The Yard Milkshake Bar — Restaurant in Columbus

I have mixed feelings about the yard, but will give them the benefit of doubt when it comes to any negativities that I believe were due to them just opening.

My wife and I split a Cookie Butter Me Up shake sundae. It was good, but also very very expensive. For food this expensive, I would generally expect fresh, house made ingredients, but that wasn't the case. You can clearly see what appears to be dates on the containers of toppings behind the counter with some dates over a month old. They also don't make the ice cream as it is just Hershey's. So if the $17 isn't paying for the ingredients, you're paying for the presentation.

The shake/sundaes are very striking to see, although I wish it was easier to see them being made behind the counter. It would be even better if you could follow yours down the line as it's made, but I digress. You get a beautifully done up jar that you get to keep topped with all kinds of decadent toppings. It is cool, but with the size, amount of calories, and cost, this is a textbook example of a splurge. Seeing their other locations in more touristy areas makes a lot of sense as it's a great thing to treat yourself to once, while on vacation... This location isn't like that though and very few people could afford to return here very often (both because of the cost and for ones health).

While the reusable jar is kind of a fun souvenir if it's a place you went on vacation, it introduces a fair bit of waste to the process for just a place you went downtown for one time to get ice cream. Unlike the one my wife got in Virginia Beach on a girl's trip, it wasn't labeled with the city. I saw multiple of these jars thrown in the trash (along with the plastic silverware and single use water bottles) as they did not have recycling bins.

If you do choose to keep the jar, they have a sink station for you to attempt to clean your jar before you leave. I say attempt, as the jars are caked with frosting or something similar, but there is no soap or sponges available to aid you. There wasn't even hand soap for you to clean yourself up with after you tried to rub all this off the jar. The sinks have grates in the bottom to catch the toppings as you wash them off and the whole process is rather off putting. After you inevitably fail to clean your jar, they did have single use bags available to carry your jar home, again introducing more waste.

While the sundae/shake was good and looks amazing, the ingredients are nothing special, the store was rather wasteful, and I just don't see it as being a place I could justify...

Well.. Here goes my first ever review. First off I would like to say thank you to the African American gentleman who always helped me and my friends who used to bike around up until this day. Okay I will get right to the point. Me and my friends stopped by the yard on a Saturday afternoon, I would say around 5ish because that’s when we usually bike. Now usually the young gentleman I believe when I heard someone call his name it was quan/quam something along those lines I really liked him! I have him all my cash one time. So me and my friends usually know what we want but this time we wanted to try something new. So I go up to the register and it’s a young African American lady working with what looked like a pigtail it was very long just one braid to the back of her hair. I go and I ask her what are her suggestions and she tells me she’s not sure and to go based off my favorite ice cream, no suggestions no nothing. So I can admit me and my friend was standing in line for about 2 minutes trying to decide and she says” Can you guys step out of my line I have customers to handle. “ like extremely aggressive and we were nothing but nice to the young lady. So we step out of line and it’s really not that busy but it is getting there. So we go back and we were chatting and randomly she goes “if you aren’t ready to order please step out of line now. “ and this was as we were standing behind people. So we brush it off again we just thought she was in a bad mood. So we order and everything and she is just tapping the screen really hard kind of like slouching around as we were paying, just huffing and puffing we could tell we were not wanted. So we get our ice cream and the server was extremely nice and she even got us some spoons, wiped our table down. I just felt very unwelcomed and I never do when I go. I hope she can get dealt with appropriately. I probably will not be back. Thank you...

This is a really fun place with Instagram worthy milkshakes that come in their own glass jar (or you can get without). The toppings are so extreme, they stick them to the side of the jar and top all the jars 3-4" high with a second dessert.

This place was founded based off the song lyrics "My milkshake brings all the boys to THE YARD". It has some fun signs in the place for pics.

You can keep the jars the milkshakes come in which are very gooey all over. It's good to know you won't come home sticky. You can wash it out in the oversized sink they have which is right to the side of the seating area by the bathroom.

I tried the salted carmel cheesecake milkshake, which was fabulous and topped with a delicious cheese cake.

I shared the cookie monster milkshake. It was just milky and not that great. The cookies were not flavorful and they were cracker light. Even the cookie dough stuffed in the cookie sandwich was bland and not like any cookie dough I have had before. I would not recommend it to anyone that doesn't like Superman ice cream or those really colorful kid ice creams (not to be confused with sherbet) because that is what it tasted like... bland. It wasn't even a vanilla taste, which is what I expected the taste to be like along with cookies, but it was just bland. It's more marketed to kids who eat colorful ice cream, so I guess I should have expected this. 😆

I'd recommend the place based on the experience, but it's pricey, so it's not exactly a value based recommendation. If you get the jar milkshake plan to share it with 1-2 people. It's large and more than a days worth of calories...