The Soft-serve Ice Cream Machine has Improved Life at State College

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The Soft-serve Ice Cream Machine has Improved Life at State College

When students returned to State College after Christmas vacation, they found a new entity in the Marriott. In the southern corner of the rust tiled dining room—inconspicuous yet bright like the last present under the Christmas tree—stood a stainless steel, soft-serve ice cream machine.

Like it or not, the students had known the machine was coming. As much as they had loved their scoop-it-yourself ice cream freezer with its vast selection of hard ice creams and sherbets, they had accepted the fact that change was inevitable—that a mechanized, stylish, and expensive contraption would replace their bicep-pumping scoop system. So when the Taylor-brand Self-Service machine became part of the campus community, only two questions remained: would soft-serve live up to its more solid predecessor? Would a McDonald’s-like cone be worth a daily trek through the maze of tables and plastic-padded chairs to the uninhabited fringe of the Marriott?

The problem with such questions is that there are no clear “yes” or “no” answers. While the soft-serve machine certainly has its advantages, it also has its faults. We know, for example, that the flavor choices under the graduated scoop ice cream system far surpassed the selection currently available from the soft-serve machine. Under the old system, at least six different flavors of ice cream ranging from peppermint candy and mint chocolate chip to peanut-butter chocolate chunk and rainbow sherbet were available every night, and the Marriott staff faithfully replenished them each time the two-gallon canisters became empty. Now, under the soft-serve system, only two options are available—ice cream in vanilla or choc...

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.... No longer can someone’s hair fall into the freezer as they lean over it to select their ice cream flavor. No longer can someone’s dirty hand leave a colony of predatory bacteria on the ice cream scoop. We are safe in the service of our sterile and efficient machine. Technology has its appeal.

So considering the inevitability of the soft-serve machine’s presence, the change has been a positive one. In practical matters of health and sanitation, the soft-serve machine makes sense; in matters of fun and enjoyment, it has introduced successful creative and artistic options. State College's hard ice cream lovers may never fully recover from the loss of the ice cream scoop. But I think that even the most determined scoop advocate will soon be as enamored by the new system as they were by the old. After all, cream is ice cream. And we all scream for ice cream.

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