Dairy Queen invests $1 million to open four stores in Costa Rica

Dairy Queen (DQ), the U.S. chain of soft-serve ice cream and fast food is back in Costa Rica, announcing Thursday the opening of their first store in years in the country, slated to open next Wednesday at Mall MultiPlaza Escazú, southwest of San José.

The local franchisee is Honduran company Inversiones Danube, which also operates Popeyes Chicken restaurants in the country. Dairy Queen was prominent in Costa Rica in the 1970s, with a highly popular store on San José’s Avenida Central, among other locations.

This year, the company plans to invest $1 million to open the first four new stores in Costa Rica in the next two months, employing some 60 people.

A second store will open in downtown San José by the end of the month, and in November, two more stores will open in San Pedro, east of the capital, and at mall Paseo de las Flores in the province of Heredia.

For 2014, the company plans on opening three additional stores in San José in Curridabat, Tibás and Desamparados, plus three in the provinces of Heredia, Alajuela and Cartago.

DQ specializes in soft-serve ice cream but their menu also includes regular ice cream, waffle baskets, milk shakes, desserts, cakes, chili dogs, chicken, burgers, salads and nachos.

The first Dairy Queen store opened in 1940 in Joliet, Illinois, and the company’s corporate offices are located in Edina, Minnesota. Currently the company has more than 5,700 stores in 19 countries, including 652 locations outside the United States and Canada.