3 Likes
Wow! Thanks!
Given that Arby’s has its “Nihilist Arrby’s” Twitter campaign, I’m going with an abundance of surreal humor?
1 Like
Maybe it comes out if you eat too much red meat — I could see it? Even when I ate that kind of stuff a little more often, I always felt like Arby’s was like making a deal with the Devil.
2 Likes
Wait - what was the worst? Forgive my ignorance.
1 Like
I’ve seen DQ commercials but never an actual restaurant.
Ypsilanti, Michigan has one. The place is the size of a barn!
2 Likes
Pretty sure Broken Chains has made an appearance in these pages before…
2 Likes
Huh. Maybe they were scattershot in what states they made it into past the midwest, as I can’t find any evidence they made it to California. Though perhaps they did and I was just unaware of them, as I’ve never paid much attention to fast-food chains besides taking pains to avoid them.
Their logo and branding look like an auto parts store. On the other hand, “Rax” sounds like it could be an off-brand Hooters.
2 Likes
Fun fact: Dairy Queen and A&W both died out in the US decades ago, but are stronger than ever in Canada. Both franchises basically “relocated” in their entirety sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s. It’s not clear to me why- maybe the Canadian branch of the companies were better operated, or franchise laws worked better? I don’t know, but I’m glad for it because I love both.
4 Likes
dairy queen is still an ongoing enterprise here in the south and southwest. i live in texas which has almost one-sixth of the currently operating dairy queens. there are around 4000 in the states and around 600 of them are in texas.
6 Likes
Yup. There are ten or so in my city. Maybe DQ abandoned some parts of the US, but not all. And they’re not just in North America.
Useless trivia/fun facts: Chinese Dairy Queens prominently feature pictures of banana splits, but don’t actually serve them. They also have many pictures on the walls of people enjoying the tasty treats. Every single person of African background. I have no idea why.
7 Likes
The A&W in Dexter, Michigan never closed. They just opened a new store in Fowlerville, MI a couple years ago. Mr. Kidd has been going to the A&W in Monroe for lunch on the regular while he’s been working down there.
In addition to the sit-down DQ in Ypsi, there’s a more traditional walk-up, and at least two more in Ann Arbor.
They never went away, but did severely contract for a good decade or so.
5 Likes
Your mentioning A&W reminded me of Stewart’s. I was stunned to learn they are still operating. The one closest to the town where I grew up closed decades ago:
4 Likes
I’ve got one guess:
4 Likes
It is certainly not as if racism hadn’t occurred to me. I just don’t get the association with ice cream. (From what I’ve seen and heard, DQs outside the US are almost all about the ice cream, very little else on offer.)
3 Likes
We saw an A&W north of San Rafael just a few weeks ago and there’s a couple in my home town in central California. And we stopped at one in Idaho two years ago, somewhere between the Utah border and Idaho Falls. Dairy Queen is still operating in SoCal, too.
1 Like
Now, I’m confused. I thought you were saying those images were just of banana splits, not all ice cream. The fact that they don’t even serve banana splits made it seem worse.
3 Likes
Oh, sorry. I accidentally created the illusion of an overly strong connection between the two different image sets.
The banana split pictures were nice glossy advertising type images with no one eating them (as I recall).
The pictures of people showed them eating ice cream treats of various kinds. Don’t know if banana splits were among them, but probably not as I think they were generally eating things you could easily hold in your hand, like cones and shakes.
2 Likes
