Greetings and salutations from your friends over at Mad Maggie's. Secret destination of the stars jetting into New England for the start of our great summer season. Come on by and watch for them to show up!

This is hopefully the last newsletter that I'll send before our big North Andover opening, as the store there is nearing completion, and I'm hoping that we'll be open right around the 7th of July. Again, we are a little dismayed that the construction has taken so long, but we're pretty happy with the quality of the work, and we hope that the end result makes up for the delays.

Pajama Party Update

For a change, we had great weather this year for our annual Pajama Party. We lost count of the number of giveaways we did, but it was well over 100, and we had quite a few creative pajama outfits.

For some reason, the Victoria's Secret models never showed up -- I'll bet that little minx Adrianna stayed away just to spite me.

You can surf on over to our website to see a ton of photos that we took that night: http://madmaggies.com/photos/albums/2007/PajamaParty/ I haven't had time to caption them all yet, but maybe by the time you read this, I will have.

If you missed the fun, take heart knowing that we're hoping to do something similar in North Andover at some point in the summer. Maybe we'll do a "last night of summer" party on the final day before schools reopen!

North Andover News

As I wrote above, we're very close to opening in North Andover, so I thought I'd fill you all in on our plans there.

The walls are all plastered, the final electrical and plumbing connections are in progress, the bathrooms are tiled,and we've got a walk in freezer (though 9" shorter than we expected, due to bad placement of the main electrical service box...), and the finished floors are in progress at this point. The major task left is the building of the counters, and I've found the requisite eccentric Maine carpenter to help build these, so, like the dog said, after the lawn mower ran over his tail, "it won't be long now"!

You can view photos of the store progress at our website, at http://madmaggies.com/photos/albums/NorthAndover/

We went before the North Andover licensing board on Tuesday, and were granted our Common Victualler's licence, which is basically the license to run a restaurant, so that's one more hurdle completed.

We plan to "soft open" as soon as the store is ready and we receive the necessary occupancy permits from the town. Whenever that happens, I'll send out a notice to our newsletter readers, and not a lot else. We're thinking that we'll operate in "stealth mode" for a week or so while we get things set up and figure out how to actually run the new location.

Then we'll plan a Grand Opening date, probably sometime around August 1st. We've got a few of our suppliers who are hopefully going to help us out with some giveaways, and maybe we can interest a local radio station into coming by to help us announce our new location.

Those of you who were lucky enough to come by the North Reading store on one of the days when Verizon FIOS was there, giving away free ice creams (they actually did this four times over four weeks!) know what a great deal that was, so I'm hoping I can talk them into helping out as well. I sure wish I had a good marketing person who could handle all of that!

North Andover Night

I've hired a group of kids for the North Andover store, and they've all been working two or three shifts a week, so that we'll have some experienced hands once the North Andover location is ready to open.

Up to now, they've just jumped in whenever they could find an open shift, and worked side by side with our "veterans" from the North Reading stand.

This week, I thought it would be useful to have all of the North Andover kids work together for a shift, so that they could get to know each other, and learn how to work well together. So on Wednesday, we had five of them all working the stand in North Reading, with no help from the experienced kids.

Maggie and I were waiting in the wings to help out if they got in a jam, but we mostly tried to stay in the background and out of the way. I waited for the lines to back up, and figured I'd then jump in and help out, but surprisingly, it never happened! They were pretty busy, but they kept up with the rush, worked well together, and just generally seemed to have a good time working as a team for the first time.

I'm continually impressed at the quality of the applicants we've had for our positions in North Andover. I've got great expectations for this group once the new store opens, I think you'll all be impressed as well when you see them working at our new home!

Flavor News

We've got a couple of repeat offenders on our flavor list.

• Apple Pie: Heck, what's more American on the 4th of July than a delicious slice of warm apple pie with a heaping hunk of vanilla ice cream on top? I know -- our delicious Apple Pie ice cream, with the apple filling, ice cream, and cinnamon graham crusts, all rolled together!
• Blueberry Cheesecake: Another summer favorite, made with wild Maine blueberries -- only available for a short period of time in the summer from one of our favorite Maine flavoring suppliers!
• Strawberry Chip: We made this a few weeks back, and it sold out so quickly, we decided to keep it on the menu for a few weeks here during strawberry season.

