Hi all, and welcome to another edition of The Scoop! The email newsletter that helps Briget Moynihan get through those quiet times while Tom Brady's son, little Jonathan, naps.

Things are getting very quiet around the store most nights. I've cut back to one person on the schedule for most week nights, and after Thanksgiving week, I'll likely be manning the store alone on Monday and Tuesday nights -- our slowest nights of the week. I'm not as efficient as some of our experienced serving team members, but I am an official graduate of "Ice Cream University" (really! there is such a place!), so what I may lack in speed, I can make up for in experience. At least, that's the story I'm sticking to.

We're still hoping to sell a bunch of pies for Thanksgiving, so we'll likely be busy this weekend. We're not sure of exactly what type of traffic we'll have through December and January, but it's likely that we'll close completely for at least a couple of weeks around the new year, if only to take a break from things.

Even with the slowdown in traffic, our new location is fantastic, and I'm continually surprised at the reasonably steady business we continue to get, even on cold, miserable nights. We'll muddle through this winter, hopefully keeping up with our bills, and plan on hitting the ground running in the spring when we'll do a big ad campaign. Let's pray for another mild winter with an early spring!

Local Drama

We've had a couple of local drama outfits ask us to run ads in their playbills, and we've been able to scrape together enough money to help out these local organizations.

Last week, the North Andover Drama Club put on a production of "Much Ado About Nothing". This weekend there are two productions: The Pentucket Players are putting on a production of "The Wizard of Oz" at Merrimack College, and the Andover Drama Club is performing "Titanic", at the Collins Center.

We have coupons in all of the playbills, so save your ticket stubs and come on by for a sundae after the show!

Two of our own, Michelle and David, have parts in the Andover shows, so we're hoping to sneak out sometime this weekend to see them.

"Our" Cheerleaders

We seem to get a lot of cheerleaders on our serving team -- I guess their upbeat, enthusiastic attitudes are right in line with what we look for in hiring. This year we have three from the North Andover cheerleading team -- Jenna, Katie, and Sara. They competed in a cheering competition last week, and we were happy to hear that they did well enough to qualify for the regional competition this week.

We'll be cheering for them to do well! If you got yesterday's North Andover Town Crossing, that's our Katie on the inside page, being lifted high into the air while she does a kick -- I don't know how she keeps her balance up there!

Growing The Business

Ice cream sales are definitely slow this time of year, and I had factored that into my business plan, but I guess I might have underestimated a little how drastically the business tails off when it's cold. So far in November, our sales are barely a quarter of what they were in September, so things are a little bleak most weeknights.

To help build up sales a bit, Maggie (mostly) and I (when I have time) have been searching and adding lunch time food offerings to our menu.

We now have Jim's Organic Coffee available during the day, along with a new hot chocolate machine and a selection of pastries from Andover Cakes. Maggie has been working on some roll up sandwiches, and we're just about ready to add those to the menu. And we'll be bringing in soups within the next week. Our plans are to offer two soups each day, with maybe a special additional soup on occasion.

Finding the best products, and figuring out how to add them to the menu has been a challenge, as we didn't want to just add something mediocre, so we spent a lot of time talking to different suppliers, and trying to find the best products to offer. Hopefully we've done a good enough job that we'll build up a bit of a lunchtime following.

While Maggie has been busy with the food menu, I've been busy looking into purchasing another business that can make use of our large, mostly unfilled, basement. I'm happy to report that I've entered an agreement to purchase "Cold Molds", which is a maker of flexible, silicon cake molds that work well for making ice cream cakes. You can check them out at http://www.coldmolds.com/

I've used these molds for years, and I really love the product, so when I heard that the founder was looking to get out of the business, I jumped at the chance to buy it. These molds are a great product, and we'll be able to use our basement to store the boxes of molds from the factory where they're manufactured, and to run a small mail order shipping center to fill the (mostly internet) orders. These molds are great for baking in as well, so if any of you want to order some to use in making cakes, you know where to find me!

Hopefully, between these two additional revenues streams, we'll be able to run the business throughout the winter and keep the heat, electricity, and rent paid!

Save the Cats!

I opened the mail last week, and got an interesting note, unsigned, but apparently from one of our customers.

I won't reproduce it here, but in a nutshell, the writer had apparently spied a cat wandering in the field/woods down behind our store, and the letter was a plea for us to either (a) catch the cat and adopt it, or (b) put out food for the cat, or (c) call the humane society to come and catch it and give it a good home.

Now, the my serving squad had quite a chuckle over this note, as they all know about my dislike of cats -- I'm definitely a "dog person", and while I can appreciate those who own cats, or just prefer cats, I don't agree with them.

So, they've been teasing me all week: "Steve, did you get some food for the cat?"; "Steve, are you going to go out back and rescue the poor cat?" They think it's hilarious. I told them that I love cats -- especially the white meat! (Just kidding there. Everyone knows there's no white meat on a cat ;^)

I don't think I'll be spending much energy trying to save a feral cat or two, though I do appreciate the concern of whomever sent us that note, and I hope they have good luck in finding and caring for the cat!

Practical Joke

Any who know me personally, know that I can't resist a good practical joke -- especially when it's on one of our lighter haired team members.

Last week, I finally got around to setting up our "Blizzard" mixer -- the machine that allows us to mix candies, etc. into a cup of soft serve to make a tasty sundae. (We can't actually call them "Blizzards", as that's a trademarked name, so ours are known as "Nor'Easters")

We had used this machine in North Reading last year, to get a feel for it, and one of the things I realized was that you really needed two hands to mix these things. So, I purchased a foot pedal on/off switch for the machine over the winter.

