Visitors to the Museum of Ice Cream in New York will be able to dive into a pool of plastic sprinkles, thanks to materials firm Birch Plastics.
Houston-based Birch made the over-sized sprinkles for the museum out of eight different multi-colored strand-cut pellets, President Rob Lang said. A Birch employee then drove a truck from Houston to New York to deliver the plastic sprinkles just before the site opened on July 29.
“The Ice Cream Museum called us a week before they opened in desperate need of plastic pellets that look like ice cream sprinkles. It was a strange request, but when I found out they had been turned down by over 30 companies and this sprinkle pool was the heart of the exhibit, we tried our best to help them out," said Vice President Brandon Cleary.
"We broke into production and produced eight different color matched pellets using 100 percent post-industrial recycled HDPE. Then then we post-blended them for the sprinkle effect. The challenge was they needed them delivered to New York City's Meatpacking District by Saturday. This gave use two days to pull it off, but the problem was delivering from Houston to NYC.
"We ran through the night and on Thursday at 7 p.m., we finished blending, but with no time to get a normal freight carrier to pick up. This was a real customer service challenge that all Birch Plastic employees got behind."
Birch's newest salesman, Brian Frye —who had just started with the company that week: "Stepped up and volunteered to drive them himself in a Penske box truck to make sure the Museum could open on time with their sprinkle pool complete. Brian made it there Saturday afternoon just in time and helped them get the material in the building which saved the day,” Cleary said.
The museum is a temporary exhibit that will be open until Aug. 31. In addition to the sprinkle pool, the 3,000 square-foot space features edible balloons, a chocolate room and a large collaborative ice cream sundae.
Birch is a recycling firm that recently added 30,000 square feet of space in Houston. The firm —founded by Lang in 2001 — also recently installed a twin-screw extrusion line for custom compounding projects.