Cold Stone Creamery

Not really much better than anywhere else as far as taste. Went there last night, the place was dirty. It looked like they had not swept the floor all day, windows dirty, a real turn off. Wont be going back.

I call this place the Stale Cone Creamery. OK, so maybe they don’t have stale cones, but it is still the last place I would ever, ever get ice cream.
It’s tragic that everyone thinks Cold Stone is just soooo great because to be honest, the ice cream here is terrible. The gimmick which gets all the sales is that they make all this fancy dancy stuff happen to your ice cream and put all this excessive (cheap, crap) stuff on it to make it look like something other than ice cream. Meanwhile all the real family owned home made ice cream places go out of business and this place just keeps multiplying, advertising, and moving in to all the college campuses and shopping malls. Ugh.
I was forced to come here by some college kids (isn’t that who goes here), and did not like it at all. This was actually just a few months ago. Ugh.
I should mention, I only rate national and global chains on a scale of 1 – 2. I rate family businesses on a scale of 3 – 5. Here is why:
Would you rather support the local family ice cream shop, or the multi national corporations and the rich men on yachts in the Carribbean? Why are the parking lots of the awesome local places usually half empty (or completely empty)? Why are the national and international ice cream chains always so busy? Why can they afford to open so late and get all the TV advertising and all the prime intersection locations? Why are they taking over all the malls and college campuses? Why go and support Cold Stone, Baskin Robbins, and so on? These places have systematically and coldly taken over the national ice cream scene by using cheap ingredients, pre-​packaged frozen systematic snacks that are identical across the nation, overrated products, overpricing for everything, often rude underpaid servers, and a ridiculously expensive mass brand advertising campaign that gets inside the heads of all the kids and the 20somethings and keeps them under the illusion that if it’s not a brand name, it’s not worth visiting. They spend all the money they should be investing in good ice cream and food and service, in advertising and cornering the market — the local places can’t compete — and someday all we will be left with is the same chains serving the same drinks all over the world. That is our future. It’s the way we’re heading and you know it. Every time you eat at a bland national chain, you buy into that, you support that. Boycott chains. Support your local places. It’s an embarrassment that generic brand national chains are even listed on a proper foodie website like Unilocal,let alone getting 4 and 5 stars from so called foodies. Wake up, America, before we’re all just batteries in the matrix.