Introduction

American Dairy Queen Corporation is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. Since 1940 the company has used a franchise system to expand its operation worldwide. The company currently has more the 6,000 stores in more than 18 countries.

The DQ story began more than 70 years ago with a ¢10 sale of soft frozen dairy product with a formula developed by John Fremont McCullough and his son Bradley. They contacted their friend and customer Sherb Noble, who owned an ice cream store in Kankakee, Illinois and convinced him to sell their product in his store. Within two hours more than 1,600 serving were sold of this new dessert in the first day.

By 1950 franchising was pretty much unknown, Dairy Queen was a pioneer of food franchising, expanding its stores from fewer than 10 DQ stores in 1941 to over than 2,600 in 1955 and more than 6,000 in 2010.

The purpose of this report is to analyze the operations of one DQ franchise, more specific the inventory management of Dairy Queen in Clark, New Jersey. Likewise, after analyzing the inventory management used by DQ, we are expecting to develop suggestions and recommendations to improve and increase the performing of Dairy Queen’s inventory management.