9 Biggest Scandals In Dairy Queen History

Dairy Queen is one of the most popular fast food chains in the U.S. In fact, according to YouGov, only 6% of people say they don't like the chain, which, of course, is beloved for its treats like Blizzards and Dilly Bars, as well as savory options like burgers and sandwiches. But sometimes, Dairy Queen isn't as sweet as it looks.

Here, we take a closer look at some of the biggest scandals in Dairy Queen history. And it turns out, like many chain restaurants, this popular fast food giant has a few skeletons lurking in its past. In fact, its franchises and employees have been accused of everything from racism to sexual harassment to forcing people to eat cleaning products. Yes, really, we wish we were joking. Get ready to explore the dark side of the Dairy Queen with this series of scandals, some of which might just make you think twice about your next late-night Blizzard.

In 2017, 21-year-old mother Deia Ford decided to treat herself and her kids to a Dairy Queen. She pulled up to the drive-thru in Zion, Illinois, placed her order, and waited. So far, it's all pretty normal, right? Well, what happened next resulted in the closure of the entire restaurant.

Ford received her food, checked the bag, and found some of the order was missing. So, of course, she notified the employee and asked for a refund. At this point, most people would expect an apology. But unfortunately for Ford, that's not what happened. Instead, she was met with a torrent of racist abuse. According to Ford, Jim Crichton, the owner of the Dairy Queen franchise in Zion, refused to give her a refund and proceeded to use multiple racist slurs in front of her children.

The young mother reported the incident to the police, and while Crichton issued an apology and promised to take sensitivity training classes, it wasn't enough. Not for Ford, who wanted to take further legal action, and not for Dairy Queen, either. After hearing about his racist actions, the fast food chain's corporate office closed down Crichton's store for good.

In 1890, New York enacted weekly pay laws for the first time. In a nutshell, by forcing employers to pay people promptly, the laws aimed to protect low-income manual workers, most of whom worked in mines or factories, from wage theft. If you're wondering why we're suddenly harking back to the 19th century, there's a good reason. Those laws, now known as frequency of pay laws, are still in force today, and they're the reason why a Dairy Queen in Long Island was recently sued for $6 million.

Sisters Patty DeMint and Michelle Robey, who run the Dairy Queen in Medford, were accused of violating the frequency of pay laws by paying their workers biweekly instead of weekly. They're not alone; there have been many similar lawsuits in New York since 2019, when a ruling against a construction management company allowed workers who weren't paid weekly to seek extra pay (even if they had been paid in full already).

In May 2025, the law was changed to allow New York businesses to pay only interest on supposedly late wages. However, it was too late for the Medford Dairy Queen owners, who ended up settling their case out of court for $450,000.

Dairy Queen had more than one lawsuit to deal with in 2025. This was also the year that the Mid-Atlantic Dairy Queen franchise settled two sexual harassment charges for $145,000.

According to the lawsuit, filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a number of female workers experienced sexual harassment at two Dairy Queen locations in Virginia. Between 2022 and 2023, the women, some of whom were only in their teens, were the targets of sexual comments and physical contact, all while the franchise did very little to intervene. In addition to paying money to the victims, Mid-Atlantic Dairy Queen agreed to update its policies and train its employees on the prevention of sexual harassment in the workplace.

Unfortunately, this isn't the first time Dairy Queen has been embroiled in this kind of controversy. In 2023, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of an underage employee, accusing the fast food chain of failing to protect the worker from being sexually harassed by a supervisor. And in 2012, another Dairy Queen franchise in North Carolina had to pay $17,500 to settle a lawsuit over the sexual harassment of an 18-year-old employee.

Let's be honest, most of us can relate to a situation where our boss is asking us to do something we don't want to do. Depending on the nature of the work, it might be something like cleaning bathrooms or meeting tight deadlines. Usually, it's uncomfortable, but necessary. In 2024, though, workers at a Campton, Kentucky Dairy Queen were apparently asked to complete a task by their boss that seemed not only entirely pointless, but also dangerous.

According to eight employees from the location, their manager asked them to eat ice cream that had been mixed with a cleaning solution. Yes, you read that correctly. One of the employees' parents claimed that some of the workers even had to be taken to the emergency room after eating the mixture. The incident was reported to the local sheriff's office, and the manager involved was, of course, fired over the bizarre request.

Apparently, the manager in question had wanted to teach the young employees a lesson about not properly cleaning the ice cream machine. However, consuming cleaning products is far from a harmless punishment. In fact, it can be incredibly dangerous, potentially leading to serious symptoms like throat swelling, chemical burns, vision loss, and vomiting.

