5 Ohio Drive-Ins and Custard Stands Locals Rush to Visit Before They’re Closed for the Season
Sharonville’s Root Beer Stand shut its 2026 season down on September 7.
That’s a full A&W stand, running since 1957, shut down for the year.
A handful of Ohio’s other drive-ins and custard counters are still scooping and still frying.
But none of them plan to stay open much longer. These are the drive-ins and custard stands Ohioans are racing to visit before their windows close for the season.
1. Wot-A-Dog Drive-In
Wot-A-Dog Drive-In in New Carlisle runs on carhop service, a covered patio and a recipe its regulars know by heart.
Steve Prechtl reopened the stand in March 2018, two years after the previous owner closed it following the 2016 season.
He’d delivered bread to the place for a decade before that, so the coneys and the homemade root beer barely changed at all.
The recipes stayed the same.
Only the name on the sign changed.
The root beer still comes homemade, sold by the gallon jug to go.
Ribeye sliders show up now and then as a limited-time special, and they tend to disappear fast.
Wot-A-Dog’s own website spells out its season in plain terms. It typically runs March through October, depending on how long the warm weather sticks around.
That same website also carries the stand’s own Facebook updates. The latest one sets an actual date for 2026.
Hours for the rest of the season run 4 to 8 daily, Wednesday through Sunday. The stand is planning to close at the end of September if the weather cooperates.
Even the safest bet on the calendar comes with a built-in maybe.
A Closing Date Is a Forecast, Not a Promise
Wot-A-Dog and the rest of Ohio’s classic drive-ins treat a posted closing date as a forecast, not a lock.
Wot-A-Dog’s own website says so outright, listing its season as depending on how long the warm weather sticks around.
An early frost, a run on soft serve mix, or seasonal staff heading back to college in August can all move a posted date by a week or two before anyone updates a webpage.
The safest check before driving out isn’t a date from an article written earlier in the summer, or even this one.
It’s the stand’s own Facebook or Instagram post from that same week.
2. Ashland-Wooster Drive-In
Ashland-Wooster Drive-In started life in 1957 as an A&W Root Beer stand, built by Barb and Bob Fordyce with a short menu of hot dogs, shredded chicken sandwiches and homemade root beer.
The Bemiller family bought it in 1969 and ran it for fifteen years before handing it to their son Steve in 1984.
A year later, the drive-in dropped its A&W franchise, added a drive-thru window and became Ashland-Wooster for good.
Mindi and Frank Keener took over in 2021 and kept the coneys, the cane-sugar root beer and the carhop service exactly where regulars expect to find them.
Ashland-Wooster’s own site puts the 2026 season at late February through mid-November, the longest run of any drive-in on this list.
That gap is measured in weeks, not days.
One review posted on the site’s own testimonials page mentions being sad to see the season come to an end soon.
3. Frostee Shoppe
The Frostee Shoppe in Belpre has run its walk-up window and outdoor patio for more than 30 years, ever since Jack and Jean Mason opened it along the Ohio River.
John and Amber Carter took over in May 2018 and kept the shop’s homemade hot dog sauce recipe exactly as written.
Soft serve here comes with an endless list of toppings.
The shop also leans on nearly 40 student staffers pulled from schools across Belpre, Marietta and Parkersburg.
Belpre’s season opens March 1 and runs through Thanksgiving week, according to the shop’s own site.
Thanksgiving week lands a full month past Halloween.
4. Pav’s Creamery
Pav’s Creamery, a custard stand in Portage Lakes, has scooped ice cream at the same Manchester Road counter since Robert Pavlik bought the shop in 1969.
The machines behind that counter are far from new.
Pav’s Creamery says it still runs its custard through old Soeder Sons batch machines, the same type of equipment once used at Cleveland’s Euclid Beach Park.
That amusement park closed for good in 1969, the same year Pavlik bought the shop.
Butter Pecan, Banana Cream Pie and a flavor called Mudd Lake top the shop’s own list of local favorites.
Pav’s Creamery keeps its Portage Lakes counter open February through November for 2026, per its own posted hours page.
Three other Pav’s locations in Summit County stay open all year.
A fourth, in Stark County’s North Canton, does too.
Portage Lakes, the original, still closes for winter the same way it always has.
5. Frostee Shoppe, Too!
Marietta’s Frostee Shoppe location, its Harmar Hill counter, opened in 2019, giving the original Belpre stand a second home in Ohio.
The Harmar Hill location skips the walk-up-only setup for full indoor seating, a television in the dining room and a to-go counter for orders that don’t need a picnic table.
The menu still runs on the same soft serve and homemade sauce recipe as the Belpre shop, just with more room to sit down and eat it.
The Harmar Hill season wraps up October 31 for 2026, according to the same site, a full month ahead of the Belpre location downriver.
Locals here don’t get a Thanksgiving-week grace period.
Halloween is the deadline.
Psst! See how these five stands’ seasons stack up, side by side. Tap any column to sort, or search for your town.
The State’s Root Beer Stand List
Ohio’s own state tourism office keeps a running guide to the state’s classic root beer stands, sorting them by region the same way it tracks lighthouses and covered bridges.
Wot-A-Dog and Ashland-Wooster Drive-In both made that official list.
Wot-A-Dog gets its own featured writeup at the top of the page, while Ashland-Wooster is filed under the guide’s Northeast Ohio region.
Not every stand makes it.
Frozen custard counters like Pav’s Creamery and the two Frostee Shoppe locations run on the same weather-dependent calendar as the root beer stands, even though the state’s official guide never mentions a single one of them by name.
Ohio’s guide adds one practical caution too: Most of these stands take credit cards, but a handful of the decades-old walk-up windows still only take cash.
Wot-A-Dog’s own Facebook feed captured how fast one of its specials can turn over this year: A ribeye slider deal ran for about a week before the drive-in posted that the day’s batch would be its last.
A $9.95 ribeye burger took the sliders’ spot instead, still paired with the same free small float the sliders had carried all along.
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