Welcome to the final newsletter of our regular season. (or is it the first newsletter of our offseason? You decide!)

Well, the ice cream is gone, the store is pretty much buttoned up for the winter, I'm settling into my "winter mode" and planning to try my hardest to not gain the 10 to 15 pounds I normally put on each fall when I'm no longer spending my nights on my feet making ice cream!

Andover Youth Services Fundraiser

As I mentioned in the previous newsletter, we decided that this year, rather than basically giving away the remaining ice cream at the end of the season, that we'd instead run a fundraiser for the Andover Youth Services to help them in their quest to build a new youth center.

We started on Saturday, the 24th, and scooped over 70 quarts of ice cream over the weekend. On Tuesday, the 27th, Bill Fahey, Tony Lombardi, Suzie Clarke, and Glenn Wilson of AYS were at the store to help scoop and we passed out most of the remaining ice cream to anyone making at least a $5 donation to AYS.

After all was said and done, we had raised $1280 for AYS, and we were pleased to send a check along to Bill and his group.

Thank you very much to everyone who donated!

And a postscript: Since we're right on the North Reading town line, and many of our customers come from other towns, we didn't think it right to ask them to contribute to an Andover cause, so we also ran our traditional "Buy One, Get One" promotion on take home quarts, and a few people elected this option. We're happy that many of our regulars got a chance to stock up on ice cream for the winter at a bargain price. Maybe next year, we'll look for a good North Reading based charitible cause and have a choice of causes to donate to.

Whatcha Gonna Do Now?

Over the last few weeks, people keep asking me "What do you do in the winter to keep yourself occupied?" Well, just a few of the items on my "to do" list:

• My home is in desperate need of a new roof. I did the back half two years ago, and plan to do the front half during one of these upcoming weekends. I spent quite a few summers growing up working for my neighbor, who is a contractor, so I'm familiar with what it takes, but my body isn't in the same shape as it was back then, so this is a good exercise to remind me of how old I'm getting. Got to buy a bottle of Advil for that weekend!
• The website is in dire need of some love. I want to automate the newletter signup process, add a guestbook application, and I need to go through a lot of the pages there and update them, as a lot of it is old ramblings of mine that I need to get rid of. Plus, the hardware that the website is running on is a bit old, and a friend has passed on a much sexier system to replace it. Lots of geeky work to do in the offseason!
• Maggie and I have plans to attend the New England Ice Cream Restaurant Association's annual convention in Mystic, Connecticut in October, and also the National Ice Cream Retailers Association annual convention in Scottsdale, Arizona in November, so those two events should keep our heads in the ice cream business a bit.
• For those who aren't aware, a portion of the Bay Circuit Trail runs through Andover, and in fact runs right by my house! I love to walk in the woods, especially in the fall, so I'm planning to hike the 10 mile or so portion of the trail from River Road all the way to my house this upcoming Sunday morning. A couple of my kids claim that they're going to join me, but we'll see if they're ready to get up early on a weekend and hike for that distance. I'll definitely bring our little dog, Gizmo, and we'll see if *he* can do the whole thing. It'll be a workout for him on his short little Pug-dog legs. He loves walking with me in the woods, but a hike this distance might be a lot for him, and will definitely make it hard for him to get his normal 18 hours a day of beauty sleep in. Hopefully, it'll burn a couple of pounds off of him, as the vet told us to stop giving him ice cream at his last checkup, as he's gained about 5 pounds this summer!
• Last winter, I bought a new laptop computer, and as a result, spent a lot of time working on it in the living room, rather than on the computer in my office as I have in the past. Sitting in the living room while the kids were watching TV, I'm embarrassed to admit that I became hooked on the tv show "Lost"! So I'm pretty sure what I'll be doing on each Wednesday night...
  
  (For this season's premier, I told Melissa, who was working that night, that we'd close at ten minutes to 9, so that I could get home in time. Wouldn't you know that after a quiet night, we had several cars drive into the parking lot at around 8:45! And, of course, they wanted a bunch of samples, and then sundaes -- missed the first 15 minutes of my show!)
  
