Sonic Drive-In

Waited over 15 minutes for our milkshakes… no sign of anyone getting their food or drinks. Only the people in the drive thru were getting served. We ended up leaving with nothing.

I pretty much only go to Sonic for their drinks, so that’s just about all I can review. But their drinks are awesome!
First of all, there are a ton of flavors you can add to your soda. I personally enjoy Sprite with cherry, cotton candy, watermelon, or peach. You can even add Nerds. Whaaat?! I think I’ll be content with adding the sugary mixes to my drinks, but that’s pretty cool.
The service is always quick, friendly, and efficient. I think their happy hour is from 3 – 5, meaning my beloved drinks are discounted!
We’ll be back when I decided that I NEED to get my cotton candy sprite fix!

Some Sonics have fast service. Others have slow. This is one of the slower ones. Food is good though.

Honestly if I could give a 1\2 a star I would. This sonic is horrible and can’t get any order right what so ever. My fiancé and I love sonic but they make me not want to come back and that’s sad. Needs new management and learn how to actually be a fast food restaurant! #annoyed

Service is terrible. I’ve been here 3 times, never pleased. First time it took 15min for a drink only order. They didn’t charge us, which was good, but also a quick way to go out of business. Better service and you won’t have to comp meals. Second time, both orders were wrong. Third, took three times for them to get the order right. And my fiancé works at a restaurant, he knows how annoying it is when people ramble or run together their words. She simply wasn’t listening. Wow. If I didn’t have a huge love for sonic, I wouldn’t have come back after the first two times. After this one, and the subpar food, we will just drive the extra miles to go to the further one.

Had Sonic when I was little and didn’t remember liking it, so I decided to give it another chance. Needless to say I don’t know what I was thinking! I got the double cheeseburger with ketchup, mustard and mayo, the fried and the jalapeño poppers. probably the best burger I’ve had since I’ve been in Columbus. Definitely going back before I leave Columbus, maybe for dinner tonight.

This location has severely gone downhill. This has been an ongoing issue for over a year. Living close to this location, we used to frequently stop. We rarely go now, as we’ve experienced unacceptable issues nearly each time we’ve decided to «give Sonic one more chance.»
The one, and only, time I used their restroom, I had to turn and walk immediately out. The light was burnt out, and I stepped in urine that was all over the bathroom floor.
One evening, around closing time, as we were waiting at the drive thru window, they were literally using a hose to spray the inside of the restaurant down. The lady, whom I believe was the manager, was so sloppily spraying the hose and sprayed water out of the window and hose water sprayed into my vehicle getting me slightly damp.
We’ve experienced a few other issues, not directly related to the food/​service, but this review is getting lengthy. The food is usually good, but the service has proven time after time to be rude, slow and incredibly unprofessional.
We aren’t ones to complain, but we have actually called corporate several times about this location. One time being today. I’ve specifically signed up for Unilocal to write this review.
My suggestion would be a total staff overhaul at this location.

I mean, what do you want? It’s fast food, granted, marginally better fast food than typical.
Food is decent and pretty reasonably priced. We got a chicken club sandwich, a foot-​long chili dog, and two styles of tatertots. All of it was acceptable, if not above average good. Total only came to about $ 12, which is average for two people eating combo meals. You get some amount of service, but that person isn’t really your server. Confusing, I know. The girl who filled this role for us was pleasant, quick, and as attentive as you can ask for at a fast food place. (Seriously, don’t forget, it’s just a different way of recieving fast food.)
Overall a good experience.

After downing some foie and picking up some booze, the only thing left to make it a perfect night was to park at Sonic, get a foot long chili cheese coney and some cheese tots and drink and drink.
Lucky for us our hotel was in the same parking lot as Sonic, so it made the 100′ drive home easy. This Sonic had pleasant night staff and the food was par for the chain. Too bad the only one in LA is 30 miles outside LA.

This chain just came to C-​bus a few years ago, and Im not sure how or why. I mean, the chain must be growing if they are able to expand, so after I tried their food, I find it hard to believe they can expand. First, who wants to eat in there car? Sure it might be a cool thing for you throw back guys from the ‘50s, but what if you want to sit down at a table to eat? No such deal here, unless you sit outside in there small dirty and noisy patio, and weather permits. And the food… burgers that are dry and bland and fries that are just as tasteless. Meh, Ill pass.

I’m a fan, think about fast food with a diner experience. They are very similar to Steak n Shake, I love their milk shakes and their tater tots. Half off shakes during certain hours. I haven’t had a bad experience. :D

A Sunny warmish Fried-​Day quick choice for lunch outdoors was a pick out of the great southwest and takes me back to my time living out in Oklahoma and Texas way. Seemed like Sonic was the epicenter of fast food and car crusing in many of these towns so I was happy to see this chain finally reach Ohio.
While this is a fast food burger chain they do have some great items that set them away from the pack. This is Tater Tot Nirvana and they offer them up hot crispy outside with a fluffy filling of tater goodness. Cherry Limeades are the perfect chaser to any meal and great for a case of cottonmouth. The burgers here are 100% beef, no slimy fillers and grilled with a goodly selection of styles to your preference.
Of course Sonic is best known for having carhop service which is always throwback fun especially when they break out the inline skates. Daily specials are offered plus Happy Hour on drinks & shakes from 2−4pm daily.
Overall this location rocked out my order in good time and is a good place for fun, fast food and def an edge over the BK/McD’s of the world.

