Recently, Bouwens van der Boijecollege in Panningen wanted us to come and scoop ice cream on the last day of their school year.

But there were 2 little problems:

• they wanted it on the busiest day of the year; all our ice cream carts were already scheduled
• they wanted to scoop over 1,000 ice creams in 5 quarters of an hour, for which we normally need 3 ice cream carts

Since we just didn't have those 3 carts available, the following idea was born out of necessity:

• we could deploy the Polar Bear, our scoop ice cream display case and our demountable care trolley, such that there could be 3 serving areas
• we could deploy 1 ice cream man. Some teachers would help with scooping
• we would only scoop vanilla and strawberry, which is faster than the normal 4 flavours

As many as 10 teachers arrived as volunteers, who were given a crash course in ice cream scooping by our ice cream man.

The scooping itself became an unexpected success. Pupils loved getting ice cream from a teacher and whole conversations ensued while scooping. And of course, this meant that the scooping speed was not very high, but as two teachers scooped together at each distribution point, overall productivity was sufficient. And the more than 1,000 ice creams could be scooped away in an hour and a half.

All in all, an approach that more schools could use.