Welcome to this week's newly renamed edition of "The Scoop"! Lori, one of our loyal newletter readers, wrote me last week suggesting that I rename these, and she even designed and included a nice little graphic for it. While I don't send these emails with graphics (my background as a computer systems manager has helped me form a loathing for over use of graphics in emails... ;^), the logo works perfectly as a header on our NewsLetter Archive page on the website -- another project that I've been "meaning to get to" for quite a while. Anyway, I took a rainy Sunday morning, and published a bunch of past newsletters to our website, so you can now view these (and Lori's logo) online right here:

http://madmaggies.com/news/TheScoop/

If you just can't stand reading an email without a nice picture in it, click on the link and bask in the glow of all those pixels lighting up on your computer screen!

Thanks Lori!

Birthday Coupons

I spent some time over the winter working on our mailing list software so that we could automatically send out coupons for those on the list who've supplied their birthdates. Unfortunately, I never actually finished it, so I'm still doing these manually. If you didn't receive a birthday coupon, please email me and let me know -- I'll send you out one right away. Sorry for messing up on this one!

Off Site Appearances

This just in: We've been asked to serve ice cream sundaes at the North Reading High Jazz Recital on May 25th at the high school. Come on by and enjoy a nice sundae, and listen to some "cool" jazz as well!

We'll also be at the Andona Society's "Clown Town" carnival, on the Andover Common again this year. We'll be there both Friday night and all day Saturday (May 19th and 20th), so come on by and say hi! Let's hope the weather is better than last year, when we nearly froze to death!

Cool Weather

One customer asked me about the state of the business, remarking that "you must be doing well, as we haven't had a lot of rain in April". True, but the weather has been cool, and the ice cream traffic just hasn't picked up early this season. We actually ended April with almost identical sales as last April's, but the daily average is down about 10%, as we were open for fewer days last year. We really need a warm stretch of weather with temps above 75 to stimulate people to come out for an ice cream, and we just haven't had it yet this year. We're hoping that the nice weather that's predicted for today and the rest of the weekend is a sign of better weather to come. If we have another May like last year's (22 days of rain), we'll be in big trouble paying our bills!

Our Soft Serve Product

If you've been by the store over the past week, you probably have seen our signs letting folks know that we were experimenting with using a frozen custard product in our soft serve machine.

"Custard" is the industry name for the class of ice cream that's made with eggs. Around New England, it's an uncommon thing to see, other than in certain flavors such as "French Vanilla".

Custard is extremely popular in other parts of the country though. I have friends who run a chain of stores in Cleveland, and others who run another chain in St. Louis. And we have several loyal customers from the Ohio area who have been telling me for the past few seasons about the great custard stands where they used to live.

When we investigated buying a soft serve machine, one of my worries was the type of product we'd put into it. Our nearest competitor down the street sells a cheap soft serve product, and I worried that selling the same lousy product, while more profitable for us, doesn't complement our premium, batch made ice cream very well.

The custard mix we're buying is very expensive -- I pay more than twice as much for it as I could purchase the cheaper soft serve mix. After trying it for a week though, I'm convinced that it's a much better product. It has a very smooth, creamy texture and a delicious taste.

So we're planning to use this product for now in our soft serve machine.

I still wonder whether this is the right thing to do, as I'm not sure that the typical customer looking for a soft serve product really *cares* whether it's a premium product, or whether they're simply looking for something cold, white, and cheap.

We can't compete pricewise on this product, as our base cost is so much more. But we're going to try this for a month or so anyway to see if customers accept it. I'll keep an eye on the sales, and will change back to a cheaper product if I find that folks just aren't interested in spending a little more for this premium product, but I sure hope it takes off and people come looking for it.

If you're at the store, please ask for a taste of the custard. If you do, please let us know what you think. Thanks!

Flavor News

With the additional storage space we have this year after the addition of a new dipping cabinet over the winter, we've been pretty active about trying out new flavors, so we have a bunch of flavors that we either haven't tried before, or that we haven't had on our menu for a while. Here are a few of the new ones:

Turtle Soup: At our winter ice cream industry get together, our main supplier showed me a new product -- caramel filled chocolate "turtles". I thought these were excellent, so I ordered a box of them. Well, they finally came in this week, so I played around a bit and came up for something we're calling "Turtle Soup".