In the U.S., it is legal for 14-year-olds and 15-year-olds to work in restaurants, but there are rules. For example, they can't work more than three hours on a school day, and for most of the year, they can't work past 7:00 p.m. (during the summer months, this is pushed back to 9:00 p.m.). If restaurants don't follow these rules, they risk paying large fines, as one New Jersey Dairy Queen franchise did in 2023.

It turns out, the franchise had been allowing 15-year-olds to work until 10:00 p.m. and for more than three hours on school days in multiple restaurants. On top of this, it had failed to pay several employees fairly (one person's pay didn't even meet the minimum wage requirements). As a result, it had to pay more than $14,000 in fines and more than $9,700 in back pay. The year before, a Dairy Queen franchise in Indiana and Michigan also had to pay a major fine (of more than $42,000) over child labor violations. 

Unfortunately, this isn't just a Dairy Queen issue; child labor violations are all too common in the fast food industry. In fact, in the first nine months of 2023, more than 75% of all child labor violations took place in the restaurant industry.

The 2017 slur incident wasn't the last time Dairy Queen was caught up in a racist scandal. In 2024, two employees were fired from a Dairy Queen in Wells, Minnesota, after making a highly offensive custom ice cream cake for a prom proposal, which referenced slavery. Unlike the incident in 2017, which involved the owner of the franchise, the Wells location was not closed. Instead, the owners assured the public that the cake was not a reflection of their own views.

Dairy Queen employees have lost their jobs over cakes before. In 2019, a Georgia worker was fired after making a marijuana-themed custom cake for a birthday. It turns out, they had misheard the customer, who actually wanted a Moana-themed cake. The customer had actually found the incident amusing, but after a post about the cake went viral, Dairy Queen chose to let the employee go.

Like many fast food chains, Dairy Queen relies on franchising. In fact, the chain, which is one of the oldest in the U.S., started franchising just three years after its first restaurant opened in Illinois in 1940. As of 2024, it had more than 7,700 franchised locations both in the U.S. and internationally.

But while franchising has allowed Dairy Queen to rapidly expand over the decades, things haven't always gone smoothly. In 2008, for example, multiple franchisees became frustrated with Dairy Queen's corporate office, claiming that they were being forced to take on a new model or lose their business. In rebellion against the chain, franchisees in several states, including Arizona, Virginia, Maryland, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, clubbed together to file a lawsuit against Dairy Queen.

At the time, Dairy Queen really wanted its franchisees to adopt its Grill & Chill concept, which not only expanded the size of the stores but also increased its menu options with items like quesadillas and chicken strips. Despite resistance, the initiative grew. Nearly two decades on, there are more than 2,000 Dairy Queen Grill & Chill locations.

Introduced in 1967, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) aims to protect people above the age of 40 from discrimination based on their age. This type of discrimination happens for a few reasons; some employers might think that an older employee can't do their job as competently as a younger person, for example, or they think it's a waste of time to invest in someone older. But unfortunately, the ADEA doesn't always manage to stop real ageism from happening in the workplace.

In 2018, for example, a 60-year-old woman named Theresa Chandler sued a Tennessee Dairy Queen after she wasn't offered a job at the restaurant, despite being a good candidate. According to Chandler, the location went on to hire five people aged under 40 due to a misconception that they would offer more flexibility. As a result of the lawsuit, which was filed by the EEOC, the Tennessee Dairy Queen franchise was instructed by a judge to pay back wages and stop discriminating against older candidates.

Dairy Queen has been caught out for ageism before. In 2005, a 63-year-old employee was awarded nearly $1 million in compensation after filing an age discrimination lawsuit against her franchise boss in Texas.

We've had cleaning solution ice cream, but now we raise you ice cream contaminated with metal shavings. Yep, in 2026, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a recall for more than 70 cases of Dairy Queen reduced-fat chocolate soft serve ice cream mix, due to fears it might have been contaminated with metal. At the time of the recall, the ice cream had already been sent to stores in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, and New York.

The FDA didn't offer a press release alongside the announcement, so it's unclear how the metal shavings managed to contaminate the ice cream mix. However, unlike with the cleaning solution incident, it's unlikely the metal made its way into the ice cream on purpose. Still, purposeful or not, consuming foreign objects like metal might result in choking or internal injuries. Fortunately, though, no accidents were reported as a result of the recalled ice cream.