Okay so its “frozen custard”. They make the best ice cream in Ames, but about half the time I forget that. Trying to get ice cream in Ames can be trying. You think of a place like Dairy Queen that specializes in it. Nope. Van Gorp’s owns the DQs in Ames and like so many others they think they’ll maximize profit by employing minimum wage teenagers. You get what you pay for. I know at the Boone DQ they had a walkout when the employees found out the McDonalds next-door was paying $5 bucks an hour more than the highest paid DQ employee! Which is what the Van Gorp’s are doing and it shows. The North one couldn’t make a malt to save their lives. The chocolate is virtually indistinguishable from the vanilla its so pale. They’re slow and after all the wait its a puny cone you get.

Ditto for the Lincoln Way DQ. I watched the kid after he spent 5 minutes unwrapping coins for the register, correcting an already served order, unwrap cones to load the dispenser, and grab mine by the lip with his bare fingers! So I went half a block to the Casey’s and get a dish of ice cream. Of course their machine was broken for the gazillionth time. Casey’s ice cream machines are always broke and their gas pumps most of the time don’t have any paper in the receipt printer. I forgot Culver’s! Its right there too on Lincoln Way! Its the creamiest and chocolatiest! Its the best in town, and I forgot it! I always associate Culvers with their burgers, especially their mushroom and swiss. Old people, we take our ice cream seriously.

When business owners try to do it on the cheap with cut-rate employees, they’re telling you they don’t think much about their product and they don’t think much about you.