Fast Food Chains That Serve The Highest-Quality Ice Cream

There aren't many more satisfying things in life than washing down a burger and fries with some ice cream. Something about the salty-then-sweet combo hits the spot every time. That's especially true if your meal is coming from a fast food joint: The extra salt and grease are that much better when your order also includes a hot fudge sundae or milkshake.

We're willing to fall for the allure of the occasional McDonald's or Dairy Queen treat, full of soft serve mix and additives we probably can't pronounce but taste so good. There's a reason why Dairy Queen's ice cream cones consistently rank among the best with customers: They're nostalgic and still incredibly tasty on a hot summer day. We're certainly not here to mock favorite standbys that cure a sweet tooth every now and then.

That said, some fast food chains certainly put more effort into serving higher-quality ice cream products. The ingredient lists tend to be a little shorter and typically don't include "soft serve mix" as the top item (or exist anywhere at all, actually). It should go without saying that these treats also aren't the cheapest ice cream options on a fast food menu — you won't find McDonald's vanilla cones for a dollar or two on this list. But if you're more concerned about quality ingredients and restaurants that use "real" ice cream in their dessert options, these chains can deliver what you're looking for.

This Midwestern fast food joint primarily focuses on dairy processing operations, so it's no wonder the ice cream it sells is at a premium level. Braum's operates more than 300 fast food locations in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas that celebrate the brand's rich dairy history alongside its platters of burgers, chicken sandwiches, and fries.

The chain offers breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the go, but ice cream is the focus. (So much so that an ice cream cone is even in the chain's logo.) Braum's sources all of the milk for its dairy products and ice creams from its private dairy herd in Tuttle, Oklahoma, meaning the family-run business knows exactly how the cows are fed and treated.

Braum's milk comes from cows that are fed a vegetarian diet without any antibiotics or growth hormones, and all of the dairy products (including the ice cream) are made with A2 milk, which contains proteins that can be easier to digest in some people who are more sensitive to milk that contains both A1 and A2 proteins. While you can pick up gallons of milk and half-gallons of ice cream at Braum's stores along with your dinner order, you can also enjoy some of the chain's quality ice cream on the spot. Braum's offers sundaes, ice cream cones, and milkshakes, so you can satisfy any sweet tooth you've got.

Elevation Burger is a fast food chain that is relatively small — just 36 locations and counting — and started in Maryland as a family-run business offering grass-fed organic burgers, cage-free chicken, and fries cooked in olive oil. Similar careful attention is given to its array of ice creams, which are hand-scooped for dishes or milkshakes. Though the ice creams aren't fully organic according to the ingredient list, we can give props where they're due: Elevation Burger at least openly publishes the ingredients it uses for the dessert menu. While that might seem like a fairly normal thing to do, several chains on this list give an overview of allergen information but make it incredibly difficult to find the actual list of ingredients. 

Elevation Burger uses a few stabilizers to maintain the ice cream's texture, like carrageenan, and you'll see corn syrup show up in the lists, too. But the first several ingredients are very straightforward: Milk, cream, and sugar, just like you'd expect in any real ice cream product. There's no "soft serve mix" in sight.

If you order fruit toppings like strawberries, bananas, blueberries, or mango, you'll also be pleased to know that the chain serves pure fruit products, without any added sugar or syrups. If dairy isn't in the cards for you, Elevation Burger also offers a vegan shake made with oat milk ice cream and almond milk.

If thick milkshakes are your jam, In-N-Out has you covered. The fast food chain famous for its animal-style fries and burgers has a reputation for using fresher-than-normal ingredients across its menus, which extends to its sparse but popular milkshake offerings.

In-N-Out has just three simple milkshake flavors: Vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. But the California-based chain uses real ice cream in those milkshakes instead of soft serve mix, just like the others on this list. It can be difficult to scale a commitment to quality ingredients as a chain grows, but In-N-Out seems to be figuring out how to make it happen. The restaurant now has more than 400 locations nationwide, primarily on the West Coast but as far east as Tennessee.

When we ranked In-N-Out menu items, the milkshakes fell in the middle of the pack. It's probably a matter of personal preference for the milkshake consistency and flavors. If you love a simple shake that requires a spoon at the beginning, this is probably the one for you. Since the base is real ice cream — which has less air incorporated than soft serve mix — the result tends to be a thicker, denser shake. In 2025, the chain announced it was removing artificial ingredients from a number of menu items, including milkshakes. Red dye No. 3 was phased out, high fructose corn syrup was replaced with natural sugar, and artificial vanilla was replaced with natural vanilla extract.

This Midwestern chain slinging crinkle fries and ButterBurgers — among other fast food fare — also has a cult following for its frozen custard. The real difference between ice cream and custard comes down to one simple ingredient: egg yolks. Custard has a higher percentage of egg yolks than typical ice cream, resulting in a richer, denser end product.