A lot of places sell Turtle ice cream, but the exact ingredients in each varies quite a bit. Some include peanuts, some pecans, some a caramel or a chocolate streak, some in vanilla, some in a caramel base.

I made ours in a light butterscotch-caramel base. and mixed in a bunch of these great tasting chocolate turtles. I also mixed in loads of lightly crushed roasted pecans, and mixed up a special streak sauce of marbling chocolate combined with the same rich caramel variegate we use in our "Vanilla Caramel" and "Massachusetts Mud" flavors. This makes a nice fudgy chocolate/caramel streak in the finish product, I think it works well (though I think it needs even more "turtles" in it...)

Come on by and try it, and make sure to tell us what you think -- does it need a stronger base flavor, or is it good as it is?

Black Walnut: This is a flavor we had quite often last year, but I hadn't made it yet this season, as it's a bit of a "niche" flavor, and the price of good Black Walnuts is crazy high -- $14 per pound! It's doubtful that we make much money on this flavor. Still, one nice customer who I "hooked" on this flavor last year called looking for it, and I promised that I'd make a batch for this weekend. So we have a batch in stock now. I don't know how long we'll have it, so if you're a fan of this interesting buttery nut flavor, come on by and stock up while it's available!

Cookie Dough: This isn't a new flavor -- in fact it's one of our hottest sellers. Still, I changed the base flavoring that I'm using in it this spring, as I found a new supplier who has an "all natural" flavoring that I thought tasted better than our old recipe.

Not everyone agreed though, as one loyal newsletter reader told me that her daughter thought that there was something not quite right about our cookie dough. We're still trying to figure out if she had tasted a batch that was made with the "new" recipe, or the "old" recipe, as I made batches using both this spring.

So maybe we'll end up switching back if enough people don't like the new taste. If Cookie Dough is one of your favorites, don't be afraid to register your opinion on whether the new taste really is better than the old one. I'm no connoisseur of Cookie Dough, so I'll be happy to hear the opinions of those who are!

Staff Profile

This edition features Mad Maggie's scoop team member Bryan.

Bryan has worked for us on and off for three seasons now. We originally hired him late one season to fill in for some others who were off to college. He is typically busy early in the year with school, then works for us for a month or so before heading off to his summer camp counselor's job, then comes back in late summer, just in time to fill the exodus of those team members leaving for college.

Bryan is probably one of our more likeable team members, as he seems to get along with everyone, boys, girls, young, old. Heck, I can even put up with his music, as he always seems to bring a wide selection of CD's to the store, and makes an effort to play one that everyone who's working with him can tolerate. Last year he impressed me by popping a copy of The Who's "Who's Next" into the CD player on a busy Saturday afternoon -- not many teens listen to the same music that *I* used to listen to growing up!

Bryan is a senior at Andover High, and is planning to attend Gettysburg College in the fall, so I guess we're going to have to weather a fall season without having him jump in and fill those unstaffed fall shifts this year.

Here's a link to a photo of Bryan from last year where he teamed up with two of our "hot chicks" on a Saturday night:

http://madmaggies.com/photos/albums/2005/May/tn/100_2681.JPG.html

Bryan *has* been known to be a little scatter brained -- I sometimes refer to him as our resident "male blonde", but all in all, he's a really good worker and a very enjoyable young man, and we're proud to have him on the team.

Make sure to say hi to him if you find him serving you at the window!

Newsletter Coupon

We want people to try our new custard soft serve, so here's a great deal: Print out this coupon, bring a friend (or six!) along with you, and for every soft serve custard item you purchase, we'll give you another one for free! Can't beat that deal with a dead cat!

(Oops, sorry about that -- didn't mean to offend the cat lover's among our readership. Actually, I *love* cats. Especially the white meat ;^)

[ Just kidding -- everyone knows there's no white meat on a cat... ]

I've probably lost all of my cat-loving customers with that last bit, so I'll end now before I offend anyone else.

Hope to see you soon at the store. Pray for some good warm weather for us!