Welcome to the December issue of The Scoop -- the newsletter that most presidential candidates read to get the pulse of the people. Those dirtballs...

The cold, wintery weather has definitely cast a cold chill on our business. We're at the point where I'm manning the store alone on most weekday nights, with just a single serving team member on to help out on the other nights. When people come by and ask "How are you?", my normal answer is "Lonely!" It's a far cry from our peak summer days when I'll have four to six helpers on during the week, and I'm definitely missing the interactions with our super serving team.

We normally have two kids on each afternoon, as Maggie can't be at the store after school due to being on "Mom's Taxi Service" detail, and we like to have at least two of the serving team on at any time, so that they have someone to cover for them if they need a bathroom break, or to run down to the basement for supplies or ice cream.

This is our first winter of operation, and it's been a learning exercise thus far. Some of the times that we thought would be busiest (Weekend afternoons, Sunday nights) have been a lot slower than we expected, while other times (Thursday and Friday afternoons and evenings) have been busy. Guess people will use any excuse to get out of the house as the week draws to a close!

We still have bills to pay, so we could really use the business. Please try to help us out if you can by using our parlor as a meeting place for any afternoon or evening clubs you might belong to. We'll be happy to cordon off a group of tables for your use!

Mad Maggie's Gift Cards Make Great Stocking Stuffers!

Well, barely four months after we were supposed to start offering Gift Cards, they finally work! Let me just tell you what a crack, efficient, professional outfit we purchased our cash registers from -- NOT!

Anyway, depite my obvious dissatisfaction with our register company and their slowness in getting things together, they finally are working, and we've been selling gift cards like crazy.

Can't figure out what to give that troublesome relative on your list? Everybody loves ice cream -- give them a gift card to Mad Maggie's, and you can stop contributing to your 401K, as they'll undoubtedly write you in for a huge slot on their will.

In all seriousness, these make a great stocking stuffer or Hanukkah gift. One customer bought 12 of them, one for each month of the year. She said that it's her way of limiting her child's sweet tooth as well as teaching a lesson on financing, as she gives them one card a month, and forces them to "budget" their ice cream purchases through the month. Sounds like a great idea to me -- we love getting paid in December when business is slow, rather than July when we have a line of waiting customers!

So, if you're looking for an easier solution than trekking to the mall to finish your holiday shopping, come on by and grab one (or ten!) And treat yourself to a cone as a reward for completing your shopping list! And our holiday "special offer": Buy $25 worth of gift cards, and we'll give you a $5 card for yourself for free!

Winter Plans

We're planning to close down, or at least reduce our normal hours, during January, mainly so that I can attend to some of the end-of-year accounting, do a few major cleaning projects around the store, and get my cake molds business in gear.

Maggie and I have gone back and forth on exactly what we're going to do, but at this point it looks like we'll do one of two things.

Either we'll shut down completely for a couple of weeks (likely, from Monday, January 14th through the end of the month, reopening on Friday, February 1st) OR we'll close down during the week for all of January, opening only on Friday, Saturday, and Sundays through the 1st of February.

I'm leaning toward the latter, but keep thinking that it'd be nice to get completely away from the store for a couple of weeks to avoid the "January Blahs" that are sure to strike us if the heavy winter snows continue as they have been.

So, if you're heading for the store in January, make sure you call first or visit the website, as we'll have updated information on our answering machine or on the website.

I Have Met The Enemy, and He is Us

As part of my day job, I write software for a company that provides website hosting. I typically write tools that a user might use to manage their website, or applications that they might use on their website, such as a message board or photo gallery.

Anyway, one of the huge "web applications" that is getting a lot of press lately is Facebook, which is a website that allows people to connect with their friends -- what people call a "Social Network" site.

I'd read a lot of articles about it, and finally decided that it was time to look into it to see what all the fuss was about, thinking that possibly I might gain some ideas that I could use in my day job.

So, I signed up for an account, and started poking around with it. I did a search, and found a group centered around Mad Maggie's. Started by one of my serving team members, it was a group of past and present team members.

I spent about an hour one night, poking about, looking at the profiles of the kids, and "tagging" them as "friends" -- which in Facebook speak, is the way you form your own network. Tagging someone has the effect of sending them a message, asking them to confirm your friendship. If they do, they get added to your network, and you each gain privileges to interact beyond the simple, casual passing acquaintance level.

A couple of days later, I saw one of my serving team members at the store, and mentioned "oh yeah, I found your profile on Facebook, and tagged you as a friend" "Yeah...", she replied, a little less than enthusiastically, "I saw that. What are you doing on Facebook?"

I explained to her about how I was doing some research, and had happened across a bunch of our team's profiles. She was still a bit standoffish about the whole thing.

The next day, one of the technology news sites that I read regularly had an article on "What Will Kill Facebook?". I clicked through to read it.

The article boiled down to "It's a social network, and it's great while you build a network of your friends, but it loses its appeal when someone you don't particularly consider a peer/friend insists on being added to your network, and then you have to transition from gossiping with your friends, to watching what you might post due to who might be reading it."

The specific example they gave was "What happens when your creepy, overbearing boss joins your network, demanding to be one of your friends?".

Dowh! Just what I had just done in the previous day or so. Cripes! It suddenly dawned on me why not everyone on my serving team was thrilled to see me on Facebook -- now I'm the creepy boss, and I'm intruding on their turf!

I'll keep my profile on Facebook ('mad maggie', in case any of you want to "find" me on there), but I think I'll stop actively tagging people as friends, and drop back into a less visible role, just approving the friend requests that come to me.

(Until my creepy, overbearing boss tags me -- then I'm dropping out too.)

Made In North Andover!

If I do say so myself, we make the best Maple Walnut ice cream around. I switched to using real maple syrup a couple of years back. In order to get the strong taste I look for, I also add a small amount of maple flavoring from a flavor distributor of mine.

