Every year, our team takes a field trip to one of our sponsors to host a “Root Beer Float Day” with ice cream and root beer donated by Culver’s. We arrived on Thursday morning and, after some struggle getting the massive tub of ice cream into the building, proceeded to set up in the company’s break room. Employees began arriving shortly after and we had a great time serving them root beer floats.
We also brought our robot, so this event doubled as a fantastic outreach opportunity. Once employees had their delicious root beer floats, we redirected them to a nearby table where one or two team members answered questions about our robot and the FTC program. As usual, there was a lot of interest in what we do and it was fun to chat with curious onlookers about the details of our robot and how FIRST had affected our lives.
Since we still had leftovers after the event, a few of us drove to a nearby fire department (which sponsored us last year!) and served them ice cream and root beer. Instead of using our little Culver’s cups, they supplied their own huge glasses and enjoyed their dessert while we told them a little bit about our team. They got a phone call in the middle of it, which turned out to be from another fire station nearby. We went there afterwards to make sure they got some ice cream too.
After all this, we still had leftovers, so we spent the rest of our time at another sponsor’s building handing out root beer floats in the break room. This was the last stop of the Posse Ice Cream Truck – a great way to end a fantastic afternoon of fundraising and outreach.