Hi all, and hope you're all warming up a bit after that lousy stretch of weather we've endured over the past couple of weeks. This weather has really killed us, as it just hasn't been "ice cream weather" yet, and I'm praying that these past few nice days are the start of a good stretch. After having our sales up almost 25% over last year to start April, we're now back to almost 40% *below* last season's sales, so we're a little worried here, and that's part of the reason why you haven't seen many of my staff serving you -- I can't afford to pay them!

Three rainy weekends in a row (if I happen to meet Harvey Leonard over the next couple of weeks, he's going to get a piece of my mind for his coin-flippin' forecasts...) have me crawling the walls, and I'm on my fourth book over the past couple of weeks. For those of you looking for a good read, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Bill Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods" -- a very funny story about his experiences during a partial hike of the Appalachian Trail.

On the "silver lining" side, our freezers are full, everything inside that can be cleaned, has been cleaned, and my staff is undoubtedly well rested at this point! Bring on some good hot weather!

Birthdays!

May 22nd is our two year anniversary of our opening! Also, May 21st is Maggie's birthday, and marks the beginning of the portion of each year when Maggie is numerically one year older than me. She *never* gets tired of hearing about it either.

New Flavors:

We have a couple of great new flavors for you to try:

• Strawberry Cheescake: We made this late last season, and it was good, but we made it using a packaged flavoring and Maggie never quite liked the taste of it. When we visited some friends in North Carolina this February, they showed us *their* cheesecake recipe, using real Philly Cream Cheese in the mix. It's definitely a nicer taste than what we had last year, so stop by and try some! (We're also planning to do a Blueberry Cheesecake soon, so watch for that one as a weekly special.)
• Big City Brownie: Coincidentally, a customer asked me to make chocolate ice cream with walnuts in it last week, just a day before one of my flavor distributors stopped by with a sample of a Brownie Batter ice cream base that he wanted me to try. I added lots of our big, fresh walnuts, swirled in some nice chocolate marbling fudge, and we ended up with Big City Brownie.
  
  It's so good that last week when I stopped at the store at 6:30am on my way to my "day job" to move some tubs of ice cream from our hardening cabinet to the tempering freezer, I scooped myself a cone to eat on the way to work. (How did you *think* I got this girlish figure??) Everyone else in traffic was sipping their lattes, and there I was, wolfing down a Big City Brownie ice cream cone!
• Banana Split: See the story below!

Anyway, hope you get a chance to stop by and try a sample of these two while we have them -- though the way they're selling, we may end up adding these both to our list of regular offerings.

Funny Story of the Month

I got my normal "Russian Roulette" haircut at the SuperCuts down the street. Sometimes I get a great cut, sometimes I get the kid who just got out of haircutting school and needs practice... Hey, it's close, usually quick, and who's really going to notice if *I* have a bad haircut anyway?

I was talking to the woman as she cut my hair (Cheri, just in case you think I got a good cut this time), and she recognized me from the store. She asked if we'd make Banana ice cream again sometime this year, as she said it is one of her favorite flavors, and the only place she could find it was at Friendly's (yuck!)

Well, when my cut was finished I went in to Shaw's next door to pick up a couple of things, and I noticed a whole rack of over-ripe bananas that had been marked down. "Over-ripe" (and half priced!) is *exactly* what you want to make banana ice cream, so I bought ten pounds, brought them back to the store, and handed them to Ashley, who was in the middle of making a couple of other flavors that were low.

Ashley mashed up the bananas (she actually made John peel all of the bananas...) and added them to a batch of vanilla, I mixed up some strawberry and pineapple variegates, and a quart of fudge sauce, and we did a little experimenting with them, and we now have a "Banana Split" ice cream. I packaged up a quart of the flavor, and sent team member John off to SuperCuts to deliver it.

I'll bet Cheri was surprised to have Banana ice cream within 90 minutes of talking to me about it! Hopefully, she'll tell some of her customers about us!

Birthday Coupons

For those of you who supplied a birthday when you signed up, I confess that I've done a lousy job of sending out birthday coupons. I had intended to automate the whole process over the winter, but it's one of those things I just never got around to working on.

If you've had a birthday, and haven't received an email coupon from us, please email me at '' and I'll send you one pronto. (You don't *really* need to use that address, but if you do, it'll get my attention...)

Customer Service

Maggie and I have always prided ourselves on the quality of the service our kids give -- we pay our team members a little more than most other places around, and are very picky in hiring new team members because we want kids who will provide friendly, courteous service.

