Dairy Queen Grill & Chill — Restaurant in Castle Rock

Fast food is awful-but deserts excellent. This is typical of 60 years of periodic visits to DQ's across the country. Mystery meat is beef [per manager] and tasteless. Blizzards are excellent with few flavors. One inch difference in medium to large cup sizes but higher cost for single inch increase in cup height. Yes the two medium cups were one inch shorter than large cups handed to me and the same diameter-not 5.5 ounces larger-but closer to 2 ounces at best. I did not weigh them. For the manager-I have been there twice-DQ is still lacking since changing cooking oils-under cooking fries-meat that tastes like bland cereal patties. Check out your competition. Try real angus beef-look at it in Walmart next to you. I visited you via Google Map search and 20 mile drive from Platte River, for what I hoped would be getting ice cream-which DQ is great for but missing on your menu during my visits. So I have been there in person. I drove specifically to you to not see it on the menu anywhere. Forcing us to order Blizzards instead. There is a much larger flavor selection in other DQ's. Peanut Butter, Oreo, M&M, etc. The food is bad at all locations across the country-yours is typical of the franchise. I don't blame you but the corporate offices. I am sure people that grew up on wet or not even browned french fries cooked in canola oil-that never had good crispy outside-tender inside fries-and don't know the difference. I do. I also know what 100% beef looks and tastes like. Your meat supplier may not be honest with their statements to you. My review is my opinion as honest as I can make it. I am not a competitor or paid by anyone for my reviews. As a franchise, drinking the Corporate Kool-Aide is not always wise. Check out Burger King, Sonic Drive In, Arby's and others. None are perfect, but prices and food leave you in the dust. I would guess these are your closet competitors. I don't expect any fast food business to compete with Outback or Appleby's, but improvement is needed. For the manager: If you think I am being unfair, watch your workers and see for yourself how they prepare food and drink sizes. One location switched cups saying they ran out. As I watched from the parking lot [Raton NM] The lazy teenage worker decided to go outside to the storage building for cups. Horribly slow and test their blizzards by turning them upside down outside the drive through window-claimed that was policy. Your workers thankfully did not do this. Getting a frozen blizzard in my lap would have been dangerous for the worker. For you the staff is fast and polite-but quality is lacking-selections are limited and just missing. Yours is the only one I've never been able to get a basic ice cream cone from. My guess is: lack of demand for them. Sonic in the midwest does not carry the same items as locatons in the Southeast. I don't expect grits here no more than Rueban sandwiches in Georgia or Alabama. Jack N the Box is much worse and should be closed down. They can't compete in other states. Yours is better compared to them, which is one exit South of you on I-25 is the first and last one...

I would give zero Stars if I could. I had a very difficult experience, I've worked in fast food before so I understand when things get crazy and busy, mistakes will be made, however, they brought our food and they didn't bring my friends Burger but they brought a chicken sandwich instead. The guy dropped my gravy on the floor and didn't clean it up, he brought me a new gravy and it was extremely cold. I took it back up to the counter and let them know that it was cold. The guy was surprised and said "it just came out of the microwave" and I said you're not supposed to put Styrofoam in the microwave. He took the gravy and I stood by the counter for a few minutes while I waited, I thought I was getting a new gravy, but they just put my old one in the microwave. It ended up chunky with a very extra thick skin on top, I tried stirring it but it didn't help and it tasted wrong, very wrong. I don't care how you think you should do business - you don't put Styrofoam in the microwave and you don't continuously reheat food that's been sitting out and gotten cold. That's unsafe. Someone could get ill. That's a lawsuit in the making.

I waited at least 10 minutes before I cleaned up the gravy. I'm pretty sure I did a bad job, but it wasn't my job to do and I didn't make the mess.

I'll Never...

It's fast food, so it isn't anything special, but the thing that doesn't make any sense to the customer is the fact they give you your ice cream first and tell you to pull around to the front to wait on your food. Meanwhile, the ice cream is melting. There's nowhere to really put it, and the kids will want it right away once it's there and the food isn't. So you get the option to see how long the food takes and how much the ice cream will melt or you give your kids the ice cream and hope they eat their dinner still. Fun times. So I really think yes, the ice cream is fast and ready, so it's out of the way for the employees to just bring the food. That is easier for them, I'm sure. However, they should ask first if that's what we want before they give it to us. For some people, I'm sure that could work for them, but for some people, it causes melting ice cream in their car and screaming kids. Plus, I really hate the idea of my kids even eating ice cream in my car they make a huge mess, and it smells bad later on. So if there's any possibility of that change it would be really...