How Did Dairy Queen's Famous Dilly Bar Get Its Name?

Dairy Queen is home to the famous Blizzard, fast food burgers that are ranked above several competitors' offerings, and a lineup of unforgettable fast food milkshakes. Of course, the beloved chain also offers iconic frozen goodies like the Dilly Bar, a disc of soft-serve ice cream dipped in chocolate and served on a stick. It's an interesting name; just where did this famed frozen treat get its moniker?

It's a cute story, dating back to 1955 and one of Dairy Queen's oldest franchise locations in Moorhead, Minnesota. The dessert was born when franchise owner Bob Litherland and some ice cream mix suppliers began playing around with different frozen treat concoctions. Somebody eventually froze a round, swirled patty of ice cream and attached it to a stick — some accounts say it was a tongue depressor — and dipped the puck-shaped ice cream in chocolate. Commenting on the finished result, someone present reportedly uttered the words, "Isn't that a dilly?" Just like that, the Dilly Bar was born.

Today, the Dilly Bar remains true to its origins. It's still a frozen round of vanilla soft-serve, coated in chocolate and served on a stick, and it also includes cherry and butterscotch coatings. The Dilly Bar has been joined in recent years by a coconut cream-based Non-Dairy Dilly Bar (say that five times fast) that is both gluten-free and vegan.

The Moorhead Dairy Queen is one of the oldest locations still in operation. DQ opened its very first restaurant in 1940 in Joliet, Illinois, and the Moorhead site opened in 1949. Unlike Moorhead, the Joliet franchise is no longer in operation, although the building survives. As of 2023, it was being leased by the city's historical museum, with plans to restore the site and convert it into a Dairy Queen shrine of sorts, paying homage to the original restaurant. In no danger of becoming a nonfunctioning monument anytime soon, the Moorhead location is still going strong and has actually only changed ownership one time since the original proprietors founded it.

The store's frozen creation — including the butterscotch and cherry versions, which also originated there — caught on with other DQ locations, and the chain's centralized supplier began shipping them out to franchises around the country. At the Moorhead restaurant, though, the Dilly Bars don't come on a truck and never have. Employees at the Moorhead store still make the treats in-house, just as the Litherlands did back in the franchise's early days. Minnesota is also noted for some other culinary achievements, like the original Minnesota hot dish, which is a casserole with many variations. If you're roaming the Gopher State in search of a taste of hot dish, what better way to follow it up than with a cold dessert — may we suggest a house-made original Dilly Bar?