Welcome to this week's edition of The Scoop, from your friends at Mad Maggie's Homemade Ice Cream. The first edition sent from our new home in North Andover!

Well, it's been a crazy few weeks, but I've finally found a few minutes to sit down and compose a newsletter. Sorry that this has been delayed for so long, but the time demands involved with opening a new store have been a little bit overwhelming!

I've told people that the problem is that there are hundreds of little, mundane tasks associated with getting the new store set up. None of them is huge in and of itself, but each seems to take an hour or so. So, even on the weekends, when I get to the store by 7am, and leave at around 11pm, it seems my "to do" list grows more often than it shrinks.

Some of the little things:

• Hang pictures
• Order business cards and frequent visitor cards with new address
• Put up a mailbox, so we get mail!
• Install speakers and receiver in parlor area
• Order gift cards
• Hang hooks to hold the mops and brooms
• Put up shelving for tubs, utensils, etc.
• Assemble shelving for walk in freezer
• Organize and label all ice cream locations
• Hang neon signs
• Fix soap dispensers
• Add door stops to all interior doors
• Put knobs on cabinets
• Configure wireless network
• Adjust height of pendant lights in parlor
• Hang new lights above inside counter.
• Run wires for cash register connections
• Move storage freezers from North Reading
• Fix leaky hand sink
• etc.

That's just the short list that came to mind while sitting here, my real list goes on for about 3 pages. And those are just the extra tasks that need to be addressed, not to mention my little job of keeping the ice cream and gelato in stock and paying the bills!

In retrospect, now that we've run the new store for a couple of weeks, it probably wouldn't have been a bad idea to wait a couple of weeks to fill up the freezers and to get a lot of those tasks completed before we officially opened, but the late season start had us worried about hitting enough of the summer season to help us bank enough cash to make it through the winter. Hopefully, even with all of the remaining tasks that we have to do, we haven't done too badly in balancing those two conflicting goals -- getting some cash flow and opening without looking too unprepared!

The good news is that sales at the new location have been fantastic -- in fact, our numbers for August are nearly exactly what I projected in my original business plan for the location. If we can keep on that pace for the rest of year, we should be able to survive the winter off season, and be ready to sell a lot of ice cream for next spring and summer!

People's Choice Ice Cream Show

Yep, it's that time again, Labor Day, and as usual, this Sunday, September 2nd from 10am to 1pm, The Pat Whitley Restaurant Show on WRKO - 680AM, will be holding their semi-annual People's Choice Ice Cream stand show.

The ice cream store that gets the most votes between Memorial Day and Labor Day wins the award, which would be a HUGE boost to a tiny little place like ours. I was a bit disappointed over Memorial Day when only one of our readers (Thanks Ron!) called in their vote, so I'm asking you to please consider calling in and voting for us.

If you can't call, please consider voting on their website. Here's the link:

http://nedine.com/voting/icecream/icecream.html

You can listen in on Sunday morning between 10 and 1pm...(www.wrko.com) The call in number is: 888-434-6464

Please don't forget to call in on Sunday morning and vote for us!

Wildlife

Since we've been working at the new location for a couple of months now, it's been surprising to me the amount of wildlife that we have in the area. We're right on the shores of Lake Cochichewick, which is North Andover's water reservior, so I suppose it's not too surprising, but...

So far, we've observed:

• Several deer
• A gray fox
• A few coyotes
• A flock of turkeys, complete with a half dozen chicks
• Red tail hawks
• What I think is a Coopers Hawk (It's a big one!)
• Several Great Blue Heron

While I haven't had a lot of time to sit around and watch for them, it seems like I've spotted most of these at either dawn, or dusk, so as the store slows down during the fall, I want to try to carve out 15 minutes or so to sit out back and watch for more.

If you're at the store in the late afternoon, keep an eye on the field out back and maybe you'll spot some more!

Funny Coincidence!

Friend Gary, of Island Homemade Ice Cream, in Grand Isle, Vermont, phoned me with this funny story.

Seems like he got a phone call from someone in the ice cream business who was vacationing in the Burlington, VT area, and asked if he could come by to visit and see their operation. This isn't unusual in the ice cream business, we're a pretty close community, and people seem to enjoy visiting with others in the same business when they travel.

Gary invited the guy to come by, and they talked shop for 20 minutes or so. When they got into talking about their businesses, the gentleman told Gary that he was a little worried, as a new competitor had entered his area, and he was hearing that their ice cream was fantastic. After a few more questions, Gary realized that the "big new competitor" that the guy was talking about was us! It turns out that the man was from Benson's ice cream, up the road in Boxford. Gary knew the business name, and the town he was in, but had no idea that Boxford was the next town to North Andover.

Gary tells me that there was an awkward silence, as the man realized that he had been conversing with someone who's a close friend of his competition, and that he left shortly after that. Not that he divulged any trade secrets that we could use or anything, but I'll bet he was wondering what the heck was going on for him to travel 4 hours and end up speaking to one of my best friends in the business!

Gary and I had a chuckle over it, but I don't think any harm was done. If he wanted to come by our place, I'd be happy to talk to him and show him our operation -- there's really not a lot to hide in this business!

Flavor News

There's not a lot to report here, as we've had enough trouble just keeping our stock flavors in the freezers that we haven't had a lot of time to experiment with new ones.

We have tried a few new flavors of gelato, and I'm happy to report that Pink Grapefruit and Chocolate Hazelnut are now available, and I'm going back and forth on which is my favorite -- they're both excellent, in my not-very-unbiased opinion.

Staff Profile

Even though we've only been open in our new location for a few weeks, we're already hitting the sad time when our serving staff starts leaving us as they return to school.

We have quite a few older kids either returning to college, or heading off for the first time, and it's a little sad to see them leave. Two of my favorites, Katie and Rachel, from North Reading, worked their last shifts on Saturday, and several of the other are finishing up this week. We have a big class of high school aged kids who've joined us this year, and a bunch of them are cutting back on their hours this week as their sports or school schedules start up.

I'm a little worried whether we'll have enough help to staff the store during the weekday afternoons through the fall, so if you know of anyone who's looking for a part time job during the school year, send them my way! We'd love to find someone who can work a "mother's hours" type shift of 10 to 3 during the fall!

Newsletter Coupon

In honor of Labor Day, we're extending this special offer: Any pregnant women who come to the store in active labor eat for free! We'll require proof that you actually deliver the kid within 24 hours...

Since that's likely to apply to a very small subset of our customers, we'll extend this other coupon to those of you who aren't in the process of procreating: Tell us you saw this coupon in our newsletter, and we'll give you a free one scoop upgrade on any ice cream: Pay for a kiddie, get a small. Pay for a small, get a medium, etc.

OK, that's enough silliness for this week. I'll try to get the next newsletter out a little closer to our target of two weeks.

Again, don't forget to vote for us, and we sure hope to see you at the store soon.