Lake Hiawatha Dairy — Restaurant in Parsippany-Troy Hills

The owner Karen would argue at length with the customer and patronize the customer rather than finding a way to make her customer happy. I’ve been getting ice cream from this place for years and I definitely will not be going back anymore. She is very unprofessional and has zero understanding of what customer service means. If you have an issue with your ice cream the whole world has to come complain about it or else she won’t believe you, because your individual experience is not respected as a customer. She literally told me that something might have been wrong with my taste buds because no one else complained and refused to even exchange my ice cream. She said I can’t expect the ice cream to taste the same every time because its handmade but what she doesn’t understand is that I never complained about it for years because a little bit of difference in flavor makes no difference to me but this time her ice cream was very different and wasn’t even the same color as usual. She refused to understand where I was coming from and just kept on arguing and arguing and refusing to exchange the product for me. She said theres no food place that will exchange food for you if you’re not happy with it and that is wrong. Not everyones customer service is as bad as hers. I used to bring a lot of family and friends here and bought a lot of their holiday cupcakes sadly she thought it was better to lose hundreds of dollars in business instead of exchanging a $10 quart of ice cream.

RESPONSE to owners response on Adeel’s review:

I feel very sorry to see that you as a business owner doesn’t understand that when a customer isn’t satisfied with your product, you shouldn’t patronize them and be unprofessional with them they deserve a better experience. You mention that you basically gave me a free full quart of ice cream between the CUP of ice cream you gave me to take home for free and the $5 off offer for the $10 quart I bought. Please stop lying. You barely gave me a kiddie scoop in the smallest cup you had. I’ve seen people give samples better than that. Both me and my spouse posted a one star review because that was the experience both of us felt. The ice cream you gave wasn’t consistent with the flavor Ive been tasting for years (without any complaint). I wasn’t planning on returning but it really was that different. You made me feel as though I bought a quart of ice cream only to eat a scoop of it and return to you. I always bought a quart from your place because thats how much I enjoyed your ice cream but thanks to your terrible attitude, we will never step into your place again. You made me feel bad for genuinely asking you for an exchange. Ill post a pic to show how much of the quart I actually consumed before I brought it back to you. The quart I bought clearly only has pink ice cream with lines of blue usually your ice cream has an equal amount of pink and blue. The sample you gave for me to test afterwards was mint green and pink. You said go home taste this and then call me, when i called you and told you that the quart you gave is very different from this, you still said I cant refund or exchange. You kept arguing with me and not wanting to make things right even though I kept hearing someone in the back telling you differently. You seem to have an ego issue and its quite visible in your responses to all your unsatisfied customers. You would rather lose all the business a customer would love to give you instead of respecting their experience and making things right for that one...

I love supporting local businesses and most importantly I really loved their cotton candy ice cream for years but unfortunately this week I bought another quart of the same but it didn’t have the same flavor or taste as the usual. We took it back to the store to get it exchanged but the owner was very rude. She argued with my wife for about 15 mins and made her feel humiliated for asking for an exchange for a different ice cream. Instead of understanding the issue she was more focused on sticking to the fact that if she takes it back she would have to admit that there is a possibility of it not being the same and. Long story short, she didn't exchange the product and offered 50% off on the next purchase. It seemed to me that she rather keep the $5 worth of ice cream than a long time customer. I will not be visiting the store until this issue is fully resolved. Once again, I do love their cotton candy ice cream and used to drive for almost an hour from Woodbridge for it until i moved to Lake Hiawatha.

RESPONSE to owner:

The reason I posted the review is because I am the one who was very disappointed by the ice cream.

I was still hoping for a solution to the issue not a justification and also wanted to point out the lack of customer service on your end. I wish you the best of luck and hope other don’t have to go through the same experience. May be you will take a moment to realize and learn from...

Icecream is absolutely wonderful. A bit pricey but then again it is New Jersey so it understandable. My only complaint is the workers behind the counter always look judgmental or upset to help customers. For the past few years I’ve been going here it seems as if they hire younger girls which is not a problem but it seems like they need a little bit of help to learn how to talk to customers. Lots of eye rolls, annoyed voices, talking in the back. almost every time we have come, there have been what looks like too many employees at a time. Only two or three are actually helping or doing things. The other two or three stand around and look a little lost, bored, or upset there are people in there. I do love the ice cream at this dairy, but the employees make me feel unwelcome and I wonder if they make others feel this way too. Given this is a part time job for them and maybe their first job, they don’t need to be held to crazy standards which is more than understandable, and perhaps given the benefit of the doubt, they may have been having a bad day or been stressed out. They seem like nice people, and I definitely am not trying to attack any individual, but as a whole they should be trained on how to better deal with social situations...