Dairy Queen Grill & Chill — Restaurant in Gilbert

Just awful. We've been coming here for as long as I've lived in AZ. It's always been so good, until we noticed today that the ownership has changed - and everything else along with it.

People angry at the counter staff over missing food, really unprofessional looking cakes in the freezer (they used to be so good), a crew of high-school kids dossing about like it wasn't busy, forcing the back of house/kitchen staff to have to ring people's orders, no visible management in sight.

The feel of the place has totally changed, too. They took down all the old pictures of historic Dairy Queen restaurants that were on the walls, they no longer have any music playing, the staff aren't nearly as friendly as the old crew and tables were left dirty. Looking around I saw nothing but grumpy customers, too. All red flags.

Food quality has also taken a dive; the sandwich I had was tasteless (a chicken bacon ranch!) My wife's chicken tenders had evidently been fried and refried and refried again, and there was a noticeable difference in color, and were mostly inedible.

This DQ in particular used to have the best onion rings around, and now they taste like they're probably store-brand garbage, bought in bulk from the Safeway across the street. The chicken in my sandwich was obviously chopped and reshaped, not a natural filet.

When our blizzards arrived, the server took away the number we had been given for our (incomplete) order, after which he delivered our main meals to another table; seemingly re-using our number for a new customer order.

In the very near future, Higley and the US-60 is getting some major redevelopment with a bunch of new restaurants going in just across the street, on two opposite corners of Baseline & Higley - if this place is going to survive, it needs to get with the program and realize how you run a place like this.

As far as I'm concerned though, it's already gone as the original owners are no longer in control, so to me it's as good as closed already as I'll never be...

I just had the worst experience. I have been going to this dairy queen for years and I cannot belive what has happened to it. It was awful, the food, service and ice cream. Let me start from the beginning. We got there about 7:45pm, upon entry we saw several angry customers waiting for their orders to be corrected. That should have been a big red flag right there, but we were hungry and decided to go ahead and order since we'd never had a bad experience in the past. Big Mistake! So we placed our order, consisting of a chicken bacon ranch sandwich, a 4pc chicken strips, 2 orders of onion rings, and 2 sm blizzards (pumpkin pie and a salted caramel truffle). We found a seat in the corner away from the obviously sick people sitting at the front and waited for our food. Shortly our blizzards arrive, the pumpkin pie one was missing its nutmeg topping, so the guy took it back, but returned saying they were out of nutmeg. I was not told this when I ordered it and would have affected my choice. He then took our number away even though we had yet to receive our food items. So we waited, and then saw what appeared to be our order delivered to the table with the sick people. I guess the guy had given them our order number without completing our order first. Once he realized his mistake he took it from them and gave it to us. I was worried but we decided to try to eat it anyway. Now onto the meal itself. Half my chicken tenders were tough and inedible, while the onion rings were flavorless. My husbands sandwich was disgusting, with pressed chicken and bacon that tasted as if it had been soaked in cleaning solution, he didn't even get through half of it. His blizzard was okay but mine lacked pumpkin flavor on top of the missing topping. Over all we were very disappointed and will...

My husband and I went through here at the beginning of the month for a small blizzard. We've been regularly going here all summer long a couple times a week as I have a slight love for the cotton candy blizzard. But I didn't get my blizzard this time because they tried to charge us over about $2 for extra sprinkles resulting in a total of over $6, and couldn't explain why this was different than other trips where they charged us $.59 for the sprinkles.

When we asked for a breakdown of the price, the manager told us that the blizzard was $4.19 on its own and the extra sprinkles were $1.40. Still doesn't explain why the extra sprinkles over doubled in a few days difference, but even more, those two prices don't add up to over $6. When we pointed that out, the manager just reiterated over and over again, that she didn't know what to tell us.

So, I wrote corporate. What a joke. Their explanation was that the price varies from location to location due to franchise ownership. I understand that. But why can their franchise not explain the drastic price jump? That's not a difference between locations, that is something very hinky going on at one location.

I wasn't going back to that location because I feel like our price was being underhandedly raised in the hopes we didn't catch it, but even more, I won't be going back to DQ because their inability to explain the price difference shows a lack of ownership and professionalism. No thanks, I'll find something else to satisfy that ice cream craving, like, anywhere else that charges...