Recently, at the New England Ice Cream convention, I met a gentleman who manufactures a 100% natural maple flavoring. After trying a sample of it, I've switched over to using it, as the other flavoring had a lot of odd sounding ingredients, and I like the idea of using as much natural flavor as I can in our ice cream.

Then last month, I met a couple from North Andover who produce their own maple syrup -- Turtle Lane Farms. We talked a bit, and I suggested that we should start buying syrup from them, and that it would then give us a product to promote that's "Made in North Andover". So, as of this week, our Maple Walnut is made using Turtle Lane Farms syrup, with just a tiny amount of our new all natural maple flavoring.

I think it's a much cleaner taste than our previous recipe, and it's great to be able to say that we're using local and all natural suppliers where we can.

I've been eating this stuff for the past couple of weeks, and it's definitely one of my favorites. Come on by and try a cone and tell me what you think -- I bet you'll end up buying a pint to take home!

Horseshoe Grille Sorbets

The Horseshoe Grille, in North Reading, will be featuring a line of our sorbets over the winter. We've dropped off samples of several of our sorbets to them, and they're deciding which ones will fit best on their menu. It's likely that they'll try a different flavor or two each week, much like they do with our ice cream pies in the summer.

I've said it often in this newsletter: The Horseshoe has one of the BEST menus in the area. I continue to get funny looks from people when I tell them that, as they usually think of it as the dirty old town bar from 20 years ago. But I tell them to stop in and try it out -- the building has been entirely rebuilt, and the place bears just about no resemblence to the old 'Shoe.

So stop in, tell them you're there because "Mad Maggie's" sent you, and have a great dinner. I'm confident that once you've tried it, you'll go back again and again.

Flavor News

We've got a few "Holiday Flavors" brewing. These are definitely not long term flavors, but they're good for a short time.

Egg Nog -- This is another test flavor that has gotten mixed reviews. Some people love it, some claim that it would be much better if I added some rum to it. Maybe I'll make a rum-laced batch this week, but for now, it's a pretty good flavor and we'll keep it alcohol free and see how it sells.

Pomegranate Chip -- This is a flavor that a friend of mine makes up in Vermont, and claims it has a loyal following. I made this from a flavor sample that one of my suppliers sent me, but I think it needs at least double the amount of flavoring. It's a nice flavor, but not sufficiently strong so that you'd immediately identify it as Pomegranate if you weren't told so beforehand. Still, it tastes good to me, and we've had plenty of people try it and like it.

Green Tea -- Another sample that needs much more bite to it before it becomes a permanent member of our flavor lineup. It has a very delicate green tea taste, but really needs a better punch to it. Next batch will be better!

Tangerine Sorbet -- Tangerines are in season right now, and they're both flavorful, and inexpensive. It's a lot of work to squeeze all of those tangerines, but with our slow ice cream traffic, my serving squad has plenty of time to do so, so I tasked Sara with doing so one Saturday, and she juiced enough to make a couple of tubs. This has a very authentic tangerine taste to it -- I'll bet it'd make a great palate cleanser for a holiday dinner!

Staff News

As I noted above, this is a rather lonely time of year, as I hardly see some of my favorites at all. We've had to ask several of our team to stop working regularly scheduled shifts, as we just don't have the hours to go around, so I've tried to keep those with the most seniority on the schedule. Some have found "winter jobs" where they can get more hours, but I sure hope they'll all come back for the spring, as I really love the group of kids we've had this past season.

Still, we're already looking forward to the spring, both to welcome our returning veterans back, and to get some new blood onto the team. We have several "rookies" who joined us late in the fall who I'm looking forward to coming back, and we have a handful of applicants that we didn't get to this year who I hope are still available when I call them this spring.

I've also put out the word to my existing team to keep an eye open for promising additions at their schools. I generally like to hire those completing their Sophomore year of high school as new team members, as they're old enough to not be overwhelmed by dealing with the public, and young enough that we're likely to have them for two or three summers.

We had an unbelievable group of Sophomores that we hired this past season -- about five each from the Andover and North Andover schools. And they're all positively drooling at the prospect of being the "big cheeses" in the spring, when they get to boss around the new rookies, rather than being on the other end of that stick.

As most of you know from my past newsletters, building the serving team that will work well together and watching them mature and gain confidence in themselves is one of the rewarding perks of this business, and it's one I've come to really enjoy. Just thinking about what next spring's team will be like makes it easier to get through these dour days of winter!

One of the parents of our serving team thanked me this fall for hiring his daughter, and pointed out an attribute of the job that I hadn't realized. He told me that he was happy that his daughter was working for a "safe" place, where he could be confident that she'd be free from any harassment and not exposed to any dangerous situations. I hadn't thought of that before, but I was happy to hear it, and I suppose it makes a lot of sense.

Most times, especially during the warmer months, the kids are working with two or three peers, so they have a nice support team to protect against any creepy customer who might get out of hand. (With so many cute girls on the team, we get our share of unwanted attention, but the girls seem to quickly learn how to handle them.) And either Maggie or I are just about always there in the background, so it's a relatively safe environment. I guess that helps explain why we get so many girls applying for our jobs, and it was nice to hear that at least one parent was appreciative of it!

Newsletter Coupon

OK, we need the business, so let's do a good coupon here:

Come to the store, bring a friend (or eight!) and tell us you're one of our newsletter readers, and we'll give you a great BOGO offer -- buy one of any item, and get another free!

The small print: Applies to individual servings only -- not to take home pints/quarts/half gallons, nor to gift card purchases.

OK, that's about it for this month. Don't forget about us, come on down on one of these cold nights and sit in our warm parlor and enjoy a delicious sundae while you dream of warmer months ahead!