Dairy Queen Blog

Dairy Queen® fans who caught the Oprah Winfrey show on Tuesday, Nov. 3, saw country music star Martina McBride return to her hometown of Hutchinson, KS, to visit the DQ® location where she worked as a teenager:

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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: