Maryellis Bunn on Scaling Creativity with the Museum of Ice Cream

“One of my firm belief systems is that curiosity and imagination are directly correlated. One of the things I learned very early on in my career is that as children, curiosity is at the helm.”

At four in the morning, covered in paint and running on no sleep, Maryellis Bunn got into a New York City cab expecting a quiet ride home. Instead, she looked up at the taxi TV and saw something she couldn’t quite process, news coverage announcing the launch of the Museum of Ice Cream.

At that point, the “museum” wasn’t even finished. She and her team were still building it by hand, figuring out operations in real time, and preparing for what they assumed would be a small, experimental pop-up. The growth, hundreds of thousands of signups and rapid expansion, came from building something tangible quickly and putting it into the world, not from a long-term plan.

That approach: starting with imagination, but grounding it in execution, has shaped every stage of the Museum of Ice Cream’s growth. From testing pop-ups before committing to permanent locations, to designing experiences people naturally want to share, to scaling a team while staying close to the product, each decision has been intentional.

In this episode of Entreprenista, we sat down with Maryellis Bunn, the founder and co-CEO of the Museum of Ice Cream. Inspired by a childhood belief that dreams could become reality, she launched the Museum of Ice Cream as a pop-up in New York City in 2016.

After quickly becoming a viral sensation, the museum has now expanded to multiple permanent locations worldwide, including a new location opening in Miami this September. This new location will feature interactive exhibits themed around Miami, continuing Maryellis's mission to foster human connection through the joy of ice cream. Tune in to hear how the first Museum of Ice Cream pop-up was created DIY-style in only 18 days, Maryellis's thoughts on the importance of hiring to the company's mission and values, and why she believes in leading by example during challenging times.

You can listen to the podcast here on Spotify and Apple Podcast.

Here are a few moments from the podcast:

The idea started long before the business, with a question she couldn’t shake:
“As a child, there was always a belief system that dreams could become a reality. And a lot of the foundational ideas and the experiences that we have within the Museum of Ice Cream were ideas that I had as a little girl.

As I grew up, I kept asking myself why the things that lived in my imagination didn’t exist in the real world.

I started thinking about whether I could build a business that made those ideas something other people could actually experience.”

The first version wasn’t a polished launch, it was built entirely by hand:
“That 18-day build was one of the most rewarding and challenging things I’ve ever done. When I say we built it, we were literally putting up walls, painting, running around New York trying to find used freezers.

We were building operations while also doing customer service. There were hundreds of thousands of people emailing us, and I was the one responding saying we were sold out.

It was a combination of building something tangible with our own hands and creating something that felt within reach.”

What looked like overnight success was actually a moment of disbelief in the middle of chaos:
“I hadn’t slept, I was in the same clothes for 10 days straight, and I got into a cab at four in the morning.

The taxi TV turns on and suddenly it says, ‘Museum of Ice Cream is coming to New York City.’ I honestly thought I was hallucinating.”

Scaling didn’t start with permanence, it started with testing and learning:
“If you're building something digitally, you can go and change it two seconds later. Once you lay and pour the concrete, it's there for good. So we strategically decided to build popups as a way of learning. How can we build something, understand what our guests feel inside these spaces, and then have an opportunity later on to change it based on that feedback. And so I, early on, people really thought we were synonymous with this pop-up craze or really built this pop-up economy in the backend.

We built a series of six popups: there was different lanes in which we wanted to test, LIKE what's the best use of space? How do you throw people through it? What's the right amount of food that we should serve? What's the right ratio between staff and guests? 

By the time we built our first flagship, we had seen nearly a million people come through and had data to actually inform what we were building.”

One of her biggest mindset shifts came from understanding curiosity:
“One of my firm belief systems is that curiosity and imagination are directly correlated.

One of the things I learned very on early on in my career is that as children, curiosity is at the helm. They ask anywhere from a hundred to 2000 questions a day, whether that's like, why is the middle of the sunflower yellow or why is the sky blue? And we've built a construct of society in which those questions no longer ask because we've become one of acceptance.

And I always try to lead my team with an idea: why can't we just re-question this? Or maybe we can make the reality a little bit different than we might see it today, and give them the autonomy and affordance to actually build that. And that's what not only breeds our mission, but allows us to live it out each day.”

You might also like:

• Scaling Strategies to Elevate Your Business with Carlyn Bushman 
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• Optimizing and Scaling Your Business with Tylar Brannon‍
• Tamara Munoz Builds Systems That Scale Without You

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Connect with Maryellis:

• Maryellis Bunn - Figure8 | LinkedIn

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Updated on: May 1, 2026