Justin Kelly unofficially began his career in sales and marketing in high school, and he hasn’t slowed down since.
Kelly, now the owner of Gray Dairy Queen Grill and Chill and Slim Chickens, explained last week how Jones County High came to have a mascot. He was a senior and decided the football team needed one. He approached the school’s booster club about his idea.
“I told them if they would buy a mascot, I would pay for it.” Kelly recalled that the group wanted to know how he would do that. “I said, ‘I will completely sell you out of programs every single home game, and we’ll pay for that mascot the first year.’” They gave him the chance.
“My senior year, I was the first Jones County mascot. I was Hootie the Hound,” Kelly chuckled. “I named him and everything. Before every game, I would sell about 200 or 300 programs, and I would be out at that gate with a sharpie marker signing ‘Hootie the Hound’ on my picture on the front of those.”
Successful ventures
Kelly’s path to where he is now — owner of the world’s busiest Dairy Queen and Slim Chickens drive-thru restaurant — has been a successful one. Kelly, now 39 and married with an 11-year-old daughter, obtained his two-year degree in marketing from Georgia Military College and finished at Macon State.
“I always knew I wanted to work for myself,” he said. He started a paving company, Mr. Asphalt, but he saw the 2008 economic downturn approaching and sold the business. “The lady who bought it did very well with it,” he recalled.
Kelly decided he needed to do ‘something stable’ for a while and went to GEICO as an overthe- phone insurance salesman.
“I was very, very good at GEICO,” he said without hesitation. “I made very good money. I was there for three and a half years, and I was the number seven salesperson in the United States.
“When you see all these ads, call 1-800-GEICO or whatever, when you call, I was one of those who would answer the phone and give you a quote. But,” he added, “I wasn’t giving you quotes. I was trying to sell you insurance … The key to that, though, was just closing the sale while they were on the phone.”
After that job, he gave up sales and took a huge pay cut. He was burned out. “It was driving me crazy,” he admitted. “I was on anxiety medicines. I weighed about 375 pounds. It was just bad.”
Kelly later left GEICO and worked in two stints at a body shop for about 10 years. He also opened a used car lot and was successful there as well, selling cars almost as fast he was buying them.
He explained, however, that a used car is just that: used. Invariably someone would return with the vehicle — and a problem. He felt obligated to take care of it.
“And if you are going to do good in the car business, you can’t do that,” he reasoned. “So I could tell real quick I wasn’t made for the used car business, at least not in Jones County.”
Beginning business during COVID
Meanwhile, Kelly had been dropping hints to Dairy Queen owner Emory Tribble that he was interested in buying the restaurant. When COVID hit, Tribble agreed to sell, and Kelly took over in November of 2020.
“I ran the Dairy Queen drive-thru only for three months because they were mandating you to do that. You couldn’t have anybody come inside your building.”
The restrictions were actually a benefit, Kelly pointed out. When the governor issued the order allowing inside customers, he was ready.
“We opened the doors, and so that was another avenue we had to learn ‘cause we were already really good, probably one of the best, if not the best, at running a drive-thru window. But now we needed to learn how to keep that going fast and keep up with the crowded inside business.”
Pursuant to the governor’s orders, workers had to wear masks, but they were not mandated for customers.
“So it was your ‘retirement country club’ for another six months,” Kelly quipped. “We were able to plant our flag with the breakfast club and the retired in the community. They could come here and see people and communicate and have relationships that had been cut off.”
Several months later, the governor issued the order making masks optional for workers.
“We were watching Channel 13, and when it came across, everybody in the place threw off their masks, and we were off to the races,” Kelly laughed. “Morale went through the roof. It’s hard to be happy when you’re wearing a muzzle, right?”
The owner acknowledged that his restaurant was nowhere near the top of the Dairy Queen ladder at that time, but he knew things were getting better.
“We were running an efficient business, and we knew what we were doing. The more and more we did it, the more and more we saw what we could do. “
It was at that point that the young entrepreneur realized he was spending his money unwisely. He noted that the building was 20 years old and the equipment at the end of its life when he purchased the business. The equipment he first bought was far from the best.
“I bought the cheapest thing that could do that. I learned really quickly, nope, you don’t do that. So, after another year, I had to replace the junk that I had bought.
“So, then I was like, if you’re going to be the very best, you’ve got to have the very best equipment that you can possibly afford.”
Kelley went out and bought the best equipment he could find — two ice cream machines for $80,000 as one example — and it paid off. His operation became more efficient, and business grew with it.
Number one in the country
He recalled being at St. Simons with a group of friends at the end of 2023.
“I can remember it being a great year, and everything was going good. I was sitting there watching Fox News, and it came across that this New Hampshire Dairy Queen is battling the Gray, Georgia, Dairy Queen for number one in the nation. I was like, oh my God.”
The New Hampshire governor actually visited that store, only about $2,000 ahead of Gray at the time. Meanwhile, the folks in Gray were doing their part.
“This place was wrapped around this building for a couple of days, and I wasn’t even here.” The effort came up a little short, though. “I think they ended up beating us by about $6,000.”
That was the last time, however, that his restaurant has been outdone, Kelly quickly added.
“This has been number one in every measurable thing that you can measure month to month at Dairy Queen since that January in 2024. It has never been beaten since then. We put them in our rearview mirror and haven’t looked back since then.”
The reasons for the success are evident.
The restaurant is host to a men’s prayer breakfast every Tuesday morning with about 80 present. Wednesday mornings feature the youth prayer breakfast with 150-200 kids visiting for trivia and devotionals before school.
Then there are the breakfast group customers who come in daily in two waves. “The first group comes in at 5:30 when we open and hang around for about an hour, then this second shift rotates in and hangs out. By then, it’s about lunchtime.”
Kelly said the drive-thru is a big part of the success, accounting for 80 percent of the business.
“We’ve gotten now where we’re doing 250 cars before 8:30 in the morning because we focus on that.”
The event that has also put the Gray DQ on the map is Miracle Treat Day, in which Dairy Queens donate a portion of their proceeds one day a year to the Children’s Medical Network hospitals. Kelly first took part in the fundraiser in 2021 and raised $50,000.
This past year the store easily raised the most money in the country, $180,000. About 2,600 cars went through the drive-thru, and 50 local businesses agreed to match the restaurant’s biggest hour of sales. Gray’s DQ didn’t donate just a portion of its sales that day. “Every cent we got from sales that day went to that,” Kelly emphasized and added that the money collected that day goes directly to the Beverly Knight Olson Children’s Hospital in Macon.
Kelly was recognized last year by Dairy Queen as the Local Corporate Person of the Year, and the company’s CEO came to Gray on Miracle Treat Day to present him with the award.
Kelly figures that the annual event puts pressure on him, the restaurant, and the community to keep raising more money. He explained that the wheels are turning to come up with some other project.
“Is there something that I can do different one time a year that would make even a larger impact? Right now, the biggest opportunity to make a difference for the kids in this community is Miracle Treat Day. But,” he added, “if it ever becomes where I can see where we can do something else and make a bigger impact, then we’ll shift.
“The kids in central Georgia are super important, but the kids in in this community in Jones County are the most important to me.”
