Many businesses are getting into the festive mood by offering seasonal menu items as the holiday season draws near. This year, peppermint, a seasonal staple, is featured in Wawa’s recently announced Christmas milkshake, the Peppermint Bark Milkshake.

If you enjoy the taste of peppermint, you’ll love Wawa’s Peppermint Bark Milkshake, which has a powerful, refreshing mint flavor along with hints of vanilla throughout each sip. The colorful shards of crushed peppermint undoubtedly bleed bright color into the pint, creating delightful ribbons of pink. The combination of vanilla and mint prevents the peppermint from overwhelming the other flavors and giving off that harsh, artificially minty flavor that peppermint-based ice cream frequently has.

Even though Wawa made a taste-worthy effort, I wasn’t a big fan of the presentation. I even had to order a new milkshake and ask the staff to make it more presentable. Not that I think every dessert needs to be Instagram-worthy, but this shake appears to be a deflated, unhappy rendition of the item depicted on the menu board, something I didn’t expect.

The sprinkles were delightful since they were actually made of crushed candy cane, which is good news. The bad news is that my shake’s sprinkles were thrown on recklessly, making it less aesthetically pleasing. When it was served to me, the whipped cream was already quite warm and melting, making it difficult to hold the candy cane garnish in place.

This shake was good. Even while it still tasted semi-decent, it fell short of the menu board’s descriptions, which unavoidably caused some mild disappointment. Wawa’s Peppermint Bark Milkshake doesn’t even deserve to be in the running given the competition from other businesses’ recently announced Christmas flavors. I believe there is much opportunity for improvement with this dessert and that incorporating higher-quality ingredients would make it a smashing success.