Food & Beverage

Dairy Queen Franchise

A soft-serve treat and quick-service food chain franchised as DQ Grill & Chill restaurants with full food menus, alongside a separate, smaller DQ Treat-only format. American Dairy Queen Corporation, a Delaware corporation incorporated in 1962, is a wholly owned subsidiary of International Dairy Queen, Inc., itself owned by Berkshire Hathaway Inc.; ADQ traces the DQ business back to 1940. Direct-licensed franchised unit count grew modestly but steadily across the FDD's three-year window (2022-2024).

Opening more locationsFounded 1940HQ: Bloomington, MN

Every franchisor has to file a document called an FDD before they can legally sell you a franchise. Buried in it are the two things a sales rep won't volunteer: what you'll actually spend to open, and whether existing locations are opening or closing. That's what's below, pulled straight from Dairy Queen's own filing.

What it costs to open

From the filing's investment breakdown -- not a "starting at" number a sales rep quoted you.

Franchise fee

$45,000

Total to open

$1,516,200–$2,543,050

Ongoing royalty

4% of gross sales

What you'd actually spend, over time

The upfront cost is only part of it. Plug in what you expect a location to bring in, and see the real total once royalties over a few years are added on top.

Your estimated annual revenue

Defaulted to a rough food & beverage industry average, not a figure from Dairy Queen's own FDD -- change it to your own estimate.

Years of ownership

Total cost of ownership over 5 years

$1,716,200 – $2,743,050

Startup investment

$1,516,200–$2,543,050

Royalty per year (4%)

$40,000

Total royalty, 5yr

$200,000

When would you break even?

Revenue alone doesn't tell you this -- it depends on what's left after rent, labor, and everything else. Dairy Queen's FDD doesn't disclose a reliable profit figure (most franchisors don't), so this starts from a typical food & beverage profit margin (~8%) and applies it to the revenue you entered above -- adjust the percentage to your own realistic estimate.

Estimated profit margin (% of revenue)

%≈ $80,000/year

Defaulted to a general food & beverage industry benchmark, not a figure from Dairy Queen's own filing -- this is a starting point to adjust, not a promise about what franchisees actually make.

At that profit, you'd break even in about

19.0–31.8 years

Weigh that payback period against what you already know: Dairy Queen is opening more locations. A long payback period on a shrinking brand is a very different bet than the same payback period on a growing one.

Is Dairy Queen actually growing?

Franchisors have to report, every year, how many locations opened, closed, or changed hands. Most franchise sites never show you this. Here it is:

Locations opened vs. closed, by year

Growing

From Item 20 of Dairy Queen's FDD, the section franchisors use to disclose real openings and closings.

+13

202220232024

Year	Franchised units, start	Franchised units, end	Net change
2022	1,952	1,965	+13
2023	1,965	1,967	+2
2024	1,967	1,969	+2

Most recent year (2024): gained 2 franchised units, ending the year at 1,969 total.

What you're actually signing up for

The cost and growth numbers above are only part of the picture. These three FDD items are the ones a prospective franchisee tends to weigh most heavily once they're past the sticker price.

Training & ongoing support (Item 11)

Item 11: three required training components (a management-readiness assessment, a ServSafe course, and ADQ's three-phase training program, $3,600/person for the full program) plus construction consultation and building-plan services available for separate fees.

Territory protection (Item 12)

Item 12: no exclusive territory or minimum area under a standard single-restaurant franchise agreement -- ADQ grants trade-area protection only to MultiTRA (multiple trade area reservation) franchisees who pay a separate $22,500-per-restaurant reservation fee.

Renewal & termination terms (Item 17)

Item 17: 20-year term for a new restaurant, with one renewal term for the shorter of 10 years or the remaining lease term, subject to modernization requirements and a renewal fee.

How Dairy Queen compares to other Food & Beverage franchises

Across the 50 food & beverage franchises we've hand-verified so far, the typical range to open runs $882,585–$2,162,912, with royalties averaging around 5.6% of gross sales (based on the 46 of them that charge a flat %-of-revenue royalty).

Dave's Hot Chicken

$617,800–$2,170,000 · 6% royalty

Slim Chickens

$1,188,900–$4,944,000 · 5% royalty

Ziggi's Coffee

$315,830–$2,093,361 · 6% royalty

Crumbl

$848,566–$1,472,533 · 8% royalty

Little Caesars

$376,500–$1,769,200 · 6% royalty

Jamba

$480,850–$941,300 · 6% royalty

Tropical Smoothie Cafe

$300,000–$720,500 · 6% royalty

Playa Bowls

$188,675–$636,458 · 6% royalty

Kona Ice

$114,730–$228,601 · non-%-of-revenue royalty

Firehouse Subs

$166,671–$950,351 · 6% royalty

Wingstop

$310,400–$1,048,500 · 6% royalty

Jersey Mike's Subs

$436,176–$1,162,228 · 6.5% royalty

Dunkin'

