“When I was younger I used to go there all the time and watched the two old people who owned the place leave every night with a little box of money, and one day I said, ‘well, do you want to sell this place?’ And he said, ‘make an offer,’” Vernon Dreher, owner of Lake Zurich Dairy Queen, said.

This all happened before Dreher went to college. In school, he studied to be and became a Physical Education teacher, a job he quit because he preferred to be his own boss. After acquiring 17 Dairy Queen stores and later downsizing to five, Dreher has been dedicated to his business and has been working everyday for 47 years.

“Sometimes [I work every day] by choice. When you grow up and you don’t have a bathroom and you get the water in your house by doing one of those pumps that are in the forest preserve, I just had aspirations of being rich some day,” Dreher said. “There’s only one way to do that and that’s to work hard.”

Dairy Queen may normally be open from 11am to 11pm, but Dreher is willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done, displaying his hard work.  

“For Lake Zurich, everyone expects blizzards to be turned upside-down. They know I will not close early. Since I’m here late, I’ll wait on people at 1 o’clock in the morning if I happen to be here and they come to the window. It doesn’t matter,” Dreher said. “When it’s raining or if it’s cold I may open late because I have to get to the bank in time or something like that, but I will never close early. It’s not going to happen.”

Staying up late is not the hardest part of his job, however. Dreher believes the employees are the most challenging part and believes in having quality employees over quantity.

“I believe that it’s better to have three good employees who want to work, and I’ll pay them more money than anybody else, than to have ten people doing half-work.”

In May, Dreher found one employee that he praises for being a quality worker.

“That girl right there [Annie Mowbray, sophomore] she is just fifteen years old. She’s the best employee ever, but she can only work until seven o’clock. She could [also] only work until nine o’clock in the summertime. I give her everything off that she’s supposed to get. Anything that’s school-related you’ve got a pass on me. I’ve got other stores and I can [move] somebody or something, but she’s fifteen and she’s great.”

After working there for the past six months Mowbray says she always tries to stay positive.

“I don’t think I’m that stellar. I always come to work with a smile on my face and when people are in a bad mood I always try to make them laugh or something,” Mowbray said.

The attitude Mowbray has when she works impresses Dreher and he says she can even make blizzards like the pictures, too.   

“It’s just about doing my job. I like to make things that look like the picture. I’m trying to teach everybody to do the same thing,” Dreher said. “You can get slop anywhere. It’s all about making it like the picture, doing it fast, and courteous service. With 47 years of doing this successfully, you really want to serve the public what they want.”

Making things perfect and pleasing the people has lead to Dreher’s success and he claims that “Dairy Queen has been very good to me.” 

“Obviously when you have a place in Hawaii, a house with six fireplaces, a five-car garage, and you can buy seven houses that are all over the place, there [are] no complaints,” Dreher said.

As Dreher has grown up and learned how to be successful he says the only way is by “staying at it and not quitting” and plans to continue working every day for a long time.