Greetings, and welcome to this week's edition of "The Scoop", with all the news that's fit to print from your friends at Mad Maggie's ice cream.

Today marks our fifth year anniversary in business, as we opened our seasonal North Reading location on May 22nd, 2003. From my SBA courses, I remember reading that 90% of new businesses fail in their first five years, so we can proudly say that we've beaten the odds, even if our bank account balance doesn't reflect it as being five financially successful years!

Summer's here -- or at least, the summer weather has hit, and the lines are getting pretty deep at the windows at times! We've never really gone through a summer at this location, as we didn't "officially" open until August 3rd last year, so it's a bit of a wild ride as we scurry and try to keep our flavors in stock and plenty of help behind the counters.

We've been boosted by the return of most of our college students last week. Old friends Katie and Bryan returned and started working shifts for us, while year-round members Rachel, John, and Janae finished up their college courses and are available just about full time. And we even added another "new kid", as Melissa joined the crew, fresh from Assumption College, and as a past supervisor at the recently closed Ben & Jerry's store up the street, she's got plenty of experience, and has been able to jump right in.

This happened just in time, as we rolled our opening hours up to noon each weekday, and had been having trouble finding enough available bodies to man the windows for those afternoon shifts. A few of the days, when the high school aged kids had after school commitments, we had a skeleton staff running around like crazy people trying to keep up with the lines, and I know we just didn't have enough some days.

Hopefully, the situation will be better now, as most of the college kids are looking to work a lot of hours, so we should have no trouble having plenty of hands on deck to wait on the crowds.

The Joys of our New Location

As I mentioned above, we've never been through a full busy season at our new location, but I'd done a lot of speculation on what type of sales we'd do at this spot when I did my original business plan. For the first four months of 2008, our sales numbers were about 4 percent below my estimates. Not bad, considering we had one of the coldest, wettest Marches we could have imagined!

It's still early, but so far for May, we're about 12 percent above plan, so that makes me sleep a little easier, as I'm pretty confident that if we can hit the sales numbers I estimated, that we'll be able to keep the bills paid, pay off a chunk of our equipment loans, and maybe even pay ourselves a tiny allowance. Sure would be nice to actually see some reward for all the hard work that's gone into opening this store, and keeping it running through the long, slow months of that first winter!

We do about three times the volume here that we did at our old location, so it's a big change for us. Considering that many of my friends who operate ice cream businesses here in the Northeast are reporting that the cool spring has caused their sales to be down up to 20% from previous years gives me optimism that we're only scratching the surface of the new store's potential.

The thing that's surprised me about the new location isn't so much the sales we do when the weather is nice. This spot has been an ice cream destination for ages, and I fully expected to see long lines at the windows during the warm summer nights. What's surprising is that we actually do reasonable business even on days when the weather is lousy. Last week was a chilly, windy spring week, not the type of weather that normally makes people think of ice cream, but we still did solid sales all week long.

I think back to our North Reading location, where on a rainy day, we'd be lucky to get a handful of people an hour and I'd be working hard to find things for the kids to clean to stay busy. Last Friday, even with a wet drizzle and cool breeze, we still had enough business that my three serving team members never got the time to get through the cleaning tasks that I had laid out to keep them busy during a night I expected us to be dead quiet.

All in all, we couldn't be happier with our new home. The building is a delight, after having dealt with the dilapidated, run-down spot that we had been in. And we have plenty of storage space, a very visible spot, loads of parking, and a great customer base. Maybe it's just spring optimism, but things are looking pretty good for our tiny little business!

Speaking the Lingo

We fight a constant mini-battle at the store, trying to understand what our customers are asking for. Many of our customers are visiting from other parts of the country, where the methods of ordering/serving ice cream is a little different, so sometimes we need to read each customer to figure out exactly what they want.

We probably sell 20 sugar cones to each of the flat-bottomed "cake cones" or "wafer cones". So for us, a "normal" cone is a sugar cone. In other parts of the country though, a sugar cone is unusual, and ice cream typically comes on a wafer cone. So, when a customer comes to the window and orders a "small chocolate, on a regular cone", we need to take a quick assessment of the customer, and figure out what they mean. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes we need to pause and ask "OK, when you say 'regular cone', do you mean this (holding up a sugar cone) or this (holding up a wafer cone)?"