$532,400–$1,832,500 · 5.9% royalty

Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen

$1,222,045–$3,923,245 · 5% royalty

Del Taco

$1,461,200–$3,313,500 · 5% royalty

Blaze Pizza

$757,000–$1,297,100 · 5% royalty

Church's Texas Chicken

$1,202,400–$1,886,300 · 5% royalty

MOD Pizza

$924,732–$1,220,633 · 5% royalty

Twin Peaks

$2,959,000–$5,734,000 · 5% royalty

McDonald's

$1,470,500–$2,642,000 · 5% royalty

Subway

$263,000–$630,000 · 8% royalty

Taco Bell

$1,859,750–$4,312,200 · 5.5% royalty

Domino's Pizza

$231,450–$743,500 · 5.5% royalty

KFC

$2,107,575–$4,155,000 · 5% royalty

Burger King

$2,039,200–$4,730,600 · 4.5% royalty

Chick-fil-A

$317,521–$3,463,155 · non-%-of-revenue royalty

Penn Station

$507,500–$858,750 · non-%-of-revenue royalty

Nekter Juice Bar

$243,155–$647,160 · 6% royalty

Jimmy John's

$366,200–$733,500 · 6% royalty

Sonic Drive-In

$1,485,200–$2,522,900 · 5% royalty

Papa John's

$281,485–$890,267 · 5% royalty

Hungry Howie's Pizza & Subs

$238,982–$697,322 · 5.5% royalty

Jack in the Box

$1,909,500–$4,041,500 · 5% royalty

Wendy's

$1,523,957–$2,992,000 · 4% royalty

Marco's Pizza

$286,477–$811,186 · 5.5% royalty

Pizza Hut

$846,000–$2,130,000 · 6% royalty

Chicken Salad Chick

$777,000–$998,500 · 5% royalty

Teriyaki Madness

$392,667–$1,121,405 · 6% royalty

Cold Stone Creamery

$390,675–$680,775 · 6% royalty

Scooter's Coffee

$1,163,650–$1,345,750 · 6% royalty

Nothing Bundt Cakes

$475,200–$994,100 · 6% royalty

Five Guys

$977,850–$1,375,750 · 6% royalty

Tim Hortons

$427,500–$3,312,500 · 6% royalty

7 Brew

$940,500–$2,283,500 · non-%-of-revenue royalty

Swig

$608,400–$1,718,000 · 7% royalty

Culver's

$3,406,350–$10,294,100 · 4% royalty

Paris Baguette

$727,515–$1,860,550 · 5% royalty

Jollibee

$1,614,568–$4,589,057 · 5% royalty

Smoothie King

$329,850–$683,215 · 6% royalty

Keep going

Dairy Queen and Wendy's are both food & beverage franchises; Dairy Queen's total investment starts about $7,757 lower than Wendy's's. Wendy's Franchise
Dairy Queen and Sonic Drive-In are both food & beverage franchises; Sonic Drive-In's total investment starts about $31,000 lower than Dairy Queen's. Sonic Drive-In Franchise

Where this came from: MN CARDS file 25, Clean FDD issued March 27, 2025 (as amended April 2025), filed 1/30/2026, effective 2/9/2026, covering the DQ Grill & Chill restaurant franchise. American Dairy Queen Corporation (California DFPI entity id 340256, legal name used here) only files a Net Worth/Experience Exemption notice with California DFPI, confirming MN as the right source. Item 5: $45,000 initial franchise fee (the first $10,000 a non-refundable application deposit); no financing offered by ADQ. Item 6: royalty is the "Continuing License Fee," 4% of Gross Sales; the ad fund equivalent, the "Sales Promotion Program Fee," is a 5%-6% range set at ADQ's discretion, not a single fixed percentage. Item 7 Total: $1,516,200-$2,543,050. Item 20's Table No. 1 covers only "direct-licensed" DQ Grill & Chill and Dairy Queen/Brazier restaurants (the unit history used here); a separate table in the same Item shows about 567-572 additional restaurants operated under wholly separate agreements with subfranchising "territory operators" (franchised 2022: 569->572, 2023: 572->566, 2024: 566->567), and Texas DQ restaurants are excluded from both tables -- none of that is reflected in this entry's unit history since this FDD only governs the direct-licensed franchise relationship. You can pull the same filing yourself from the California DFPI's public franchise search. Filed 2026-02-09. None of this is investment advice -- get the franchisor's current FDD and talk to a real attorney or accountant before you sign anything.

If you see a different unit count elsewhere: franchisors only have to refile their FDD annually, so the numbers here can run 6–18 months behind a franchisor's own real-time marketing claims -- which often aren't independently verified, and sometimes count signed-but-not-yet-open locations. A gap isn't necessarily an error on either side; it's two different snapshots in time from two different sources.