Photo by Deb Gau Rita Smidt said connections with customers and employees have been the highlights of running Smidt’s Little DQ in Marshall for the past 32 years. Smidt still has a calendar that the Little DQ employees made for her in 2016.

MARSHALL — When Smidt’s Little DQ on Country Club Drive closed last fall, it wasn’t just for the season.

Business owners Rita and Gary Smidt said they decided it was time to close up shop for good.

“It’s been a fun 32 years. It’s just time. We need a little time for ourselves, I guess,” Rita Smidt said.

This week, the Smidts reflected back on their time running the Dairy Queen location. Rita Smidt said the connections they made with customers and employees were a big part of what kept them going for more than 30 years.

“It’s just the people. We’ve got really nice customers. They’re very loyal,” she said.

She said she knew there were people who would be disappointed that the Little DQ wasn’t opening again in the spring.

The small Dairy Queen on Country Club Drive has been part of Marshall going back decades. The Smidts didn’t know the exact year the restaurant opened, but Rita did have a copy of a photo of the building taken during the 1957 flood in Marshall. The three Little DQ owners that the Smidts knew of before them included Irving Peterson, who had the business in 1976; Bob Grupe, who had it around 1980; and Brad and Cheryl DeRuyck.

The Smidts purchased the Little DQ in 1994, Rita Schmidt said. Buying a Dairy Queen location was a new endeavor for them. Gary had his own plumbing business, while Rita worked at Southwest Sanitation.

“It was our daughter’s idea,” Rita Smidt said of buying the Little DQ. “She was 21, 22, and she was going to school and she needed a summer job. So, she thought that would be a good thing to do.”

“We never had restaurant experience,” Smidt said. “I had to go to school for two weeks in the Cities, at Dairy Queen, and then Cheryl (DeRuyck) helped us for about a month, with how to do things.”

In the early 1990s, the restaurant also looked a little different than it does now.

“We had inside seating, but we didn’t have a drive-up window. We put that in about five years after we bought it,” Smidt said. “It was a very good move.”

Other changes over time included new building signs, and adding a paved parking lot for the restaurant, the Smidts said.

The Little DQ had some things that set it apart. While they did sell hot dogs, the Little DQ didn’t have a full menu of hot food like at larger Dairy Queen restaurants. The Smidts said their Dilly Bar frozen treats were also made fresh at the restaurant. “We’ve got a mold that makes them, and then we freeze them overnight and then dip them,” Rita Smidt said. The “homemade” bars were popular with many customers, she said.

“It’s mainly the kids that keep you going,” Smidt said of running the Little DQ. She said she had seen many employees go from being shy teenagers, to opening up and getting to know customers. “And then the older girls have always been really good about helping the younger ones. They’re kind of like a family.”

In 2016, the Little DQ crew even got together to do a photo shoot outside the restaurant, and made a calendar for Rita. In the calendar, the girls had different costumes for seasonal holidays from St. Patrick’s Day, to September back-to-school time and Christmas.

Smidt said she and Gary have kept in touch with past employees over the years.

“We’ve been invited to their weddings,” she said. “It’s fun to see them come back. Some of them would back with their kids and say, ‘I worked here when I was a teenager.'”

Smidt said they got to know the customers at the Little DQ, too. Employees would recognize some customers by seeing their cars in the drive-through, and know what their usual order was.

The Little DQ also benefited from being close to Legion Field Park, she said.

“The lobby was full after ball games, that’s for sure,” she said.

The Little DQ had a challenging final summer in 2025. Reconstruction work on Highway 19 made the business harder to get to, and a severe rain event caused some flooding in the restaurant. But the Smidts said it was more a combination of other factors that led to the decision to close the restaurant.

“We had been trying to sell it for about five years,” Rita Smidt said.

Then, the Dairy Queen company decided that the little restaurant would have to become a larger “Grill & Chill” location, she said.

“It was time that we gave it up, I guess. And circumstances with the land, and Dairy Queen deciding it should be a brazier, kind of did it for us. I know there’s going to be a lot of people that are going to be disappointed,” Smidt said.

The Smidts said that the Little DQ building will remain up for sale. They will also try to sell some of the equipment this spring.

“It would be really nice if somebody would come in with a mom-and-pop ice cream store, especially with a new pool and everything coming,” Smidt said.

Running the Little DQ has been a positive experience, she said.

“It’s been a good trip. I mean, we’ve got 32 years, and we’ve had fun,” she said.