Häagen-Dazs is making even more of a buzz at UC Davis, offering comfort music to go with your comfort ice cream! And donating money to the university’s honeybee research.
UC Davis is the home of the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a bee friendly garden at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility west of Highway 113. Häagen-Dazs gave $125,000 to the garden project in 2009.
Now, Häagen-Dazs is pledging up to $75,000 to UC Davis bee research, by way of $5 every time someone downloads the ice cream maker’s free mobile app for Apple devices. (That's 15,000 downloads.)
The new app, Concerto Timer, is more than sweet, classical music. It’s, well, a timer that runs for two minutes, the recommended length of time to let your Häagen-Dazs sit — or temper — after you take it out of the freezer, before eating. By doing so, you’ll get “full, rich consistency and allow all the flavors to fully bloom,” according to a Häagen-Dazs news release.
“Waiting is not an easy task for ice cream lovers, but the process is transformed,” the company says, when you use Concerto Timer. It’s a 3D Kinect, “augmented reality” experience: You point your iPhone or iPad camera at a Häagen-Dazs carton lid — and a violinist or cellist uses the lid as a stage for a performance of J.S. Bach’s Inventions 14. Point your camera at two lids and you’ll see and hear both musicians.
“By the end of the concerto, the ice cream will have softened to a perfect consistency.”
(By the way, you can use Concerto Timer without a Häagen-Dazs carton lid — but the app isn't nearly as cool!)
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Dave Jones, Dateline, 530-752-6556, dljones@ucdavis.edu