked: 

The band No Doubt was formed by three young DQ crew members in Anaheim, CA—John Spence, Eric Stefani, and Eric’s younger sister, Gwen.  Eric and Gwen eventually earned a Grammy Award nomination for their song “Don’t Speak.”

And an autographed black and white photo of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft still hangs prominently in a Springfield, MO, DQ store.  Ashcroft was only 13 years old when former DQ operator Bud Bergstrom gave him his first job, which happened to be in one of the DQ system’s longest-running locations.  When Ashcroft was elected governor of Missouri, Mr. Bergstrom presented his former employee with a soft-serve machine as a memento:

Planning for this gigantic cake began back in March and nearly 30 people helped out in making this feat possible. For five hours the day before, volunteers worked in a -25 degree Celsius warehouse to make the cakes. When they were finished, the product was loaded into a freezer truck and transported to a park the next day. It even arrived with a police escort!

Once at the park, it took 30 minutes to reassemble and ice the cake. Then it took another 20 minutes to serve it to the more than 600 people who showed up on that rainy day. It was sliced into 3,500 pieces and all leftovers were donated to The Salvation Army and a homeless shelter. Now what are they going to come up with for next year?

Employees say O’Brien was really nice and friendly, and he even asked them if they wanted a group shot or individual shots. They opted for the group shot to ensure that they would get a photo with the celebrity in case the restaurant got busy.

After the photo op, O’Brien ordered a banana split—hold the pineapple—and hung out at the restaurant for half an hour before taking off with his crew in an unmarked van. They were believed to be on their way to shoot footage in nearby cornfields for a segment for O’Brien’s new gig as host of “The Tonight Show,” which he took over from Jay Leno on June 1. That segment ran during the first episode and featured O’Brien running from his old studio in New York City across America to his new studio in Los Angeles. While running, O’Brien stopped by the St. Louis Gateway Arch, which was where he had been filming before stopping in for a DQ treat. Edwardsville is about a 25 minute drive from the Arch.

Here are some other famous faces that have appeard in DQ locations over the years:

Actor Tom Cruise (center) became a regular customer at the Lexington, Va., DQ restaurant in 2004 when he was filming the Steven Spielberg movie “War of the Worlds.”

Former President Bill Clinton visited the Flemingsburg, Ky., DQ restaurant in March 2008. Nearly 400 people greeted him upon his arrival, and he gave autographs and shook hands with most of the people at the restaurant. He even tried his hand at making a DQ cone!

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates (center) actually rented out a Kirkland, Wash., DQ restaurant for 45 minutes in December 2007 to hold a mock business meeting that was being filmed for a documentary.

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And although David Letterman didn’t actually stop at a DQ restaurant, he asked Andy Pettitte if he was running a DQ while not playing with the Yankees when the World Series champ stopped by “The Late Show” with fellow teammates Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada.

In 1959, the first Dairy Queen restaurant in the Central American country of Panama opened to the public. This year marks the 50th anniversary of that store’s opening, and to date there are seven other DQ locations in Panama. The official celebration took place in March, but there are festivities and celebrations that will continue throughout the rest of the year.

To kick off the “50 Years Growing With You” campaign, a birthday party was held for DQ staff, special guests and the local media. Shortly after that, the general manager from the DQ store visited TV and radio stations to participate in morning talk shows, and on one radio program they developed “Dairy Queen Memories,” where people could call in to share their memories of growing up with the DQ brand. The event was so successful it prompted the launch of a Facebook page, and those who shared stories and photos were entered to win prizes like digital picture frames and cameras. And in September, they held a Customer Appreciation Day.

Panama, which is located between Colombia and Costa Rica, borders the Caribbean Sea and the North Pacific Ocean. It is slightly smaller than the size of South Carolina and has a population of more than 3 million people. The most popular menu items are Blizzard® Treats, chili dogs, shakes, Moolatte® beverages and banana splits. They also sell DQ Cakes, which were just introduced to the country last year.