In our region, a Root Beer Float is obvious, right? Root beer, with vanilla ice cream. In other parts of the country, chocolate ice cream is typical -- here, we'd call that a "Brown Cow", or even a "Chocolate Rootbeer Float". I had a young customer order a root beer float yesterday, and noticing that the youngster looked a little out of place, I asked "You'd like that with Vanilla ice cream, right?" She looked at me as if I were stupid. "No, Chocolate!", she demanded, obviously perturbed that I didn't know what flavor of ice cream goes into a root beer float. Glad I asked!

And of course, here in stuffy old Massachusetts, our drink of blended milk, syrup, and ice cream is a "Frappe" -- most other parts of the country would call that a "Milk Shake". Ordering a milk shake here means milk with syrup only. (I'm convinced that old time operators here in Massachusetts invented the term "Frappe" simply so that they could take advantage of unwitting tourists, who didn't know our "secret" terminology, by serving them a cheaper product.)

When someone asks me for a Milk Shake, I'll normally say something like "Welcome to Massachusetts, where we make up our own words! You really want a Frappe, right?"

We don't always get it right, but we try!

Behind the counter, we have our own little lingo that the kids use. My serving team all know that "CD" is "Cookie Dough", "BCB" is our "Big City Brownie" flavor, and "VCT" is "Vanilla Caramel Turtle". So, you might hear one of the kids yell to another "Hey, we need another BCB from the freezer. And while you're there, you might as well grab a BRICK." ("BRICK" is what "BRC" sounds like, and "BRC" stands for "Black Raspberry Chip")

Prank of the Week

I've kept the kids at the store on their toes all week by slowly catching each of them up in a fantastic tale that has an "Oh my God!" element to it, and a final punchline that makes it clear to them that they've fallen for another of my pranks.

The story is told a little differently each time, but boils down to something like: Two people stop at a nearby convenience store right at closing time, and one of them runs inside to pick up a bottle of wine. The other waits in the car, but sees the store lights go out without seeing their friend return, then a frantic 911 call results in police breaking into the store, and finding the missing companion tied up in a backroom, while a perverted clerk licks their face. After the expected cries of outrage and disgust, I tell them that after all that, it turned out they had to let the clerk go, because (ready?) "they checked with the town, and it turned out he/she had a liquor ("licker") license!"

Yeah, it's a lame joke, but it's got legs, because once one of the team has been on the receiving end of the tale, they can't wait to catch the next unsuspecting crew member, so they play along, embellish the story in their own way ("Yeah, that was my friend's uncle who called 911...", or "Oh, that guy's son is in my math class", or "I read about that in the newspaper yesterday"), and add their own details to help reel in the others who are swallowing the entire tale.

With some of them, we've managed to draw out the tale over the course of the entire shift, adding more and more detail as they pry for information. I've found that if I sprinkle in a "I don't know if we should say anything else while there are customers around -- it might disturb them", that it helps set the hook a little deeper.

The hardest part of telling the story is keeping a straight face, but so far we've managed to do so each time. We've probably trapped three quarters of the team with this story, and so far, none of them has caught on that they're being the target of a prank before the final punch line. (And I've learned not to involve any of our blondes in telling the story, as they either mess it up, or spill the secret way too soon.)

I don't know who the last one at the store will be who we pull this on, but after that, we may need to move on to customers to keep the chain going.

So beware!

And the latest update: Several of my team have excitedly reported catching their friends and/or family up in a variation of the same tale. They seem to take a special sort of satisfaction in hooking their parents with the tall tale. The talk of the store lately has involved comparing whose family member or friend fell for the story the hardest. So, if you hear a variation on this story, you know it started here!

Flavor News

There is a small (Maggie), vocal (Maggie), argumentative (Maggie) portion of our team (Maggie), who insist that any ice cream flavor that isn't obviously brown, tan, red, green, or purple, must be Vanilla based. I won't say who that person is (ok, it's Maggie...) but it drives me nuts to hear her tell people that my Peanut Butter Cup or Coconut Fudge ice cream is "a vanilla base".

She's not the only one -- her sister, Priscilla, worked for us for a couple of years, and I couldn't convince her either that just because something is lightly colored, it doesn't mean it has vanilla in it.

