Sheridan at Work
The Sheridan Dairy Queen restaurant on 236th Street over on the southeast side of town has been a mainstay of the Sheridan community for years. In December of 2015 the store was purchased by present owners Jeff and Lucy Scammahorn, who continue the fine DQ tradition in Sheridan.
Jeff and Lucy had been in the insurance business for some 25 years before they became restaurant owners. According to Jeff, he and Lucy felt they wanted a change and a challenge in their lives, and owning and managing a fast food business was an answer to that yearning.
Sheridan Dairy Queen co-owner, chief cook and bottle washer Jeff Scammahorn hard at work. (Photo provided)
The Scammahorn’s are not absentee managers. Every day finds Jeff hard at work managing the kitchen and doing all the other things necessary to make a restaurant work. Wife Lucy is right there with him and she helps manage the administrative end of things, as well as making ice cream cakes and doing some of the short order cooking. In addition, daughter Vanna pitches in to do her share of the kitchen work doing short order work just like mom and dad. This is a real family operation.
As an outlet for soft serve ice cream, DQ traces its roots back to 1940 when the first store opened in Joliet, Ill. DQ was an early pioneer in the fast food franchise business and by 2014 had put its logo on some 6,400 outlets worldwide, with 4,500 of them being right here in the United States. DQ’s early roots belong right here in the Upper Midwest when the first few stores were primarily concentrated in Illinois.
Daughter Vanna (left) and co-owner/mom Lucy are not afraid of a little hard work either. (Photo provided)
Dairy Queen has become a staple of small town America with some 4,500 stores nationally, selling not only the trade mark soft serve ice cream but also typical fast food items like hamburgers, fries, chicken strips and hot dogs. Scammahorn says that like the current national DQ trend, people here in Sheridan seem to prefer Blizzards and chicken strips to anything else.
Many young people have begun their working lives with part-time employment in fast food outlets, and Sheridan’s DQ is a fine example of the type of character a little bit of sweat equity builds into our younger generation.
Dairy Queen out at “The Point” is an institution in Sheridan. Rest assured it is being capably run by two dedicated owners and their daughter and an awesome crew of young people to back them up. They are open year round for your dining pleasure, so stop on in and say hello and have a sweet treat.
(From left) Alex White, who works the drive-up window; owner Jeff Scammahorn; and Robert Bowen, Paige McInerney and Gabe Knochel, who work the front counter. Here the crew is just beginning the evening shift and anticipating a warm Saturday evening in early July – prime time for cold treats and tasty eats. (Photo provided)