Free Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream! That certainly got my attention.
Free Cone Day has been a Ben & Jerry's tradition since 1979, a day when the ice-cream chain thanks its loyal customers for their support over the past year by dishing out free ice-cream to all! I think it's a nice gesture with the added bonus that it's great for PR!
I've missed the event year after year, always realising at the last minute that it was D-Day. But this time! This time I had rather providentially walked past the the promotional poster at Great World City just the week before. I made a mental note of the date, then hatched a plan with our swim mates to head over for free ice-cream after our swim session on 8 April. We picked Dempsey, thinking that it's more inaccessible location might mean smaller crowds in the middle of the afternoon.
Well, the crowd wasn't small. There were loads of students! But the queue was very well managed and there was a carnival-like atmosphere around which made the whole process more palatable. Instead of holding the event at their store, Ben & Jerry's had wisely set up shop in the open carpark behind their store, so there was plenty of space for the snacking queue, and more stations for the scoopies who were busy dishing out ice-cream. There were also plenty of helpers getting folks to pose with props and being around to ensure that the queue was kept moving. Thumbs up on a well-run event!
We made it to Free Cone Day!
That's me, the 1st year Cone Newbie. They handed out stickers to everyone, from 1st year Cone Newbies to 2nd Year Scoop Rockers, up to 6th year Moo Masters and 8th year Resident Gurus!
Donation boxes were strategically placed to collect donations for Ben & Jerry's charity partner, The Children's Charities Association of Singapore.
We stood in line for about half an hour before we got to the front of the queue. In that time, we had plenty of time to contemplate the all important question of which flavour we were going to get. I was pleasantly surprised to see that pretty much the full menu of scoop shop flavours were made available, though the the downside to going later in the day was that about half of the flavours had run out. They were out of New York Superfudge Chunk (my favourite flavour!!) and in fact, all chocolate-based flavours like Chocolate Therapy, Phish Food and Chocolate Fudge Brownie. In the end, I opted for their newest flavour Couch Potato, a vanilla ice-cream with a salty caramel swirl and chocolate covered potato chip clusters. It was surprisingly good! The kids wolfed down their English Toffee Crunch and Strawberry.
Friendly scoopies serving up our ice-cream
The little miss is well-pleased.
Even little B got in on the action, with a cone AND ice-cream in a cup!
It was a nice afternoon treat. Maybe I'll be back for my 2nd year next year!
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