Dairy Mart — Restaurant in Washington

I have been coming here for over 3 decades. The last couple years the service and quality of experience has gone down. The employees now are just rude and do not care at all. I went on Sunday evening recently and waited around 45 minutes. They were under staffed and slow. The drive thru and walk up windows had huge lines. If you order a large snickers shake it is just a little bigger than the small size of a few years ago. The service size across the board has gone down while the price goes up. Extra large cones are the previous medium. I have a lot of fond memories here. I am unfortunately going to find somewhere else. Poor service, small servings, higher prices = bad value. If they would step up I would gladly come back. I feel like their answer is the same for all the negative reviews. Maybe they should plan better and staffing wouldn't be such a issue. They have been doing this a long time. The school schedule is the same. Also, one of the main issues is the shrinking serving size. Has nothing to do with staffing. I personally would rather pay a little more and get a more ice cream. Let me clear: I would love to be a regular customer again. Nothing against them. Just currently a terrible value. If somebody cared it could be fixed. Update: Yotty's in Kalona is what Dairy Mart used to be. Very friendly staff and great portions for a great price. Their cones are are very well done and their blizzards have tons of toppings mixed in. Their blizzard cups are a touch small but much better...

This place has been in business for a long time and the new placement of the highway has not slowed down business a bit. They have so many different flavors of shakes, sundaes and Cyclones, and combinations that cannot be found anywhere else. They also sell sandwiches and meals through a window. Today, I had red raspberry shake and my son had a vanilla sundae. Delicious! Next time I will either try the butter pecan sundae or a chocolate peanut butter Cyclone. There are plenty of places to sit in the sun, picnic tables and a gazebo, surrounded by flowers and neatly trimmed bushes. My kids used to enjoy doing somersaults down the hill there after eating their ice cream. I just wish they had inside seating so they could stay...

Very disappointed with the service. It wasn't that busy, so we parked along the south side of the building. My wife went to the front to wait in line... only one family ahead of her. As I sat in the car, and watched, and waited. Took 20 minutes before our order was taken, and almost 10 more minutes, for the one girl working the window, to get the order served. All we ordered were ice cream items. While all of this was going on I watched 5 other cars go through the drive-through, where two girls were working. In the moments of free time, they would disappear to the back of the store, and left the one girl to manage the front windows alone. Any one of the other staff could have seen the customers standing out front waiting...