When I went to show each of the kids how to mix the sundaes, I didn't tell them about the foot pedal -- I told them that there was an electronic sensor that turned the machine on when you got the cup in the right position. As I showed them, I'd have my foot on the pedal, and turn it on at the right moment. Then I'd tell them to try mixing it, and I'd step back to watch how quickly they figured it out.

Some of them (mostly the ones who know me best) figured out pretty quickly that I was playing a trick on them, and found the foot pedal. A few others spent several minutes trying to get the cup into the right position to "activate the sensor".

Most of them figured it out after a couple of minutes, but I had a few of them going for the better part of 15 minutes, and it was hard for those of us "in" on the secret to keep straight faces while we watched them fumble about. Of course, I kept jumping in telling them "What's the problem, just put the cup right here!" as I stepped on the foot pedal.

They all took the joke pretty well, as they're all getting used to me playing tricks on them by this point in the season. One of the ones who fell hardest for it was one of our brunettes, so my intentions of finding our "blondest of blondes" didn't work out as I had hoped!

Flavor News

We're starting in on our holiday flavors, so we now have (or will soon have...) all of these:

Peppermint Stick - We make this flavor year round, as it's one of my personal favorites. I just found a new extract supplier, and have been using a different peppermint flavoring, so I'll be interested to hear feedback on whether this version is appreciably better, worse, or no different from our previous batches. This supplier uses all natural ingredients, so I really want to be able to switch to using them.

GingerBread - I played with this flavor last winter, but lost my recipe during the move, so I'll have to recreate it from memory. I love a good gingerbread with a huge dollop of whipped cream on top. (My personal favorite is served at the 1686 House in Kingston, New Hampshire -- about 4 inches thick, and with REAL whipped cream. Yum!) So we'll see how close to that flavor I can come!

Egg Nog - Again, I tried this last year, and it sold pretty well. I've got a friend up in Vermont who's helping me come up with a decent recipe, so between the two of us I'm pretty sure we'll have something that's yummy.

Other flavors that we'll make special for the holidays: - Toffee Heath - Caramel Apple - Pumpkin Gingersnap

If you have suggestions for other holiday flavors you'd like to see, don't be bashful about sending them to me!

Staff Profile

Our staff is quickly shrinking, as I've had to move several of our kids from regularly scheduled shifts to our "on call" list in case shifts open up.

This is a tough job for me, as we really have had a wonderful group of kids this year, and every one that I have to tell that we won't have any more regular shifts for them until the spring is difficult. I hate the thought of not seeing them for a few months!

We've had great luck this year in putting together the team. We have a group of kids from North Andover, another few from North Reading, several from Andover, and one each from Salem, NH, and Burlington. I always worry about how the kids from different towns will mesh, and whether we'll have cliques develop where one group won't work with another. But we've had just about no trouble there, as the different groups seem to work well together.

One of the unanticipated bonuses of running this business is the opportunity to watch these kids grow and mature, and this year has been a special one from that angle. We had more kids than before, as opening the new store took a lot more staff, so we had plenty of freshly scrubbed newbies working around the old store, then slowly taking over the new store. It's fun to look back at the photos we have of them early in the season, and see how much they've grown over the short six months we've known most of them.

For most of these kids, this is their first job, and it's funny to watch how they first come to us, all wide-eyed and nervous, and how the more experienced kids treat them, first with skepticism, and gradually more and more as peers as they grow out of their "rookie" status and into their roles as polished vets.

We had two "Young'uns" this year -- I normally try to hire one or two who are under 16 years old, with an eye on them growing into future team leaders. I think I did a pretty good job, as "babies" Shannon and Brittany have both done great jobs fitting in, and I have high hopes for them as they become the seasoned veterans for us next spring.

Our Andover crew of Michelle, Gina, David, Rachel, Emily, Alex, Ashley, Mike, David, John, and Janelle were all great performers for us, with Janae and Peter working mostly behind the scenes to help keep the ice cream freezers full.

Our North Reading squad of Kristina, Rachel, and Katie all made the transition from the old store to the new one without missing a beat.

And our "cute crew" from North Andover -- Katie, Jenna, Carolyn, Megan, and Sara, with an assist to James, and to our college kids Jamie, Mike, and Sheela, fit right in and helped us ease into the North Andover community.

And "long distance" travelers, Molly and Melissa helped fill in the empty shifts!

Most of the our new hires this year are in their Junior year of high school now, so we can look forward to a well-seasoned team for at least another two summers from them before they head off to college.

My goal for the spring is to again hire a lot of "rising Juniors", so that we have a never-ending progression of good kids giving great service.

I received three different emails in the past couple of weeks from customers complimenting me on the service they received, and that always makes me feel good. I put a lot of effort in hiring good kids -- no black t-shirted, nose ring wearing, moody teens at Mad Maggie's! So I'm always proud to hear good feedback on them, and I hope you all notice the great group of kids we have to serve you!

Newsletter Coupon

As much as I hate giving away things at this time of year, I guess we must have a coupon, so here it is:

Tell us you're a newsletter subscriber, and we'll consider you part of our serving team for the day -- meaning you'll get the "Staff Discount".

That amounts to a whopping 25% discount off any item. See how great my serving team has it?

OK, not that I'm "finished", but it's time to send this out, so that's it for this week. I'll plan on sending these updates out less frequently over the rest of the winter, so maybe one every three to four weeks, rather than one every two weeks from here on.

Thanks for reading, and PLEASE come on by the store! We can really use the business at this point!