Liquid Ice Cream

I was making a batch of ice cream last week. When the ice cream comes out of the "batch freezer" (think of a small, home ice cream maker, on steroids...), it's in a semi-frozen state, along the same consistency as soft serve. From there, we place it in tubs and store it in our cold "hardening cabinet" to freeze it quickly to -25 degrees F.

As I was extruding the ice cream into the tubs, one of my staff walked by. He watched the ice cream coming out, and remarked "Wow, I didn't know that ice cream came out at room temperature..."

Yep, he's one of our blondes! I resisted the urge to spring one of comedian Steven Wright's lines on him: "It doesn't make a difference what temperature a room is, it's always room temperature."

Staff Profile

Those of you who read this newsletter religiously probably remember back in the spring, when I related the story of being accused of only hiring cute girls and encouraging them to dress provocatively. I denied the practice (although I don't deny giving preference to girls over boys -- they're just for the most part flat out more mature and better workers at that age.)

So, this spring, I decided I was going to make an effort to eliminate any bias I might have towards looks, and was going to make 90% of my decision based on email conversations with the applicants -- so there'd be no way I'd be swayed by looks.

In the past, when we've had openings, we'd call in three or four kids to interview for each spot, and choose the best match between them. This year I decided that I'd try to have the decision made before I met the applicant, and to only call in those who were pretty much assured of getting a spot. And that unless they showed up and were just obviously not going to be comfortable dealing with people, they'd have the job.

This approach has one huge benefit -- it's really hard to call a young kid in for an interview, and then have to break the news to him/her that you gave the job to someone else.

Well, looking at our new additions this year, I'm afraid this new approach isn't going to help me one bit in my argument that we aren't hiring based on looks -- the new kids are all cute as kittens!

I was talking about this with Maggie, and she remarked "yeah, even the boys we've hired this year are all good looking." I don't have a good track record of figuring out what makes a guy good looking -- I think Richard Geere and Prince both look like fruitcakes, but Maggie gets weak in the knees over seeing them on TV, so I'll take her word on it.

We've hired several kids this spring who are siblings of past team members. And they're all cute. Then, I hired a few others based on recommendations from members of our team. When they reported for work, they're all cute. And, we hired six or so kids to be the "founding team" for our North Andover store -- and most of these kids are away at college during the winter, so I hired them from around the country, sight unseen mostly. And they're all good looking kids.

I think I'm going to go back to my old excuse -- all kids in the 15 to 20 year range are good looking, just because they're 15 to 20!

As to the "dressing provocatively" bit, I see exactly what's going on there. Again, we probably hire 65% girls, and I notice a distinct pattern in the new kids, especially the girls. At first, they come in for work "dressed down", as they presume that they will be working hard and getting dirty.

After they work a few weeks, and work side by side with some of the others who dress a little nicer, they also start dressing more stylishly. I think it's also a badge of honor among them -- as they get better at scooping, they tend to learn to stay cleaner, they seem to compete to see if they can both look sharp and keep themselves clean, and it becomes a bit of a competition.

In any event, I wouldn't call their dress "prevocative", but more "stylish".

All in all, I'm extremely impressed at the overall quality of the kids we've added to our team. I deal with them every day, and they're all hard working, pleasant, and surprisingly easy to work with. I consider us pretty lucky to have such a great team working for us -- no matter what they look like!

Newsletter Coupon

Come on by this week, and treat yourself to one of our delicious, frosty frappes. Mention this coupon, and we'll take dollar off the price. In my humble, completely unbiased opinion, we make the best frappe you'll find anywhere in the area, so you're getting a great deal here!

That's about it for this week. Hope you all have a happy and restful 4th of July! Please make sure to say hi if you stop by the stand for a treat!