Culver's takes pride in its custard recipe. The Wisconsin-based restaurant chain sources the milk for its dairy products from family farms to ensure freshness, and keeps the ingredients list pretty simple. Yes, there are some stabilizers in the recipe. But kudos again go to Culver's, which makes the ingredient list easily accessible. The first six ingredients for the custard are pretty standard and very easy to understand: milk, cream, skim milk, sugar, corn syrup, and egg yolks.

There are a couple of extra things to know about Culver's custard. To maintain the right flavor and texture, custard is served slightly warmer than typical ice cream, which means your dish, sundae, or Concrete Mixer is less likely to give you a brain freeze but just as likely to take you to your sweet tooth's happy place. Most importantly, the custard is churned in small batches daily in the restaurants, so you're always getting a fresh serving of the dairy dessert.

The Freddy's versus Culver's debate is alive and well in the Midwest. Though this Kansas-based chain was founded in 2002, it has since expanded nationwide to more than 500 locations. One of the biggest reasons these franchises go head-to-head is that Freddy's dessert menu also features freshly made frozen custard instead of typical ice cream. Both chains offer base custard flavors of vanilla and chocolate with countless toppings and ways to turn those basic orders into sundaes and milkshakes.

Culver's might have an edge on Freddy's if you're looking for originality, since Culver's also offers a flavor of the day that varies by location. That said, plenty of Freddy's fans say the freshly churned custard there is hard to beat and, in their opinion, creamier than Culver's.

Regardless of personal preference, fanbases of both chains win when it comes to quality desserts — at least by fast food standards. Like Culver's, the custard at Freddy's is churned throughout the day in each restaurant. The chain reiterates that the custard starts with three main ingredients: milk, egg yolks, and sugar. Unlike Culver's, Freddy's doesn't publish its list of ingredients for the custard — just nutritional info — so it's difficult to compare. However, the restaurant has a reputation for quality that extends to its custard. In our own ranking of Freddy's menu items, a simple chocolate milkshake won out over everything else, in large part because of its intense chocolatey flavor and utterly smooth consistency.

When it comes to Smashburger, we don't have to waste our collective time wondering whether the ice cream in each hand-spun milkshake is really quality or not. The fast-casual chain that now has more than 240 locations originally set out to create a better burger than its competitors. By partnering with a well-known ice cream brand, however, the restaurants have also become synonymous with excellent milkshakes too.

Smashburger uses Häagen-Dazs ice cream as the base for the simple list of milkshakes on the menu. You can only choose from vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, and Oreo cookies & cream flavors at all locations, though some restaurants offer a greater variety. Knowing exactly what type of ice cream you're getting makes it worth the (very small) dinnertime risk to see if these shakes are worth the hype. Häagen-Dazs frequently ranks near the top of popular ice cream brands, and it's a name that's become synonymous with premium, quality ice cream over the years.

As more points in Smashburger's favor, seasonal flavors like the banana chocolate shake use real banana puree instead of artificial syrups, and the chain shares on its site that it uses whole milk to achieve the right milkshake consistency. No fillers or weird additives here, folks.

This Alabama-founded restaurant now has more than 250 locations across Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, and Mississippi, and celebrates being Southern to its core. That mindset is true for the burgers, biscuit sandwiches, and chicken, but also for the scoops of ice cream and milkshakes at Jack's.

The restaurant doesn't publicly name its ice cream supplier, though it's presumably believed to be from Mayfield, a popular creamery and ice cream brand throughout the Southeast. The best supporting evidence is that among its somewhat limited ice cream scoop menu, Jack's offers a flavor called Smoky Mountain Fudge — a flavor that's also sold by Mayfield.

Mayfield is the official ice cream supplier for the Atlanta Braves and was named the "world's best ice cream" by Time magazine all the way back in the '80s. The ice cream competition has only gotten steeper in the intervening years, but it's safe to say the brand has stuck around for its solid offerings and beloved reputation. If you're new to Jack's, longtime customers say the milkshakes are absolutely worth a stop. If you're looking for something unique in the summertime, customers swear by the lemonade shake, made with hand-scooped vanilla ice cream and fresh lemonade.

Cook Out infamously has close to 40 core milkshake flavors, and the fast food restaurant known for its burgers, barbecue, and shakes allows you to mix and match flavors, too. Purported employees share that the shakes start with an ice cream base and whole milk, then customers can add any of the numerous available flavors.

Several reviews say the milkshakes are incredibly thick, with a rich and creamy texture. You can choose your own adventure when it comes to the straw versus spoon choice here, but it could be more effort if you're going the straw route. When we ranked each Cook Out milkshake, flavors like Oreo Mint, Orange Push-Up, and Cheesecake came out on top.

Other flavors are more controversial, but provide extra freshness points in Cook Out's favor. Take the chain's seasonal watermelon shake, for example. It's exactly what it sounds like: fresh watermelon pieces blended with vanilla ice cream. It's typically only available during the peak of summer in July and August, and while a waterlogged melon mixed with ice cream might not sound like something you need this very minute, scores of Cook Out fans would beg to differ.

