Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett takes a bite of a Dairy Queen vanilla orange ice cream bar at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in 2010. Rick Wilking / Reuters
Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett takes a bite of a Dairy Queen vanilla orange ice cream bar at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in 2010. Rick Wilking / Reuters

Warren Buffett’s favourite ice-cream chain Dairy Queen comes to the UAE



Berkshire Hathaway-owned Dairy Queen is coming to the UAE. The restaurant chain where the Berkshire chairman, president and chief executive Warren Buffett famously takes his grandchildren to eat, has signed a franchise deal with Bajco Group to open as many as 20 outlets.

The agreement covers DQ Grill & Chill restaurants and DQ Treat stores. The first outlet is due to open in the first quarter of next year, although the exact location is still to be decided.

“The problem is that everybody wants to be in Dubai, which means locations are very hard to guarantee,” said Malik Bajwa, president of the Bajco Group. “We will likely open in the Northern Emirates such as Ras Al Khaimah, and we are also looking at Sharjah and Al Ain. Our flagship standalone store will most likely be in Dubai on the Jumeirah Beach Road or Sheikh Zayed Road.”

The agreement covers store openings over the next five years.

Dairy Queen was one of the first American restaurant chains to be franchised and is commonly associated with small towns across the Midwest in the 1950s and 1960s. Mr Buffett, known as the Sage of Omaha for the shrewd investments that made him one of the world’s richest men, is a fan of the chain’s ice-cream.

So much so that on the morning of September 23, 2008, at the very height of the financial crisis, when he agreed to plough US$5 billion into Goldman Sachs, he told his banker he would be out of touch until 2.30pm – eating ice-cream with his grandchildren at Dairy Queen.

ascott@thenational.ae

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