 We do!  And many of us here at International Dairy Queen, Inc. (IDQ) haven’t yet grown up.  In the past three or four years our corporate Halloween party has become something we all look forward to.  In previous years our receptionist had embraced the fun and greeted guests in all kinds of fabulous costumes – and a smattering of other employees would don costumes for fun. Now most of the corporate team takes part in costume contests, cheering on the executivess in some kind of event, and enjoying a pizza lunch.

 Some of the fun in past years included Duct Tape Man (I am sorry no photos of that costume survived!), Lady Luck, a 401k Portfolio, Mr. Bill …  and, as you might imagine, food-themed costumes. Last year we had a contest where teams turned our executives into toilet paper mummies.

This year we’re looking forward to a pumpkin decorating contest, more costume contests, lunch, and an “Executive Fear Factor” event.  What do you do at your office?

Don’t get me wrong; I love cake, chocolate and anything sweet, but my husband is more of a Gummi Bears guy, so I thought choosing a cake we could agree on would be one of our hardest decisions. Was I ever wrong! One day my then-fiancé mentioned that we should have Dairy Queen® Cake for all of our guests at our wedding. At first I thought that was a silly idea. I mean, who has ice cream cake at their wedding? But after talking with one of my co-workers, I found out that’s exactly what she did too, and it was a hit with all of their guests. All of a sudden, it didn’t seem like such a crazy idea after all.

So we served DQ® ice cream cake at our wedding, and honestly, it was one of the easiest decisions we made. Not to mention, all of the guests loved it, including my husband, who made sure everyone knew whose idea it really was!

But in Nappanee, Ind., there is one Dairy Queen location that boasts something unique to the DQ system—a 100-foot-long hitching post for Amish buggies. After a tornado ripped through the small town in 2007 and destroyed the local DQ restaurant, the owners bought property in a better location and built a new DQ Grill & Chill® restaurant.

Along with the new space came room for more seating inside and outside, and a bigger parking lot. To accommodate the large Amish population in the area, the owners decided to build the hitching post that can hold up to 10 Amish buggies. It even comes with a separate driveway.

Yep, you read that right!  I ate six Blizzard Flavor Treats in ten hours – the delicious (and heartwarming and emotional and goose-bump creating) “occupational hazard” of having Miracle Treat Day as part of my job here at the DQ® corporate headquarters. 

Last year was my first Miracle Treat Day, the one-day fundraising event where participating Dairy Queen locations raise money for their local Children’s Miracle Network hospitals by doing the most delicious thing possible – selling Blizzard treats! Together with my Miracle Treat Day coworker, Sara Will, and our president and CEO John Gainor, my “six Blizzard Treats in ten hours” marathon last year began by delivering 200 Blizzard treats to the patients and staff at Gillette Children’s Hospital in the Twin Cities.  Wow, what an amazing and moving experience it was to deliver those treats and see the HUGE smiles, knowing how much hurt and heartache those children were facing! I honestly can’t describe how proud I felt knowing that generous DQ franchisees all over the country that day were selling Blizzard treats (and donating their own money) to raise funds to help kids like these ones get better.

We spent the rest of the day visiting DQ locations all over the Twin Cities. It was great to see the hundreds and hundreds of people lined up buying Blizzard treats to help us make miracles happen for sick and injured children, and to see how hard our DQ operators and staff were working to make the day such a huge success.

So, although eating multiple Blizzard treats in one day won’t help me train for that 10 mile race in October – I know what I will see and feel on Miracle Treat Day will do wonders for my heart and my spirit.  I might even try to sneak in a seventh Blizzard treat this year – I have always wanted to try that Banana Cream Pie Blizzard, and I should probably demonstrate to my boss that I am indeed “growing and improving” in my job, right?!  Please join me on Aug. 13 by purchasing a Blizzard (or six!) at a participating DQ location and help make Miracles Happen in the lives of kids in need.

Check out what American Dairy Queen Corporation’s president and CEO John Gainor has to say about this year’s Miracle Treat Day:
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