Story & photo by Joyce Coronel
As snow and ice continue to blanket parts of the country, Tempe and Chandler are blissfully immune to the ravages of extreme winter weather. So immune, in fact, that earlier this week a steady stream of customers sat devouring
ice cream sundaes and cones at a local
Dairy Queen.
The restaurant chain has more than 6,000 outlets across the globe and is in the midst of expanding in the Tempe and Chandler area.
Two more Dairy Queens are on deck to open during 2017.
Blizzard bliss
“We’re just eating lunch before we take her to work,” Michelle Dunlap said as she sat inside the Elliot and Rural roads location with her daughter and another two children on the last day of winter break. “We like it because the $5 lunches are reasonable.”
Sipping soft drinks and munching on chicken tenders, french fries and cheeseburgers, the Dunlaps were saving room for the Blizzard and soft-serve ice cream offerings that DQ is famous for.
Fees College Preparatory and Middle School sixth-grader Julia Dunlap sported a pink jacket—after all, it was 61 degrees outside. Her brother, Rover Elementary third-grader Ethan Dunlap, grinning as he awaited his sweet treat, was asked how old he was. “Good,” he told Wrangler News. “I mean 8—I’m 8 years old.”
Andy Beatty, the manager on duty, said the Tempe location where he works is a busy one, though he conceded that December and January tend to be a bit slower than the warmer seasons.
“It will pick up in a couple of months. My cousin works at a store in Michigan and they’re closed for the winter.”
“We do a lot of fundraisers and we get a lot of Corona kids after games,” Alicia Barker offered between filling orders. She’s worked at the South Tempe location for about a year and said the store does a lot of fundraisers that bring customers through the doors.
Mike Mettler, Dairy Queen’s vice president of franchise sales and development, said the genesis of the company’s expansion effort has to do with the connection customers feel with the brand.
“Dairy Queen has been around 76 years. People, myself included, remember riding their bikes to DQ to get a treat.”
Products like the chicken basket and the many unique flavors of the enterprise’s Blizzard are the other draw.
“We keep coming up with innovations,” Mettler said.
“The Royal Blizzard was launched last year with hot fudge or marshmallow in the middle. It’s a product line we continue to innovate.
Currently there are 77 DQs in Maricopa County, and the two new stores in Chandler will be seeking 50-70 new employees, Mettler said.
The area’s sunny weather and continued growth have encouraged DQ to expand its presence, Mettler noted.
