He asked the group to choose “ice cream names” instead, flavors and toppings written on a nametag. Then he told the group to forget those names, at least for the next half hour, as the troubles of the outside world vanished within the universe of sprinkles and candy. “Getting folks out, into real space, playing, laughing, smiling, eating ice cream together … interactive entertainment is what we’ve always been focused on.”īut after so many months of harsh reality, could we really go back to pretending it all away?Īt the museum, Vora gathered visitors in a semi circle, a technique he learned from docents at the Whitney, and asked for names. Fans can also buy Museum of Ice Cream merch, like T-shirts, water bottles, and decorative pins, but those products are exclusively available at museum locations. There were digital ice cream classes and experience kits during the height of the pandemic, but those were primarily to “keep our team working and engaged with our community,” Vora explains. Forbes reported a retail partnership with Target was abandoned in 2020. The company launched direct-to-consumer ice creams sold through Goldbelly in May 2020, and it began selling its pints through a retail partnership at 14,600 Lawson stores in Japan in June 2021. The business model of the Museum of Ice Cream did shift in response to the pandemic, Vora says, but only slightly. Online retail grew 26 percent in 2020, topping $4.2 trillion. It was time to prioritize utility over experience: E-commerce wasn’t just easier, it was necessary. This summer, more than a year into a global pandemic that has killed more than 600,000 Americans, that era felt far, far away. In the tightly controlled world of experiential retail, everything could be perfect. We could buy it in a bottle, or we could at least photograph it for everyone else to see. Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood proved fertile testing ground, every block reinforcing the promise that our lives could be curated just as carefully as a store window: the glimmering perfection of Glossier’s 2016 arrival, the fragrant landing of Goop Lab in 2018, the embrace of direct-to-consumer at Showfields in 2019. It offers an escape to a better place, and through that escape, it drives sales. Venture dollars poured into “the experience.” An experience is immersive. The competition-a race to build the next swimming pool of sprinkles-was on. E-commerce brands stood to benefit from noteworthy brick-and-mortar spaces too, increasing brand awareness and distribution. Consumers would emerge from their apartments, retailers discovered, if only you gave them a reason to. “At no point did we ever waver in the knowledge that we bring joy.”ĭuring the heyday of the Museum of Ice Cream, its lines wrapped around New York city blocks, and Bunn was heralded as the “ Millennial Walt Disney.” Launched in 2016, the Museum of Ice Cream’s approach to wowing consumers-meticulous design, interactivity, celebrity approval-felt like a revelation for retailers losing market share to Shopify and Amazon. “There was never a moment that I didn’t believe in the mission,” Vora says. In aggregate, 30,000 tickets at $39 a pop were sold for opening weekend across both locations, according to the company. The New York location is beginning to see pre-pandemic ticket sales, Vora says, and the company opened two new locations this summer in Singapore and Austin, Texas. (Vora disputes this reporting, Bunn was not available for comment.) The Museum of Ice Cream’s flagship location in New York was closed from March through September of 2020 as the pandemic swelled its San Francisco location closed permanently in July 2021. Reporting by Forbes, which included interviews with 20 former employees, painted the picture of a startup on the brink of collapse-not just from COVID-19 related challenges, which Vora calls “catastrophic”-but from a corporate culture of fear and intimidation led by co-CEO Maryellis Bunn. Once the weekend dalliance of celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Beyonce, ticket sales for the company’s “experiums,” elaborate mazes of ice cream themed spectacles, evaporated overnight. It’s been a tough year for the Museum of Ice Cream.
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