Potbelly is best known for its line of toasted sandwiches and started in Chicago before expanding throughout the Midwest and beyond. Though most people stop in for a generously portioned sandwich chock-full of deli meat, the hand-dipped ice cream that goes into the chain's simple line of milkshakes is a welcome bonus.

On Reddit, a former Potbelly employee says the milkshakes were at one time made with Dean's vanilla ice cream, whole milk, and then other toppings for desired flavors. Dean's, the largest dairy producer in the country, filed for bankruptcy in 2019 and was bought by a dairy co-operative, Dairy Farmers of America. The brand underwent some changes and is now called Dean's Country Fresh, but is still available through some retailers. It's unclear whether Potbelly continues to use Dean's products following the bankruptcy, but either way, it's clear the restaurant does use hand-dipped ice cream in its milkshakes instead of a shake mix.

Another employee shares that a key component of Potbelly's shakes is the use of a milkshake machine to hand-spin each one — the machine creates the ultra-light, creamy texture that's difficult to achieve with a regular blender.

Shake Shack goes the extra mile to make sure that the "shakes" in its name live up to the hype. While diners can stop in and enjoy a perfectly great meal without ordering frozen custard or a premium milkshake, it's difficult to know why they would.

Shake Shack offers scoops of vanilla and chocolate custard or a variety of milkshakes with a lot more creativity. (For a limited time, Shake Shack is currently offering a K-Shack Spicy Caramel shake, featuring a vanilla base swirled with a sweet and spicy gochujang caramel sauce.) Regardless of what you choose, the frozen custard bases are made in-house daily and use ingredients like real cane sugar and cage-free eggs. Core flavors like vanilla and chocolate are never made with high fructose corn syrup, though the chain says some seasonal shakes might include it. Though the Shack doesn't readily post its ingredient lists, it attests on its U.K. site that all custards are made with pasteurized milk, cream, cane sugar, and egg yolks.

Zaxby's, which is most popular in Georgia and known for its chicken, delighted fans when it permanently brought milkshakes back to the menu after a seven-year hiatus. The chain reintroduced a limited run of milkshakes in Macon, Georgia, in 2024, featuring four core flavors made with whole milk, real sugar, and real whipped cream. In 2025, the milkshakes permanently returned to menus across all Zaxby's locations — totaling almost 1,000 spots across the nation.

The franchise's menus still feature those four core milkshake flavors: vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, and birthday cake — the chain's iconic shake that includes freshly baked cake, sprinkles, and buttercream mixed directly in the hand-spun treat. Other specialties come and go, including flavors like banana pudding and peaches and cream.

In a Reddit post, one Zaxby's fan says the birthday cake shake tastes just like they remembered it — clearly, the nostalgia factor is high. Some customers complain about the $5 price tag, but most say the size is big and hard to finish in one sitting. "They're quality compared to most fast food places," another commenter on Reddit shares. "The Bday Cake shake is totally worth it imo when taking in the quality and quantity factor."

This Colorado-based burger joint, like several others on the list, specializes in premium frozen custard rather than regular ice cream. There seems to be a trend there, at least when it comes to using quality ingredients for cones and milkshakes. Good Times is known for its flavorful burgers, but for the truly indulgent sweet treat, the chain's custard is top-notch. The custard base that's used in all flavors couldn't be simpler, and actually meets the standard of being "all natural." According to the ingredient list, you'll only find milk, cream, sugar, egg yolks, and Grade A milk powder as the starting point for all of Good Times' frozen custard.

The chain offers cups, cones, and pints of its frozen custard, along with super-thick Spoonbenders that include other flavorful combos. (We're over here eyeing up the Strawberry Cheesecake Addiction and Caramel Toffee Crunch options, since it's hard to choose just one.)

If your furry companion is often your dinnertime guest, Good Times offers something for them, too. The Pawbender features the brand's all-natural frozen custard topped with dog biscuits and peanut butter.

Though it can be tricky to judge one quality bowl of ice cream from the next, there were a few key parameters to determine which restaurants ended up on this list. First, the fast food chains needed to have several locations (the lowest number was between 30 and 40 stores, though most on this list were at least regional companies with hundreds of restaurants). The chains also needed to serve other food besides ice cream and desserts. (For example, Andy's Frozen Custard in the Midwest gets a lot of love from its fanbase, too, but the chain only serves sweet treats, not meals.)

Quality can technically be subjective, since customers sometimes consider factors like price, taste, and other aspects alongside the actual ingredients to determine whether a product is high quality. To keep things as simple as possible, we focused on ingredients, the menu's overall sentiment of "quality" with customers online and in reviews, and how transparent restaurants were about the sourcing of their in-store desserts. Restaurants definitely earned bonus points if they made it easy to find ingredient lists to confirm what actually goes into each product on the menu.