Museum of Ice Cream's Ops VP Takes a Systems-First Approach to Delighting Experiential Guests at Scale

In experience-driven spaces, operations are the architecture of emotion. The physical environment is engineered to produce a specific feeling, and every staffing model, maintenance protocol, and uptime metric exists to protect that outcome. When experience becomes the operating system, design starts with the desired guest response and works backward, turning facilities from background support into a direct driver of dwell time, sharing, and repeat revenue.

Carmen Morrell has built her career on this principle. As the Executive Vice President of Operations at the Museum of Ice Cream, she's well-versed in building systems that can scale a memorable feeling. She says the challenge is translating creative vision into operational architecture, ensuring that what guests see and feel is fully supported by what they never see at all.

"Operational excellence is invisible when done well, but its absence is immediately felt by the guest," she says. In Morrell's view, every operational decision is ultimately a financial one, as installation uptime, cleanliness, and team readiness directly shape a guest's sense of ease and satisfaction. "That resulting confidence is what drives dwell time, social sharing, and repeat visitation."

• Friction erasers: For Morrell, achieving this seemingly effortless infrastructure starts by reframing the work itself. Instead of reacting to problems, her team maps the entire guest journey to find potential friction points and design them out of existence before a guest ever experiences them. "At scale, our role is not to chase perfection, but to consistently protect that feeling of ease by prioritizing what most impacts the guest."

• Chaos by design: In experiential spaces where operational strategy is fundamentally shaped by experience, Morrell’s approach treats change as a given rather than merely tolerating it. Fluctuating guest volumes and shifting expectations aren't viewed as problems, but rather accepted as the norm. "We assume variability is a constant and design our systems accordingly," she shares. "Our processes are built around foresight, fast feedback loops, and decision velocity. We then institutionalize the learning from peak periods, operational misses, and guest comments, turning that information directly into more resilient systems."

Building truly resilient systems, she says, is a human challenge more so than a technical one, requiring leaders who can synthesize operational data with deep understanding of human emotion. "Technical skill is just table stakes. True consistency comes from leaders who understand that how they show up for their team is what becomes the standard for the entire guest experience."

• Freedom in a framework: Morrell motivates her teams with visible leadership, repeatable systems, and shared ownership of outcomes within a clear set of expectations. "We establish non-negotiables around safety, quality, and guest care, which gives our teams the freedom to adapt locally within that framework. When expectations are clear and modeled consistently, motivation follows, and that is how the culture scales."

• Systems, not saviors: A reliance on individual efforts to solve problems is often a sign of underlying systemic disorganization or a lack of clear direction. By creating a stable and predictable framework, Morrell says, leaders enable their teams to handle challenges effectively on their own, making the system itself the source of resilience. "From a leadership perspective, resilience comes from reducing noise, prioritizing what truly impacts the guest, and empowering teams to act within clear guardrails rather than relying on heroics."

Even within the strongest framework, a culture of invisible excellence is difficult to sustain with systems alone. The people who run them make the difference, which is where the organization's hiring philosophy becomes crucial. Morrell says she intentionally looks beyond experience to find the innate traits required to operate with trust and proactive ownership. "We hire for judgment, curiosity, and comfort with ambiguity over specific backgrounds, because even our most behind-the-scenes roles are guest-facing in their impact." In a tightly engineered experience, she explains, the smallest judgment calls shape what guests ultimately feel. "We need people who can see the downstream effects of their decisions and who take ownership of the outcome without ego."