Sonic… where have you been my whole life?! I was never lucky growing up, all we had were McDonalds and BK. After moving to Columbus, we nocticed a bunch of new chains like Rasing Cain and Sonic. Now, I have heard of Sonic… they have those commercials with those 2 guys at teh drive up window, yeah we’ve all seen them.
I love the idea of the drive up drive through, where you park your car at the menu board and sit there while you wait for some girl to bring you your food on rollar skates. It’s such a vintage idea, I like it. My hubby likes the idea that if he’s still hungry, all he needs to do is hit the button and order more food. Overall it’s convient.
The hot dog are nothing special… theyre just normal hotdogs with different things on them like chili or relish. The burgers on the other hand are fantastic. I would say they even rival Five Guys but that might be cuz I was very hungry that night. on second thought Five Guys is still better but the thought still stands; at the time I would have said it was better or at least equal in yummy-​ness. Oh yeah. and they have tatar tots, sweat potatoe tots, and chili cheese tots… so good! The icey’s always give me a brain freeze, more so then any other icy ive had. dont like that so much. Still need to try their milkshakes and I have my eye on their grilled cheese. I think my favorite part of this Sonic is the dollar deals menu. Always a bonus to add fried motz sticks for a dollar!

I go to Sonic for one thing, and one thing only — Cherry Limeade.
Now, there are two reasons why that’s all I typically get…1) I love Cherry Limeades; or 2) I CAN’T READ THE MENU AND IT’S THE ONLY THING I KNOW THEY FOR SURE HAVE!
Seriously, the menu is in the smallest font possible, it’s absolutely impossible to read!!!
But I love Cherry Limeades, so it gets 4 stars.

Hamburgers are pretty good. Tater tots are okay. Drive-​through is always a long wait. Then I get up to window and they then go get your drink.
The menu at drive-​through is too far away to read. The sign should be moved closer. Better efficiency with the drive-​through would help.
Good burgers, just the same. Not as good as Culvers.

I’ve heard so many great things about Sonic, I had to try! I got a limeade slushie and tots. The drink was awesome — real limes in the slushie! Color me shocked. The tots were fine — nothing special. I sort of wish I would have gotten a burger or something. Maybe next time.

Is Sonic a great place to get awesome, awesome food? No, of course not – it’s a fast food chain. But, the beverages are pretty rad (I dig Ocean Water right down to the ground), the tater tots have always been crispy and good when I stopped in, and it’s about as good as a Sonic gets.
Some people have talked about the slow service, and I saw that it had been taken over by new mgmt in April 2010. If the service was ridiculous before, it seems to have gotten much better – I’ve gone out of my way a few times to visit this Sonic and I’ve always, always had prompt service. The major reason I’m writing this and giving it a 4-​star, despite that it’s just a Sonic, is that I appreciate that the new management took time to read the reviews and respond to the problems. They seem to have gotten much better.

I’m from out of town.
I literally Unilocaled when I saw the Sonic sign, now I get why this site called Unilocal!You see, back in VA/​DC/​MD we constantly get Sonic commercials about delicious tots, slushies and burgers. I’ve been brainwashed by them! Sadly, I thought, there is no Sonic near the Washington DC Metro area. I even contemplated trekking down to southern Va to check one out, thank goodness I didn’t!!! So when I saw this sign, I immediately decided to try it. What disillusion! The burger has no flavor and the patty is measly. More bread than meat. The tater tots tasted stale and flavorless, like fried styrofoam. Speaking of styrofoam, their slushies/​limeades come in cheap styrofoam cups. I reached for my cup and it broke as I grasped it, wth! I know my guns aren’t that powerful! So I lost more than half my drink :(
To my fellow DC folk who have been fooled by Sonic commercials as I had been, ignore the commercials, it’s all lies! lies I tell you!
p. s. the car hop is a cute idea, if only the food were good!

