Dairy Queen in Minnesota

dairyqueen.com · Bakery & Desserts · the Q3 2026 release

Dairy Queen has 279 locations in Minnesota, its 4th-largest state of the 49 it operates in.

Every figure in this block is measured inside Minnesota. Nothing in it is a rate.

Dairy Queen: local figures for Minnesota.
Figure	Value	What it measures~~Minnesota only~~
Locations in Minnesota	279	Records the US location index holds for Dairy Queen inside Minnesota right now — a snapshot at the Q3 2026 release, not a change over time.
Rank among Dairy Queen's states	4th of 49	By location count, among the states where this brand clears the publication floor.
States with a published Dairy Queen page	49	States where the brand has at least 3 locations. Smaller states exist in the index and are not published.
Locations across those states	5,930	The sum of the state table below. Lower than the national count, which includes states under the floor.
Minnesota's share of that footprint	4.7%	A share of the published states only. Both halves are the same measure, so this is not a growth rate.
Index opening records in Minnesota	1	A DIFFERENT measure from the count above: openings detected inside the tracked window, not stores standing today.
Cities with index opening records in Minnesota	1	Distinct cities after folding spelling variants. See the city table.

The two counts above are measured differently and are both correct. Locations in Minnesota is a presence snapshot of what operates there now; index opening records counts what opened inside the tracked window. A chain that already had 40 locations in Minnesota and opened none reads 0 openings.
It is a count of OPENINGS, not of stores. Openings are diffs against the previous release, so a mature operator that finished its Minnesota buildout before the window opened shows a large location count and no openings at all.
Dairy Queen's opening records arrive overwhelmingly as supplier batches rather than as dated store openings, so they are labelled index opening records and no quarterly pace is published from them.

Where Dairy Queen has opened in Minnesota

Cities with index opening records recorded for Dairy Queen in Minnesota. The count beside each city is its openings — not its total Dairy Queen locations.

Dairy Queen index opening records by city in Minnesota, largest first.
City~~modal spelling in the index~~	Index opening records~~inside Minnesota~~	Share of Minnesota openings	Spellings folded~~raw variants in the index~~
Bloomington	1	100.0%	1

1 cities with index opening records in Minnesota.
Spellings are folded the same way the city URLs are built, so "St. Louis" and "St Louis" are one city rather than two. The most frequent raw spelling wins the label; "Spellings folded" is how many the index actually holds.
Cities are NOT linked: a city page is published only where at least three brands clear the floor, so a link from here would frequently point at a page that does not exist.

Dairy Queen in every state we publish

The brand's whole published footprint, largest first. Minnesota is highlighted in place.

Dairy Queen locations by state.
Rank	State	Locations~~presence snapshot~~	Share of footprint~~published states only~~
1	Texas	742	12.5%
2	Ohio	343	5.8%
3	Illinois	326	5.5%
4	Minnesota — this page	279	4.7%
5	Indiana	277	4.7%
6	Georgia	276	4.7%
7	Pennsylvania	257	4.3%
8	Florida	243	4.1%
9	Michigan	233	3.9%
10	Kentucky	170	2.9%
11	Wisconsin	168	2.8%
12	Missouri	156	2.6%
13	North Carolina	145	2.4%
14	Arizona	144	2.4%
15	California	142	2.4%
16	Iowa	136	2.3%
17	Virginia	132	2.2%
18	Tennessee	122	2.1%
19	Washington	117	2.0%
20	Colorado	114	1.9%
21	New Jersey	113	1.9%
22	Oregon	113	1.9%
23	Alabama	107	1.8%
24	West Virginia	97	1.6%
25	Kansas	83	1.4%
26	Nebraska	73	1.2%
27	New Mexico	60	1.0%
28	Nevada	58	1.0%
29	North Dakota	57	1.0%
30	Massachusetts	52	0.9%
31	South Dakota	50	0.8%
32	New York	49	0.8%
33	Connecticut	48	0.8%
34	Maryland	48	0.8%
35	Arkansas	46	0.8%
36	South Carolina	46	0.8%
37	Montana	45	0.8%
38	Louisiana	42	0.7%
39	Oklahoma	36	0.6%
40	Utah	33	0.6%
41	Idaho	31	0.5%
42	Mississippi	28	0.5%
43	Maine	26	0.4%
44	Delaware	19	0.3%
45	New Hampshire	14	0.2%
46	Wyoming	14	0.2%
47	Hawaii	11	0.2%
48	Alaska	6	0.1%
49	Rhode Island	3	0.1%

A state appears here only with at least 3 locations. States below the floor are in the index but have no page, so this total is smaller than the national count.
Locations are a presence snapshot at the Q3 2026 release. They are not openings and they are not a change.

Dairy Queen nationwide

Context for the local figures above. None of it is a Minnesota number.

