Historic Moorhead Dairy Queen kicks off 74th season amidst snowy conditions

It's March and the madness has begun. The Historic Moorhead Dairy Queen has officially opened and the F-M community is coming out in droves.

MOORHEAD, Minn. (KVRR) – Customers are braving extreme winter conditions at the Historic Dairy Queen on the corner of Main Avenue and 8th Street in Moorhead for its season opener.

“With the divisiveness that’s in our culture, we can all rally around one thing and that is ice cream. How Midwestern is this? The opening day of the Dairy Queen. We just got a foot of snow on us. I just think that’s awesome,” Paul Dummer said.

“We were just talking on the way over that this is the best snow day we’ve had this year. The other ones were kinda, like, bad weather snow days. It’s just a fun snow day instead of all that bad icy road,” Katrina Lokken said.

“I think it’s great to rep a local business that’s been here a while and really stands for Moorhead,” David Wichmann said.

Every year the store opens March 1st no matter how cold it is or how much snow falls. The home of the dilly bar celebrates its 74th year with an opportunity for hundreds to grab a blizzard while snow was falling.

“It just goes to show how much people love this Dairy Queen because everyone is still willing to come here when ten inches of snow were just dumped on us,” Lexi Funk said.

It was never in doubt how busy it could be since opening at 10:00 Wednesday morning.

“Like they were saying with the weather and everything, people won’t come out as much. I said to the people, ‘But, there’s no school. Concordia, you can just walk here. Moorhead State, you can walk here. And high school? Kids will get out no matter what.’ I said ‘We’ll be busy, maybe a little bit later on like it has been this year’, but it’s a lot of fun,” Historic Moorhead Dairy Queen Owner Troy DeLeon said.

“I love the convenience of it. You can walk anywhere, too and it’s easy access. Even if you get a foot of snow, it’s always awesome,” Tyler Aanenson said.

He says the only comparable time to this storm was five years ago when customers braved freezing temperatures to grab their favorite frozen treats.

“I think when it was eleven below zero but with wind chill it was like twenty something below and we had people sitting and eating blizzards on the table, it was quite something,” DeLeon said.

The store is open from 10 to 10 every day and typically closes in October.