{"id":71820,"date":"2025-12-16T01:44:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T01:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/71820\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T01:44:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T01:44:11","slug":"dairy-queen-coming-soon-to-ithaca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/71820\/","title":{"rendered":"Dairy Queen coming soon to Ithaca"},"content":{"rendered":"

ITHACA, N.Y.\u2014The fast food chain Dairy Queen is bringing its iconic soft serve to Ithaca. Or rather, it\u2019s returning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The new Dairy Queen Grill and Chill is slated for the former Tim Horton\u2019s and Cold Stone Creamery at 407 Elmira Road, next to the recently-built KFC. No official opening date has been posted.<\/p>\n

The building was purpose-built for those two chains,but Tim Horton\u2019s shut the location down in 2015 after only four years of operation as a part of their failed regional venture into Upstate New York<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dairy Queen used to have a location in Ithaca where what is now Pudgie\u2019s Pizza on Old Elmira Road is. The building still sports the old-style Dairy Queen design with its red mansard roof.<\/p>\n

Dairy Queen locations have been expanding through franchisees across Upstate New York<\/a> over the last few years, where locations had been few and far between. At present, there are 38 across the state<\/a>, out of about 4,500 nationwide<\/a>. Recent additions include locations in Big Flats outside Elmira, and additional locations around suburban Syracuse and Rochester.<\/p>\n

The Patel family of Corning purchased the 2,542 square-foot Tim Horton\u2019s property through an LLC in January 2016 for $640,000, and the mortgage was paid off in 2023.The Dairy Queen proposal has been floating around for years. (The original draft of this article was first written in December 2021.)<\/p>\n

Their primary business is building and operating chain hotels<\/a>, with about 70 locations across New York and Pennsylvania. A separate LLC at the same Corning address, established in January of this year, is listed as the franchisee for the Dairy Queen; a check of online filings notes that Arun \u201cAndy\u201d Patel is listed as the manager for both LLCs.<\/p>\n

According to the construction loan filing, Chemung Canal Trust Company loaned the Patels $1 million for the project, of which about $766,000 is for the renovation itself. Along with the exterior and interior updates, the location will feature a drive-thru and a small outdoor seating area at the front of the restaurant.<\/p>\n

The new Dairy Queen is nearly complete from the outside, with interior furniture installation and finish work ongoing. A visit this weekend showed the electronic menu signs were already turned on. Positions are being advertised online.<\/p>\n

\n\tMore stories like this<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ITHACA, N.Y.\u2014The fast food chain Dairy Queen is bringing its iconic soft serve to Ithaca. Or rather, it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[36600,4843,9985,9,11,10,49,51,50,5943,36601],"class_list":{"0":"post-71820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-andy-patel","9":"tag-dairy-queen","10":"tag-ithaca","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-new-york-state","15":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","16":"tag-new-york-state-news","17":"tag-retail","18":"tag-southwest-ithaca"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}