I worked briefly at a Friendly's restaurant while in college (many years ago) and it pretty much put me off soda fountains / ice cream for life. I like my ice cream out of a Dreyer's tub from my own freezer, thank you. And it's $5 for a half-gallon, not $5 a cone.

This is a country where people routinely spend $5 on a cup of coffee or an ice cream cone "because I'm worth it," drive $40,000 SUVs that need $75 worth of premium gas per fill-up "because I need it," then get their homes foreclosed "because I'm broke."

Hmmm...ice cream...I am drooling just thinking about it :) and cold stone, whew. That's rich. But I guess to enjoy that goodness you have to endure singing teenagers, some of them want to be singing and twirling a spatula around, and some of them dread it. But regardless, personally, its worth it.

for me
1. soft serve ice cream, like carvel
2. traditional frozen custard
3. hard ice cream (dont care for it at all really, unless its on top of something at a restaurant)

and i only get chocolate, or vanilla with sundae/at restaurant, so the whole "10 billion flavor" thing has no appeal for me. coldstone and ben and jerry's definitely go for the weird combinations---peanut butter cherry pie anyone? :D and baskin robbins is starting to go that route as well it seems.

You can also use higher quality ingrediants and increase the butterfat content.

coldstone i don't get.
it's like a cheap marble slab imitation.
marble slab rocks my world...but i don't go very often--doesn't go hand in hand with my svelte figure. :D

We used to always make it a point to go to Cold Stone every time we were in Las Vegas back when there weren't very many of them around. Now there's a Cold Stone in my town and I go there maybe once a year. It's good, but there was something about the novelty factor that was a big appeal for me. I'd rather have a pint of Haagen-Dazs at home.

Sir,

Do they also have real country ham? If so, I might have to make a several hundred mile detour one of these days.

As long as people are paying it, they aren't charging too much. I don't get it either, but apparently lots of people do, I've never seen one empty.

The €4 or the £2.50 cup of coffee are not uncommon.

I'm not a fan of Coldstone...give me Ben and Jerry's anyday...

In Australia we have Cold Rock ice creamery- must be one of those international franchising or patent issues, but it sure looks like the same kind of stuff!
But then I prefer Baskin Robbins anyway.....! :)

This is true. You can forget about getting ice cream in there when colleges are out for spring break, break, etc. or summer weeknights. I mean kids are just in there like locusts.

You've never seen that before? Baskin-Robbins had bubble gum ice cream back in the early 80's. There were even pieces of bubble gum mixed in with the ice cream as an, um, "post-dessert snack." :p If I ate that now, I'd probably puke.

Cold Stone is the most common franchise in Denver, but Mrs. Swede and I prefer Maggie Moo's.

If you want just ice cream, go to the grocery and pick up a pint. If you want a coffee ice cream with peanut butter, chocolate syrup and chocolate chip cookie dough mixed in, go to Cold Stone. It's that simple.

For a while US Airways was giving away discount coupons for
Coldstone Creamery. I gave all mine away.