  The other show that I make a point to watch is "The Apprentice", as although I loathe Donald Trump, I really like the small business angle that a lot of the tasks have to them. Oh, and as long as I'm divulging all of my dirty little winter bad habits, I also watched "Survivor" last winter -- I know, empty calories, but everyone needs a vice or two, right?
• I've got a ton of bills and receipts from the summer season to sort, file, and enter into my computer. I'm actually in pretty good shape this year, as I've already entered most items up through May. Last year, I didn't even have a computerized system set up, and ended up entering most of my business records during the couple of weeks around Christmas to get them to the accountant in time for the tax returns to be prepared (Massachusetts businesses need to file an annual report by March 15th, so the tax season starts even earlier...)
• I'm also working on an article on "Effective Email" for the NICRA monthly newsletter. Gives me a chance to pass along lessons from my geeky day job to others in the ice cream business. I don't know if they'll actually publish it, as I think most of the people running the national organization view me as a problem child, but we'll see!

I'm sure I'll find a few other odd jobs to do around the house, but those are a few of the things I'll be doing!

2005 Recap

Well, now that the season is pretty much in the books, I'm happy to report that we're in much better shape this year than last, when I was wondering if we could continue to run this business. Our prices on several of our key ingredients -- most significantly cream and vanilla -- were back down to normal levels after skyrocketing last season. The two-fold, Madagascan Bourbon vanilla that we use cost me $62 a gallon this year, where last year we were paying $365 after most of the vanilla bean crop was wiped out by a cyclone!

I think we've also gotten better at managing the number of kids we have for each shift, so we also saved money there, although it did result in a few shifts where the line seemed to get too long. I also cut back on the workload that I was having my accountant do, as I found it was easier (and cheaper) for me to enter our expenses into QuickBooks, especially since I can now do it on my laptop during commercial breaks while watching Survivor ;^) My accountant wasn't thrilled with having that task pulled back from his billable time, but it's saved me some money.

And, our gross sales were up around 9% over last year -- a nice trend that we hope we can continue in the upcoming years.

As a result, for the first time in three seasons, we have enough money in the bank that I *won't* have to write a check from my personal account to cover the final payroll and year end expenses. It's hard to accurately predict things until the accountant does his year end "gazintas" (12 ga-zin-ta 72 six times...), but I suspect that we'll actually make a tiny profit this year after all is said and done. After losing money in our first two seasons, this is a nice milestone for us, and Maggie and I are encouraged by the year's results.

We also had a lot of good news this year. Our awards at last year's national convention, the Boston Magazine article, naming us one of Boston's "25 Most Beloved Ice Cream Locations", and a bunch of other small mentions in other media have helped us to gain a reputation for having the best ice cream in the area.

All in all, 2005 was a pretty good year for Mad Maggie's, and we're encouraged that maybe this isn't such a hair-brained idea for a busines after all! As always, we really appreciate all of the support that we've received from our customers, so "Thanks!" to each of you.

Flavor News

I know I'm far from impartial, but I honestly think that several of our flavors have gotten significantly better this year. Last year, our Maple Walnut was just pedestrian, not significantly better or worse than most other stands around. This year, after swapping some tips from my friends Gary and Patty Sundberg, of Sunburgers Ice Cream in Grand Isle, Vermont, I now think that no one in the area makes a better Maple Walnut than ours (I must have eaten a gallon of it alone in the past couple of weeks.) Also, our Vanilla, Strawberry, Cheesecake, and Chocolate are all better than what we made last year. All in all, I'm very happy with the quality of the ice cream we're making at this point.

While many in this business look for ways to cut costs by buying cheaper ingredients, I refuse to do that. We've been aggressively stalked this season by a vendor who wants to sell us a cheaper ice cream mix, but I refuse to switch, even for a cost savings of nearly $8 per case, because I know the mix we're using is the best tasting one I've found. Our goal is to become known as the place to find the best ice cream, and I'll happily sacrifice some potential profits for better tasting ice cream. And I hope that I can keep improving all of our flavors over the years to come.

Our newest flavor, Pumpkin Gingersnap, is now one of my favorites, and I've had several customers tell me that it's one of the best flavors they've tasted. I'm not sure if we'll make this one in the spring, as it's really more of a fall flavor, but I'm certain you'll see it reappear at least by mid-summer.

