Dairy Queen developer seeks OK to build store near ACHS
Clinton just might be getting a Dairy Queen.
A developer who proposes to build a Dairy Queen restaurant between Walgreens and Anderson County High School has scheduled an appearance before the Clinton Planning Commission on July 12 to seek approval for the project, city officials confirmed.
The Dairy Queen would be built on a vacant lot fronting on North Charles G. Seivers Boulevard that was sold by Christy Hicks last December to Atul B. Patel and Jaymin Patel.
Hicks said the Patels also own the Red Roof Inn & Suites hotel on Buffalo Road behind Zaxby’s and Hardee’s, just off Interstate 75, Exit 122.
Neither of the Patels could be reached for comment Monday.
Plans for the project will be presented to the Planning Commission by Michael Brady Architects (MBI Companies) of Knoxville, city officials said.
No information was available yet as to who the owners of the Dairy Queen business would be, but it will not be the same owners as the DQ Chill & Grill restaurants in LaFollette, Oak Ridge, Farragut, Sevierville and Morristown.
Those restaurants are owned and operated by Minnesota-based Fourteen Foods, whose spokeswoman said is not involved in plans for a Clinton store.
The new Dairy Queen also is not related to the Sinking Springs LLC development just across Seivers Boulevard, where a Starbucks and liquor store are under construction, and a Sonic drive-in will be built close by. Andy Hillmer, developer of those properties and the Buddy’s Bar-b-q building on that site, said he did not know who was building the Dairy Queen.
One of America’s most iconic restaurant brands, Dairy Queen began making a comeback in the Knoxville area in 2016 with the DQ Chill & Grill concept stores opened by Fourteen Foods.
That company has more than 200 DQ stores and is the parent Dairy Queen company’s largest franchisee. Dairy Queen Corp. is a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.
Presumably, the Clinton location, no matter who owns it, will be the DQ Chill & Grill fast-casual concept that Dairy Queen introduced in 2002.
These aren’t the quaint Dairy Queen ice cream stands of the past, where customers ordered from outside through a small window and ate sitting in their cars or on outdoor tables. These stores have inside dining, where customers order at the counter and their food is delivered to their tables.
But the stores also have takeout windows for drive-up traffic, and during the pandemic, the dining rooms were closed while the drive-throughs remained open and busy.