MOORHEAD — Marin Schultz has one sweet gig.
Schultz is the co-owner of three Dairy Queen restaurants, including her most recent acquisition, the south Moorhead Dairy Queen Grill and Chill at 802 30th Ave. S.
Schultz and her silent partner, husband Todd Schultz, purchased the Southmoor Plaza shop Nov. 1, 2022, after she had supervised its operation for several years as regional manager for a small group of Dairy Queens.
“I had been the regional manager for the old owner for a long time. She (the owner) got out of the Dairy Queen world. There was talk of shutting it down,” Schultz said. “I did not want to close it down.”
Her first DQ Grill and Chill purchase was the Wahpeton, North Dakota, store in late 2019. She added the Dickinson store in July 2022.
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The Christine, North Dakota, resident was in Dickinson on Wednesday, March 29, keeping tabs on operations there when she talked with The Forum.
“I’m always very involved with all three stores,” Schultz said, proud that she had gone through all of the training offered to Dairy Queen franchisees.
“I know all the ins and outs and ups and downs,” the 51-year-old said.
The restaurant industry has been part of her life for 39 years. She started working with her parents at age 12 in a small family style restaurant in Rapid City, South Dakota, “and I just loved it. I just loved the atmosphere of restaurants.”
When she went to college, she studied criminal law, but was drawn back into the restaurant world, learning to manage restaurants. In November 2017, she became the food and beverage manager for the restaurant at Hector International Airport. She was there about a year when she was offered the opportunity to manage the Dairy Queen group.
The hot eats, cool treats restaurants are essentially “the same as full service (eateries), it’s just on a smaller scale,” she said. And “now I own them, instead of running them.”
Schultz said the south Moorhead store is doing well, with her two cake decorators kept busy making specialty and blizzard cakes.
She’s also determined to keep an Old School standard for one DQ treat in particular.
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“We make our own Dilly bars. Not everyone does that anymore. The quality of an in-store Dilly Bar is just superb … They fly off the shelf. It’s just worth it for us to keep that for the extra benefit for the customers,” she said.
When nice weather finally arrives, she plans to expand the south Moorhead restaurant’s patio. If there is room on the lot, she would also like to expand the drive-through, perhaps installing a digital menu board and adding a second lane to make it “a faster, more efficient” experience.
“The drive-through is 70% of our business year-round,” she said.
Buying more DQs is also a possibility for Schultz and her husband.
“We may. It’s not out of the question,” she said. “Three is good. Four would be OK. We’ll see if something else comes up.”
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