Our Peanut Butter Cup base is peanut butter ice cream -- I put huge gobs of peanut butter into the mix, and our coconut fudge has over a quart of rich, ground coconut in its base. No vanilla in either of these. Not that it has anything to do with our flavor news, but I feel good after venting about that...

We made a Chocolate Coconut last week, chocolate ice cream with the same delicious coconut we use in our other coconut flavors. I debated stirring in some chocolate chips or marshmallow, but in the end got lazy and left it a "plain" flavor, without mix ins. One gentleman beckoned me to the window as he was leaving, and told me "This is the best chocolate coconut around -- a couple of other places in the area make it, but none as good as this one!" Good to hear feedback like that, especially since I really hadn't thought it was anything special! Guess we'll have to make at least one more batch, to see if it continues to build a following!

We've had several requests to bring back our "Chili Chocolate" flavor. One gentlemen has called four times in the past month, asking me if I had made it yet. Each time I told him "Not yet, but it's on the list to be made", but it's one of those flavors that always seems to have something more important on the list ahead of it. (Let's see, do I make a batch of Chili Chocolate, which takes a half hour to carefully cut and seed the dangerous Habeneros, and which we'll probably sell two tubs of in a month, then have to take the entire machine apart to wash it clean to get the Habenero peppers out, or do I just make Cake Batter, which we'll sell two tubs in a couple of hours? Cake Batter wins every time!)

Anyway, I promised that I'd get to it this week, so hopefully by the time you read this, we'll have it in the dipping cases. It strikes me as more of a "fall" flavor, but hey, what the heck! (Late update: It's sitting in our freezers now, angrily waiting to be ordered!)

Staff News

We've started to get flooded with job requests, and unfortunately, I think we're pretty much done with hiring at this point. The good news is that we've got better than 100% return from last year's team, as one or two who I really didn't expect to come back have contacted me looking to spend another summer in the fun employ of Mad Maggie's.

We have only three "Rookies" this year. One, Melissa, I mentioned above, comes to us from the Ben & Jerry's in Bradford, where she was a supervisor. I have high hopes that we'll learn a few things from her, and I don't expect that she'll be our typical, bumbling rookie.

Another, Sioban, is the daughter of Kathy, one of our friends over at Turtle Hill Maple Farm. She's now the youngest team member, something that had returning team member Shannon, happy as a clam, to not be the "baby" of the store any longer! I can tell right away that Sioban is going to be "one of the smart ones", as she obviously studied our jobs page, and did a great job on her application. (She'd have probably got hired even if I didn't know her folks!)

And the third, Ashley (or "Ash", as she prefers to be called) was one of the first to get an application in early this spring, and had the benefit of getting high recommendations from some of the other North Andover kids on the team. So far, Ash has worked a couple of busy early season shifts, and shown a great ability to handle the stress and do great work, so I've got high hopes that she'll rise through the ranks quickly.

We had offered a spot to one other, Brittany, but she got some bad news on the day before she was to come in for training, as she needs to have some surgery done to fix an ankle injury, and will be on crutches for a couple of months. I told her to take her time, get herself back on her feet (literally!), and to contact us in mid summer when she's ready to start in, and we'll more than likely have a spot for her.

And one more Staff News item: One of our best, Carolyn, our super cake decorator and unofficial "Miss Congeniality" and "Best Smile" winner, is going to be missing for a few weeks, as she's having surgery to fix some nagging knee problems. We'll miss her, but hopefully she'll be back on her feet quickly, and back to decorating our cakes. I've kidded Carolyn that we're going to purchase a company "Rascal" scooter, so that she can motor around the store, waiting on customers. Heal fast Carolyn, we'll be thinking of you!

Newsletter Coupon

It's Memorial Day Weekend -- the unofficial start of the summer, so let's do a fun coupon. Come on by the store, and say "Happy Birthday!" to whichever of my serving team member waits on you. My serving team will respond by "up-scooping" you by one scoop. Pay for a kiddie, you'll get a small, pay for a small, get a medium. You can figure out the rest!

OK, that's it for this week. We've got a busy Memorial Day weekend ahead, and the weather looks promising, so we'll be busily cranking out the ice cream and hopefully keeping our lines moving.

Hope to see you at the store!