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You have ice cream when you feel happy, you have ice cream when you feel sad. You have ice cream when you’re outside in the blazing heat, you have ice cream when it’s freezing outside and you’re tucked up in front of the TV. But do you know the origins of ice cream? There are many types of ice cream, but only one “correct way” to make ice cream.
Ice cream has been used as a celebration, but did you know that ice cream killed people, many people?
At Bompas & Parr’s exhibition in the British Museum of Food (SCOOP: A Wonderful Ice Cream World), you can discover all this. But not in the conventional way you’d have thought…
Bompas & Parr are the brains behind some of the most spectacular food you will ever have seen. From Gin Clouds to an Outdoor Spa Bompas & Parr expand your mind and challenge what you conventionally think of as food. In what is only the British Museum of Food’s second exhibition the Etonian duo have taken over the King’s Cross location.
Bompass & Parr’s SCOOP: The Wonderful Ice Cream World at the British Museum of Food | Lick & Learn
TEXTBOOK GUEST EXPERIENCE
There are a few certain checkpoints to look out for when assessing the guest experience, our Guest Experience 101 blog series helps identify them, and SCOOP hit them all.
The Guest Flow – it’s so important to get your guest flow right. How are you going to control how many visitors see your attraction? How are you going to control if they actually see the attraction at all?
SCOOP set the whole exhibition out like a maze. Whilst the visitors were waiting for their allotted entry time they were handed a newspaper complete with Ice Cream related news and a map of the Wonderful Ice Cream World. What comes after the “Shock of Ice”? The “Sublime Banquet” of course!
Learn the history of ice cream at SCOOP, including how the Victorian’s made it
The sights, the smells, the feels. Typically of a Bompas & Parr exhibition, the decor was opulent. But as was the story. A wall of ice cream smells gave you the taste of early ice cream (I can see why rye bread ice cream didn’t catch on…). Where does ice cream live? In the freezer. So it was only right that the exhibition started in a freezer.
Smelling the walls at SCOOP @ BMOF
Interactivity – we love it when an attraction can blend the physical and digital. When done right it can be that WOW moment all attractions long for. SCOOP blended it with their IP partnership…
IP Partnership – You don’t need an IP (Intellectual Property) to create outstanding guest experience, but it can be the flake in your 99. Bompas & Parr collaborated with Ben & Jerry’s to create a headset that can detect how your brain interprets taste.
Free stuff – Everyone loves free stuff. It adds an element of generosity to an event, and when the free stuff is a surprise it can elevate the guest’s experience to the next level. I was expecting a taste of ice cream, not the copious amounts I received – including glow-in-the-dark ice cream.
Lick the sky at SCOOP, or lick the Glow-In-The-Dark ice cream. Choices.
As if all that ice cream wasn’t enough, their guest flow was positioned in such an optimal way that we ended up at the Conehenge Cafe. More ice cream anyone?
SCOOP WAS COOLER THAN COOL, WHAT’S COOLER THAN BEING COOL? ICE COLD!
SCOOP wasn’t your ordinary museum exhibition – a ice cream exhibition would have probably been really popular regardless – but with Bompas & Parr it was otherworldly. For an hour or so on a Saturday afternoon I experienced ice cream in so many ways. I’m now following Bompas & Parr on every social media platform imaginable.
The vast collection of Robin & Caroline Weir’s ice cream postcards
You can check out SCOOP: A Wonderful Ice Cream World at the British Museum of Food until the 30th September, but Bompas & Parr events and installations are popping up all over the place so keep an eye out.
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Photo credit: Hannah Foster (she really likes museums)
