The business began in 1938 with sales of a "soft serve" frozen dairy product similar to ice cream at a store in Kankakee, Illinois. The first Dairy Queen outlet opened by Sherb Noble in Joliet, Illinois on June 22, 1940. DQ was an early pioneer of food franchising, with the 10 stores of 1941 expanding to 100 by 1947, 1,446 in 1950 and 2,600 in 1955. The first store in Canada opened in Estevan, Saskatchewan in 1953. The company became "International Dairy Queen, Inc." (IDQ) in 1962. The company was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway in 1998.
The company's products expanded to include malts and milkshakes in 1949, banana splits in 1951, and "Dilly Bars" in 1955, and a range of hamburgers and other cooked foods in the late 1950s.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Dairy Queens in small towns of the Midwest and South, and most especially Texas, were often a center of social life. In that role they have often come to be referenced as a symbol of life in small-town America, as for instance in Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections at Sixty and Beyond by Larry McMurtry, Dairy Queen Days by Robert Inman, and Chevrolet Summers, Dairy Queen Nights by Bob Greene.
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