Dairy Queen Grill And Chill In The Big Apple

New York City is the land of franchises. Every block has a Starbucks or a McDonalds or both. Very few neighborhoods in Manhattan go without one of every fast food/fast drink restaurant in the tri-state area. There’s really only been one thing missing: Dairy Queen.

Although there is one Dairy Queen technically within New York City, it’s in Staten Island. After stating that its Manhattan store will be the first in New York City, Dairy Queen came under a little bit of fire from some New York publications, like Gothamist. Writer, Neil Casey, wrote, “To shed light on the SI snub, we reached out to we reached out to [Dairy Queen’s] publicist, who patted our hand and gently explained to us that this new location will be the first in ‘actual Manhattan’.”

Since Staten Island is one of the five boroughs it is actually a part of New York City. However, few people think about anything but Manhattan when they think of that title. Even people from the boroughs surrounding it think of Manhattan as simply “the city”. Dairy Queen may have flubbed the quote, but if they were just any other resident of Brooklyn or the Bronx, it wouldn’t have been a big deal at all.

Regardless of any perceived faux-pas that may have occurred, Dairy Queen has big plans for Manhattan. The two floor, 2,500-square-foot restaurant that’s opening at 54 West 14th at the end of May is just the first of many. The chain hopes to open somewhere between 35 and 50 Dairy Queen Grill and Chill restaurants in the Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island area within the next few years.

Jim Kerr, Dairy Queen’s vice president, spoke about why they were bringing Dairy Queen to New York City. “One of the reasons why we’re going to Manhattan is we’ve been breaking sales records multiple times in the last five years… The New York City market has always been an area that expresses interest in franchising. Anecdotally, a lot of come in and out of New York City. I know I will land and people will see ‘DQ’ on my shirt, and they say ‘When are you going to build one here?'”

Residents of the five boroughs are excited to see the ice cream giant come into their backyard. It’s no doubt that Dairy Queen will find that they’ve made a good choice moving into the Big Apple.