Central Ohio can be a frustrating place at times, and for years I have viewed Sonic as the burger-​joint manifestation of this idea. I’ll explain.
For years we central Ohians have been subjected to Sonic commercials. Burger joints have always been able to make their fares look impossibly tempting in ads, which really is not frustrating at all when you can just drive to the end of your street and grab a crappy burger from Burger Joint X. You figure out pretty quickly that the flattened soggy «burger» in your hand looks little like the towering monument to freshocity you saw minutes ago on TV.
I wanted to believe that Sonic was different. Their ads (which taunted us for a decade when the only Sonic was an hour drive towards West Virginia) talk of things that have no place in the land of fast food. Slushies? Mmmm. Tater tots? Uh, ya! Breakfast all day? There has to be a catch right? Of course there is…
Breakfast is served all day, but tastes like it is only cooked once a day — about 20 hours before you got there. So why did you wait in the drive thru for 20 mins (no joke — there were ZERO cars in front of me on my first trip here and I still waited 15 mins)? I’m guessing Tito, my soul-​glowed rollerskating car-​hop, did not have to hand-​chisel the ice for my slushies.
Final Verdict: It’s Fast Food. Minus the Fast. Plus a little uniqueness. And Slushies.
P. S. The G.F. swears by a Sprite Slushie when hung over. Look into it.

I’ve been to Sonic several times, but this was my first trip to this location. This Sonic sprung up not that long ago, so it’s relatively new. I was really excited to have one so closeby, because I like Sonic every now and then but don’t feel like driving very far for fast food. But I have to say that this was my worst trip to Sonic so far.
I’ve always felt that while Sonic is fast food, that it was a little better quality than places like McDonald’s and Burger King. Their food just looked and tasted better. And it’s a little more expensive, but worth it. Not so tonight.
This Sonic is close, but in kind of a bad spot. It is right on Olentangy River Rd., and it shares it’s driveway with Kohl’s. If you’ve ever been there, you know that it’s kind of a weird entrance. So we get there and decide to go through the drive though. How Sonic works is that you can’t eat inside, sort of like Rally’s. But at Sonic you can pull up to a parking space with a menu and speaker for ordering and sit in your car and eat. They’ll bring the food right out to your car like was popular in the 50’s. I think it’s pretty stupid. Why would I want to sit in my car and eat if I didn’t have to? I always opt for the drive-​in option and just take my food home. But Sonic does also have some tables outside in the front. But obviously that wasn’t working for anyone in the middle of winter.
The drive-​in line wasn’t long, but we couldn’t really see the menu until we got up to the speaker because it wasn’t very big and they didn’t have any along the way so you could decide ahead of time. They have a dollar menu now, which I think is awesome, and I ordered the dollar burger, fries and a junior sundae. Healthy, I know. But I really don’t eat fast food very often. I was with my sister and her husband so together we had sort of a big order. The woman taking our order had to repeat it like 3 times. But it sounded like she got everything, so off we went to the window. It was just shy of $ 20 for all our food.
We pulled up to the window and a guy took our money and gave us our change. Then we had to wait a minute or two for our food. The first thing out was my sundae. It was so tiny! But the guy tells me that the lid just sat on the top and didn’t really shut, so I take it and hand it to my sister so I can get the rest of my food. She drops it. But she managed to save most of it and then she figured out how to put the lid on correctly. It did, in fact, snap on. Why the people working at Sonic couldn’t figure that out, I’ll never know, but that was really annoying. Then we got our bags of food. I had my sister go through the bags and make sure we had everything before we drove away. And they actually didn’t screw up our order at all! I was surprised about that. So we drove off, but didn’t get very far. Going out that driveway that’s shared with Kohl’s sucks. That stoplight never ever turns green! There was a huge line of people waiting for the light. We must have been sitting there for 5 minutes and it still didn’t turn. Finally, everybody just started turning right. We did too, and the light was still red as we drove away! So it took us a little longer to get home than usual. They really need to do something about the entrance to this place, especially now that it’s shared by 2 businesses. It’s so frustrating.
We got home and everybody started to eat. I felt bad, because I had been telling them that Sonic was really good and they’d never had it before. But this was not so good! All of our sandwiches looked so sloppy and like they were just thrown together. My burger had the smallest beef patty, and it was overcooked to the point where it was crunchy around the edges. Their dollar burger also came with just pickles, tomato, lettuce and onion. There wasn’t much flavor to it. My fries were soggy and flavorless. My sister and her husband liked their food, but weren’t too impressed by it. They each got a Bacon Cheeseburger Toaster, that had cheese and onion rings on it, too. My sister gave me her onion ring because she hates them and that was good. Their onion rings taste sweet. I like them, but I can’t eat very many of them. My sister also got tater tots and my brother-​in-​law also got a breakfast burrito and they split popcorn chicken. They liked it, but their burgers looked awful because they were so smashed and sloppy. I felt bad for suggesting Sonic. My sundae was really good. That was the only thing that I really liked, but it was just so tiny. But it was just a small version of a really quality sundae, topped with crushed Reese cups, whipped cream and a cherry. Delicious!
I think that I will go back to Sonic because I like their food from time to time, but this location was pretty bad. I’m not sure if we just happened to come on a bad night, but it was quite disappointing and my burger was just bad. Add to it that it was a hassle to get out of that place and back onto the road, and I’m pretty sure that I won’t be coming back to this Sonic again.