Dairy Queen: national figures, for context only.
Figure	Value~~United States~~	Basis
US locations	5,968	At the latest vintage, Q3 2026.
US locations at the window start	6,094	The first tracked vintage, Q4 2024.
Net new over the window	-126	The difference between the two counts above. A count movement, not a count of openings.
Growth over the window	withheld: this brand's index coverage is still maturing — see the note under this table	Percentage change in the count between the first and latest vintages, nationwide.
Growth as a multiple	withheld: this brand's index coverage is still maturing — see the note under this table	The same movement stated as a multiple of the starting count.
Growth against its category	withheld: this brand's index coverage is still maturing — see the note under this table	The brand's percentage change minus its category's, so a rising tide is subtracted out.
Mean quarterly change	+32	Average count movement per vintage step. The default ranking key on the hub.
Verified openings in the window	withheld: the opening records are supplier batches — see the note under this table	Individually dated location records new to the index inside the window, nationwide.
Openings pace, latest step	withheld: the opening records are supplier batches — see the note under this table	Verified openings per 91 days over the most recent vintage step.
Openings pace, prior step	withheld: the opening records are supplier batches — see the note under this table	The same measure one step earlier.
Direction	withheld: the opening records are supplier batches — see the note under this table	Accelerating, steady or slowing, decided on the two paces at the precision they are printed.
Latest pace as a share of the base	withheld: the opening records are supplier batches — see the note under this table	The latest pace over the store count at that step's start vintage.
Prior pace as a share of the base	withheld: the opening records are supplier batches — see the note under this table	The same measure one step earlier.
Reported openings pace, latest	+19	The server's own pre-aggregated pace. Shown because the page ranks on the series-derived figure above and the two must agree.
Reported openings pace, prior	+11	The same, one step earlier.
Largest single step's share of the change	—	One release carrying most of the movement is the signature of a data-coverage artifact rather than of openings.
Steps that moved the same direction	43%	A real buildout moves one way most quarters. This and the row above are the credibility filter.
Passes the credibility filter	no	Largest step at or under half the movement, most steps in one direction, and net new above zero.
Cleared to print a percentage	no	Whether the index's coverage of this brand is mature enough for a rate to mean anything.
Openings corroborated by coverage	—	Share of the openings that agree with the count series over the same step.
Records matching the brand's own website	87%	Share of index records whose website resolves to this domain.
Records sharing an address with another operator	73%	High values mean host locations, sibling banners or shared kitchens rather than the chain's own leases.
Entity class	chain	Anything other than a chain is not published as a brand page in this state tier.
Category	Dining and Drinking > Dessert Shop > Ice Cream Parlor	The index's own category path for this brand.
Segment	Bakery & Desserts	The published grouping the category rolls up to.
Match name in the index	dairy queen	The string the location index matches records against. Rarely the display name.
Display name	Dairy Queen	As published. Some domains carry a read-time repair where the index's most frequent name is a department's.
Domain	dairyqueen.com	The key every table on this tier is joined on.
Tracked window	8 vintages, Q4 2024 to Q3 2026	How many quarterly releases this brand has been measured across.
Vintage stamps	2024-11-19\|2024-12-03\|2025-03-06\|2025-06-10\|2025-09-09\|2025-12-16\|2026-03-18\|2026-07-09	Every release these figures were built from, oldest first, pipe-separated. It is a LIST of dates rather than one date, which is why nothing on this page prints it as a timestamp.

Every figure in this block is NATIONAL. It is identical on all 49 of Dairy Queen's state pages and is not apportioned to Minnesota — dividing a national percentage into a state is not a fact about anything, which is why no Minnesota growth rate is published anywhere on this page.
Openings are individually dated records new to the index; net new is the difference between two count snapshots. The two answer different questions and rarely match.
Dairy Queen's opening records arrive overwhelmingly as supplier batches rather than as dated store openings, so they are labelled index opening records and no quarterly pace is published from them.
This brand's index coverage is still maturing, so growth percentages are withheld.

Dairy Queen's count by quarter, nationwide

The national count series behind the figures above. Both readings of it — the raw count and the indexed one — are columns here.

Dairy Queen: US locations at each tracked vintage.
Quarter	Vintage date	US locations	Indexed~~100 = first vintage~~	Change vs prior
Q4 2024	2024-11-19	6,094	100	—
Q4 2024	2024-12-03	6,089	100	-5
Q1 2025	2025-03-06	6,125	101	+36
Q2 2025	2025-06-10	5,994	98	-131
Q3 2025	2025-09-09	5,968	98	-26
Q4 2025	2025-12-16	5,948	98	-20
Q1 2026	2026-03-18	5,958	98	+10
Q3 2026	2026-07-09	5,968	98	+10

Indexed values rebase the series to 100 at the first vintage with a non-zero count. A brand first measured at zero enters at 0 and reaches 100 one step later.
National figures. Not apportioned to any state.

Dairy Queen's openings by vintage step, nationwide

Each row is the difference between two consecutive releases, so there is one fewer step than there are quarters above.

Dairy Queen: index opening records per vintage step, with the real step length each pace is normalised by.
Step ends	Quarter	Openings~~in the step~~	Step length~~days~~	Pace~~per 91 days~~	Batch-suspect~~share of the step~~
Dec 3, 2024	Q4 2024	1	14	+6.5	0%
Mar 6, 2025	Q1 2025	2	93	+2.0	0%
Jun 10, 2025	Q2 2025	6	96	+5.7	17%
Sep 9, 2025	Q3 2025	3	91	+3	0%
Dec 16, 2025	Q4 2025	5	98	+4.6	0%
Mar 18, 2026	Q1 2026	11	92	+11	27%
Jul 9, 2026	Q3 2026	23	113	+19	0%

Steps are irregular, so a pace is openings divided by the step's real length and multiplied by 91 days rather than a raw quarterly count.
A batch-suspect share above half means the records were created on an index-wide vendor ingest day or bunched into a few days of the step; it impeaches the timing, not the existence of the stores.
National figures. Not apportioned to any state.

Where should Dairy Queen open next in Minnesota?

Cobroker ranks the Minnesota trade areas that look like the ones Dairy Queen already performs in — demographics, co-tenancy, traffic.

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