DQ features pancakes at dairy breakfast

Flipping pancakes may be a fairly normal routine at many households for breakfast, but what happens when the guest list exceeds the 1,000 mark.

Jay Klemmensen, owner of the Blooming Prairie Dairy Queen, found out exactly what it’s like as he prepared pancakes for 1,050 people over a four hour stretch during the annual Steele County Dairy Association’s Breakfast on the Farm Saturday morning at Schmity Holsteins near Owatonna. It’s the first time Dairy Queen has been involved with the dairy breakfast.

Jay and his wife, Jamie Klemmensen, didn’t stop with just pancakes. They made a full-blown breakfast, including scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage as well as biscuits and gravy. It’s something that has become a signature meal for many Dairy Queens across the country. The Klemmensens introduced the DQ breakfast last fall when they began serving breakfasts for the first time.

For the Klemmensens, cooking breakfast for 1,000 people is substantially more than what they’re used to. A normal day at the BP Dairy Queen is about 400 customer transactions with about 65% of the business being meals, according to Jamie.

“I used to love cooking for large groups,” said Jay, who previously worked as the manager at the Blooming Prairie Country Club for several years. “This is old hat,” he said, noting that he was used to doing about 300 at the country club. “This is actually probably easier.”

The Klemmensens brought in lots of help to ensure everyone got fed at the Breakfast on the Farm. In addition to Jay and Jamie’s three children, they brought along about 20 employees and volunteers from Dairy Queen and Jay’s other gig, Eagle Prairie Insurance Company.

With Jay’s farm background and working with many dairy farms in Steele County through his insurance agency, he pitched the idea to the local dairy group for DQ to do the breakfast. In the past, the dairy breakfast has featured waffles and not as much other food. 

The Klemmensens loaded up a horse trailer with three large grills and coolers in order to pull off the breakfast. Jamie credits her husband for pulling it altogether for the dairy breakfast. “Good planning and good organization. That’s Jay,” she said.

On a normal day, the Klemmensens provide breakfast from 7 to 10:30 a.m. Jamie said with limited dining options in Blooming Prairie, they felt “it would be a good fit for the community” to offer breakfast in addition to the regular DQ products. They traveled to DQ in Kentucky last year to sample the food before rolling it out locally.

Jamie said the bacon, egg and cheese biscuit is their most popular item, though she says,
“I personally think our pancakes are really good.” She added the pancakes are corn meal based.

They have found preparing breakfast was a bit of a learning curve because “it’s a lot different than lunch and dinner,” Jamie said.