Ben & Jerry's Will Use Taxi Cab Data To Determine the Ice Cream Flavor of New York City

Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream is starting a bizarre new project in which they are using not only user votes, but real-time data in order to determine the unique flavor for several cities, including New York City. For example, in San Francisco, the company is using two different water bowls at a dog park that represents Vanilla and Chocolate, then tallying up the number of times dogs will drink out of each.

One of New York City's real-time data points are the number of uptown taxi's vs downtown taxi's on a certain street, with uptown being peppermint, and downtown being vanilla. As somebody with an engineering background, I can say this is not very scientific or data driven at all, but instead a rather gimmicky ad campaign. It depends on which street you use, what day of the week is being tested, the time of the year and the time of the day.

All that being said, it is probably going to be super tasty either way, and I can't wait to try the NYC branded Ben & Jerry's flavor. My suggestion for a flavor name: 5 Borough Cookie Dough. What's yours?

Matt Coneybeare

Matt Coneybeare

Editor in Chief

Matt enjoys exploring the City's with his partner and son. He is an avid marathon runner, and spends most of his time eating, running, and working on cool stuff.

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