The Museum of Ice Cream (MOIC) was founded by Mary Ellis Bunn and Manish Vora, who decided that New York had run out of new things to do and nothing would connect millennials with an experiential art project more than an ice cream-themed event in 2017.
Bunn said “It’s all about fun, and feeling like a kid again. Everyone loves ice cream. It’s a way to bring people together.
From her early days, Bunn was obsessed with becoming the next Disney (which she named as her only direct competitor in her late 2017 Forbes Under 30 vetting questionnaire).
At the outset, she created her own “brand book,” which dictated that everything playoff a distinct bubblegum-pink tone (Pantone 1905C).
The first Museum of Ice Cream took place from July to August 2016 in a 5,000-square-foot space in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District.
It sold out in three days after the initial press release was sent out. Smelling the sweet aroma of success, the dynamic duo behind the Museum of Ice Cream next set their sights on Los Angeles. Other locations for the museum include, San Francisco, California, Miami, and, Florida.
“I called every single broker from Tijuana to San Francisco and no one took me seriously. No one” says Maryellis Bunn, co-founder, and CEO of Figure8, the parent company of the Museum of Ice Cream, which raised a $40 million Series A round at a $200 million valuation in August. “I would call, and they’d go, ‘Oh, you’re the ice cream girl? You’ve already called us. We don’t have anything for you.'”
Eventually, Bunn and co-founder Manish Vora were able to secure a space in the gritty Arts District of Los Angeles for the spring of 2017. Tenants from nearby buildings cautioned Bunn to set her expectations low, claiming the area was a ghost town.
“They told me, ‘You might have a great business on the weekend, but no one will come here during the week. There are tumbleweeds here,'” she recalls while sitting in her New York office. “And then we sold out every single day.”
During its eight-month run in L.A., hundreds of thousands of people flocked to the Museum of Ice Cream, including celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, Kim Kardashian, and BeyoncĂ©, who broadcasted their visits with their kids to legions of social media followers.Â
“Conversations are very, very different now,” says the 27-year-old Bunn through the faintest of smiles. “Now [property brokers] are calling me and sending me flowers.”
Bunn, who’s been called the Millennial Walt Disney, says her goal is to create the kind of irresistible, whimsical experiences in the real world that you can’t get by, say, scrolling through your Instagram feed.Â
The company has reportedly made more than $10 million in sales since its inception.
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