I visited the stand alone store in Sister Bay a few days ago and had a wonderful experience. The young man behind the counter was very pleasant and helpful. I informed him that I had a severe peanut allergy and I asked if he could get a new scooper before scooping my ice cream. He told me that he used the same scooper for all of the ice creams but that he could wash the scooper off with anti bacterial soap a few times to get rid of any peanut ""residue"" that was on the scooper. Really, this doesn't get rid off all of the contaminants, but at least the staff member was willing to help.\r
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I visited the base store in northern Sister Bay this afternoon. At the base store I was EXTREMELY dissatisfied with the service. My husband ordered his ice cream cone and all was fine. Then, before I ordered my cone, I informed the girl behind the ice cream counter that I had an allergy to peanuts. I asked her if she could get a new, clean ice cream scooper to scoop the ice cream that I wanted. She told me, ""I can rinse the scooper off"". I told her, ""No, I would need a clean scooper that hasn't been used in peanut ice cream at all."" She said, ""The best I can do is rinse it off."" I was really caught off guard by this especially after having such a positive experience at the stand alone store in southern Sister Bay. Had we known that we would have encountered such a response, we would not have ordered the first cone to begin with. Thinking back on the situation, my husband wished he would have handed his cone back to the girl behind the counter and said, ""No thank you. I don't want this cone either"". Instead we were stuck with one of us having an ice cream cone, the other one not having a cone, and on top of that we received poor customer service. These days there are so many kids and adults with peanut allergies that I feel it would be beneficial for this store and its business if they would consider educating their staff about allergies and coming up with some solutions to how they can provide some sort of service to those customers with nut and peanut allergies. Unfortunately, rinsing off an ice cream scooper is just not good enough. I was completely shocked at the ignorant responses from this staff member compared to the response I received from the staff member at the stand alone store. \r
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I visited another local ice cream parlor in Ephraim yesterday (Wilsons). The experience I had there was completely different than at your store. After informing the staff about my allergy to peanuts, they got a brand new scooper to use, opened a fresh, new box of waffle cones, and even went into the freezer to get a fresh, brand new tub of the ice cream I was ordering. They made sure that there was no possible way I could have had any peanut contamination in my ice cream, whether it was from contaminated scoopers or a bucket of ice cream that could have been contaminated from prior use.\r
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As a result, and due to health and safety concerns, I will never be going to the Door County Ice Cream Factory stores again and I'm going to suggest that my friends and family, who visit Door County every summer, do not come to these stores either. \r
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We'll continue to go to Wilson's and we like their ice cream better anyway. At Wilsons you get a huge, double scoop of ice cream in a waffle cone for $5.00. At Door Co Ice Cream Factory you get one scoop in a waffle cone for $4.20. Our vote is for Wilsons!
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