I'm in a bit of a quandry about this one though: I got the original recipe for this from my friend Orrick Nepomuceno, of Cosmic Ice Cream in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I promised Orrick that I wouldn't pass it along, nor submit it to any flavor competitions. Orrick's recipe was good, but I knew I could do better, and I've modified it (using my Mom's great Pumpkin Pie recipe as the basis...) and now I've got a recipe that's significantly different, but still based on Orrick's. I don't want to go back on my word, but this is such a good flavor that I'd really like to submit it to some competitions. Guess I'll have to have a negotiating session with Orrick at this year's convention in Scottsdale to work out an agreement!

And Banana Pudding has also been a surprise -- it's continued to sell well, even after the initial spike that all new flavors seem to go through has subsided. I guess we'll move this one to a more permanent position on our flavor line up.

Staff Profile

Well, I know I haven't gotten through all of my team this year, but I've saved one of the best for last. This month's profile is of team member Melissa.

Melissa is not only one of my favorite employees, but she's also my niece, so from the time when she was a little child, she's had the misfortune of having to put up with me and my teasing at every Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter.

Melissa started working for us last year when she was just 14, and I worried a lot about her, as her mother, my sister-in-law, Priscilla would report to me that she came home exhausted and slept for 12 hours after completing a shift.

Now, in her second year with us, Melissa has grown into one of my steadiest workers, and I know I can always count on her to come in on short notice if needed. She's part of the core team that we expect to return next season to lead the new crop of recruits.

Melissa lives in Burlington, and attends Shawsheen Tech where she's studying Graphic Design with an emphasis on computers.

Here's a photo of her from earlier this season

You won't be able to say Hi to her for the rest of this year, but come on by in the spring and see her!

Addendum

My favorite story about Melissa has nothing to do with ice cream: It's about a pie!

A few years back, we had gone blueberry picking, and I had made a fresh blueberry pie from the berries. We have this little tradition of "naming" each pie I make -- if it's groundhog day, it might be the GroundHog Pie, if it's Easter, it might be the Bunny pie, etc., and I make a corresponding little design in the top crust as airholes to let the steam escape as the pie cooks.

Well, on this day, I named it "The Melissa Pie", since she had gone with me to help to pick the berries. When I tell you that this was a beautiful pie, I don't do it justice -- the crust was perfect, and it came out of the oven looking like it belonged on the cover of the Betty Crocker cookbook. I set it on top of the stove to cool, and turned off the oven while we all salivated, waiting for a slice.

About ten minutes later, there was a lound BANG from the kitchen, and we ran in to find exploded blueberries all over the stove! I had turned the wrong knob, and had mistakenly turned the stove element on, rather than turning the oven off, and the glass pie dish had exploded from the heat of the stove element!

Let me tell you, there were a lot of sad faces in the house that day, as we were all disappointed in not being able to eat that pie! I even scooped a couple of spoonfuls of blueberry filling out of it and tasted it -- it was absolutely delicious -- before Maggie tossed out the rest, yelling at me that I was going to end up swallowing glass shards. I made another one, but it didn't come out anywhere near as perfect as The Melissa Pie.

Now, whenever we pick blueberries, someone will always say "Hey, remember `The Melissa Pie'?", and we'll have a moment of silence, as we all remember that perfect pie that we didn't get the chance to eat.

Blonde Pirate

A man walks into a bar, and notices a blonde pirate sitting drinking a beer. The pirate has a peg leg, a hook for a hand, and an eye patch. The man gathers up the courage to sit next to the pirate, and finds that he's actually not a bad guy -- for a pirate anyway.

After a couple of drinks, the man asks "Say, how did you lose your leg?"

The pirate replies, "Aye, we were in a storm at sea, and I was swept overboard into a school of sharks. Just as me men were pulling me out a shark bit me leg off."

"Wow! Is that when you lost your hand too?"

"No," replied the pirate, "while me men and I were plundering in the middle east, I was caught stealing from a merchant. I was arrested and me hand was cut off."

"Incredible! What about your eye?"

"A sea gull dropping fell into me eye," replied the pirate.

"A sea gull dropping caused you to lose an eye? I don't believe that!"

"Well," said the pirate, "it was me first day with the hook..."

OK, that's it for this edition. I'll try to send out some news every other month or so during the off season. If I didn't get a chance to see you before we closed, know that Maggie and I wish each of you a great fall and winter, and we'll look forward to seeing you all in the spring!