So I was a little dismayed to get a call last week from a regular customer, complaining that our service had been a little off the past couple of times she had visited. She claimed that she was served the wrong flavor, and the error wasn't corrected after she pointed it out, and that the person serving her had seemed more interested in joking around with the others on duty at the time than in paying attention to getting her order right. To make matters worse, we had a batch of our hot fudge that hadn't been made correctly -- it was missing something, as it was very grainy and just didn't taste good. Unfortunately, we didn't catch this until after the customer had left, and with three sundaes to go, to boot!

Fortunately, she *did* take the time to call me, and we made good on her sundaes by replacing them on her next visit. We also tried to refund her money, but she was too nice to accept that.

At the industry conventions I go to where I talk to lots of others in this business, it's a generally accepted rule that if one person complains, ten others won't take the time to -- they'll just stop coming.

I've already put on my "grumpy boss" hat, and chewed out my kids a bit about paying more attention to performing their jobs with exceptional service. Unfortunately, one of the side effects of having 100% staff return from last season is that many of the kids on the team have formed friendships, and they seem to view those not-slow-but-not-super-busy periods as times when they can relax, joke around a bit, and catch up on what everyone else has been up to. Believe me, I'm going to be on them like Kirstey Allie on an all-you-can-eat buffet this week, making sure that they're staying focused and serving you with all of the attention you deserve!

So here's my little plea to each of you to act as my eyes and ears! If you ever find anything about our service, our flavors, our prices, our store, that just doesn't sit well with you, please, please take the time to call or email me -- I promise, I'll do everything I can to correct whatever the problem is. Don't be bashful about it either! I'm extremely grateful that that customer who got the poor service took the time to make me aware of it. We never want to fall into the trap of complacency, so if there's anything we're not doing as well as we could, please take the time to let us know! Thanks!

Staff Profile

This week's staff profile is on team member Mike H., of Wilmington.

Mike joined us in our first season, and was definitely a case of "if at first you don't succeed...", as I initially told him that we had no positions open, but Mike proceeded to stalk us for the next few weeks, seemingly always being at the window or popping by to say hi. During one of the times we were caught short-handed, I agreed to give Mike a shot to see if he could keep up with the girls, and he's more than held his own, and has become one of our most dependable team members.

Mike is a senior at Wilmington High, plays on the golf team, and is planning to attend Bentley College in Waltham in the fall. He seems to have a steady stream of beautiful young ladies who he goes to school with coming by the store to see him, though he claims that they're "just friends", and he has a steady girlfriend. (Yeah, I've got to have a talk with him about that.)

Mike held down one of our hardest shifts last year, as he was caught at the store alone for just about the whole afternoon when the rest of us were staffing last year's "Clown Town" in Andover. The couple of times I ran in to restock our cart during that shift, Mike was going a mile a minute trying to keep up with the line at the window during a busy afternoon. He left that day with over $50 in tips, which made it worth it, but he told me he slept well that night!

Mike also has survived life threatening situations, as he managed to spill nearly an entire box of chocolate jimmies (not the cheap, $17/box jimmies, mind you, but the expensive, $55/box real chocolate jimmies...) just minutes after I had chewed the team out for the lax customer service I wrote about above.

All in all, Mike's been a great addition to our team, and we're very proud to have him on it. Here's a link to a photo from last season: http://madmaggies.com/photos/albums/2004/May/tn/100_1201.JPG.html

If you see Mike at the store, please say hi to him and tell him you read about him in the newsletter -- and make sure to tell him to "hold the jimmies"!

Find Your Way Back!

A couple wandered by our stand last week. Apparently they had stumbled upon our location after they got lost driving up Route 28. They went on and on about how great the ice cream was, and how lucky they were to have found us.

As I was picking up some trash around the grounds, I heard them talking about coming back the next day. One suggested that they should draw a big "X" on the side of the car to mark where our stand was so that they could find it again. Her companion looked at her with understandable disbelief, and said "I can't believe you're that dumb! How do you know we won't take *my* car tomorrow?"

Yep, they were both blonde, allright.

See Us at Clown Town

For the second year in a row, we're proud to participate in the Andona Society's Clown Town carnival, Friday, May 20th, and Saturday, May 21st on the common in Andover. We'll be selling pre-packed ice cream cups, with a portion of our proceeds going to the Andona Society to benefit causes for Andover youth.

Come on by, have some fun at the carnival, and say hi!

Newsletter Coupon

Print out this newsletter, bring it to the store, and we'll give you a FREE small cone (or dish) of our Double Dark Chocolate -- 2004 Blue Ribbon winner at the National Ice Cream Retailer's Association annual convention -- with any other purchase. Even better, bring a friend with you who's never been to the stand before, and we'll upgrade it to a medium size!