Dairy Queen Has a Massive Expansion Planned for Massachusetts

On the eve of its patented "free cone day" on March 15, Dairy Queen has announced major expansion plans for the Northeast. The ice cream chain will add 60 locations to the existing 33 in Massachusetts, according to The Boston Globe, raining soft-serve ice cream, Blizzards, and sundaes upon the region.

The buildout will take place over five years, bringing exponential amounts of soft-serve desserts to the Bay State. Dairy Queen, which is owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has its sights set on locations in Amherst, Worcester, Billerica, Plymouth, Burlington, Peabody, and Stoughton, International Dairy Queen's vice president Jim Kerr told the Globe, though no official sites are locked down.

DQ will also make moves to open a location in Vermont, which is currently the only state without an existing Dairy Queen. The chain opened its first location in Illinois in 1940 and now has more than 6,700 locations worldwide, and franchisees can apparently invest upwards of $1 million into their own locations.