This Beloved Chicken Chain's Chocolate Milkshake Outshines Burger King And McDonald's

On the face of it, making a cracking chocolate milkshake shouldn't be too hard. After all, this isn't the place for subtlety or nuance. The goals are simple; a shake should be thick, creamy, sweet, and decadent, with a generous hit of chocolate. While you'd think this would be easy enough for large chains like Burger King and McDonald's to have nailed down, one chicken chain's chocolate milkshake clearly outshines those served up by the two global fast food giants. After tasting 10 fast food chocolate milkshakes and ranked them worst to best, our resident expert found that the offering from Chick-fil-A was far superior to the shakes of Burger King and McDonald's.

"The milkshake has that hand-spun consistency that's craveably dense yet still sippable," wrote our reviewer. "Instead of being syrupy or a chocolate overload, it also offers smooth and mellow chocolate notes that aren't too sweet or too artificial; they're just right." Our writer also praised the milkshake, which is made using Chick-fil-A's underrated Icedream dessert as a base, for its old-fashioned appeal, giving the whipped cream on top a special shout-out by saying, "There's just something about the way it complements a silky chocolate shake, a plain vanilla, or a fruity strawberry."

This review sharply contrasted that of the chocolate milkshakes from McDonald's and Burger King. "My Golden Arches' blend of soft serve and chocolate syrup was still only of medium thickness, at best," said our writer. "The thinner consistency makes it feel less indulgent and causes the shake to fall behind many other chains in comparison." The Burger King chocolate shake, meanwhile, looked like "a bit of a mess," noted our writer, adding that it was "far from perfectly blended." 

Our writer found Chick-fil-A's chocolate shake to be "scrumptious all around" — an opinion shared by many of the chain's fans online. Responding to a Reddit user who asked if the shakes at Chick-fil-A were any good, one fan responded with a loud, "THEY'RE SO GOOD!" while another piped up with an eloquent, "oh gosh yea." The love extends beyond the chocolate milkshake, with flavors such as cookies and cream, strawberry, peppermint, and peach all getting rave reviews online. 

Regulars also had suggestions on how to improve the shakes. "I like mixing the chocolate and cookies and cream," one Redditor wrote. Several other fans suggested adding cookies to either a strawberry or peppermint-flavored shake. Incidentally, there's a very good reason why Chick-fil-A's milkshakes taste so good. It turns out their employees have to follow strict recipes while making them, with lines marked out on the blending cups for all the ingredients.

The one complaint about the shakes that some express relates to the calorie count. "Almost every shake has over 80g of carbs per shake. Some have even more. The peppermint has 110g so that's something I always keep in mind," wrote one Redditor. While the idea of a healthy milkshake seems counterintuitive, considering it is meant to be a decadent treat, if you want a thick and creamy milkshake without ice cream, skip Chick-fil-A and make your own shake with avocados instead.