Greetings, and welcome to the January edition of The Scoop, the news from Mad Maggie's Ice Cream. No where in the history of man has a list of so many amazingly attractive people been assembled, so take a quick look in the mirror, smile, then sit back and enjoy the news.

January has definitely been a better month for us than December. That warm week at the beginning of the month seemed to infect people with an early dose of spring fever, and we were busy for most of the week.

Alex and Emily, my stalwart Saturday night crew, claimed that traffic was like a summer night on at least one weekend. I think they were exaggerating a bit, as I was down in the basement office, working on bills and didn't hear that much commotion up above me. Still, it's nice to see lines at the counter (at least once in a while), and I have high hopes that we're going to have a fast start once the snow starts to melt away.

My unofficial target of "making it through the winter" is February 15th, so I'm counting the days, and hoping that old man winter doesn't decide to settle in for a long stay. Looking at the almanac, I see that we've gained 39 minutes of daylight since the drudgery of the winter solstice, and we're gaining around two minutes every day, so I think the end is quickly approaching. (Do I sound convincing?)

Regular Customers

When you run a small business like this, it's funny how you notice the patterns of customers. I think I notice it more at this time of year, as I'm spending a lot of my time working the counter, and I seem to see a group of the same people on the same night each week.

On Saturday nights, we often see our friend Pat, who just about always gets a quart of ice cream, along with a half gallon of yogurt for her friend. Another Saturday night regular always orders a half gallon, a small cup, and a medium cup, all of chocolate almond yogurt. The girls know him so well, they'll start scooping it when they see him come in.

Another regular always orders a Mocha frappe. Another gets a half gallon of Oreo. The little brother of one of our scoop team members always orders a medium Peppermint Stick with Nerds on top (Yuck!) -- even before his sister ever worked for us!

I don't always remember the names, or the exact orders until after they place their order, but it's funny to see the patterns that develop, and to see the reaction on people's faces when they realize that they come so regularly that you've learned exactly what they order each time.

We're certainly thankful for these regulars who keep at least a bit of business flowing for us during these slow winter months!

My God! What Have I Done?

There are times in the running of this business when I make some decision that seems like a no brainer, but then turns out to be something I should have put a little more thought into.

Our annual mission of buying Girl Scout cookies seems to be one of those that I should have thought about a little more before implementing.

We use real, authentic Thin Mint girl scout cookies in our Mint Cookie ice cream. I normally buy 30 to 40 boxes each winter, and at our North Reading stand, that would keep us in Mint Cookie ice cream up through around July or so.

Last year, I was a little distracted in writing a business plan for our new store during cookie-selling time, and had to scramble at the last minute to find out where the scouts were selling cookies during January/February, so that I made sure I had enough.

So, this year, I decided I'd avoid a cookie shortage by posting a news item on our website announcing that we'd be happy to purchase two boxes of cookies from any scout who wanted to sell us some. I figured I'd get ten to twenty kids selling cookies -- after all, who the heck reads our website? -- and I'd have our cache of cookies for the spring and early summer.

It turns out I'm an idiot.

I didn't count on the viral nature of email, and the tenacity of those scout troop leaders. One person involved with the scouts saw our news item, and decided to forward the notice to everyone in her troop. Someone also decided to forward it to other neighboring troops. And so on. And so on.

When I logged in to read my email on Saturday night, I was pleased to read our first response from a scout, telling us that she had signed us up for two boxes. I sent her a short thank you note of a couple of sentences.

The next five emails were also scouts, thanking us for buying cookies. Each of them also got a short reply of thanks. Then I thought to look at the Subject lines of my inbox, and I was shocked to find that 25 or so of the next thirty-odd messages were also scouts taking us up on our offer. Yikes!

By about the 50th message, my replies were a single sentence of thanks. By the 100th or so, responses were just "Thanks". I timidly start up my email reader each morning and night now, as I'm afraid of how many eager little scouts will have emailed me since my last session.

Anyway, at this point, we're committed to well over 275 boxes, and the emails keep coming in. It looks like my plan to buy 30 or so boxes is going to instead turn into two or three hundred boxes! We'll definitely need a lot more cookies at our new location, but I think we've probably over committed at this point.

We'll happily make good on our offer, but PLEASE don't forward this on to any more scouts! At this point, we may need to take out a bank loan to pay off those cookies! And I'm starting to have nightmares of being stalked by tiny little girl scouts, who keep jumping out from behind trees and out of dark alleys, burying me with cookies and demanding four bucks a box ;^)

We have plenty of storage space though, so we'll be able to keep the cookies for quite a while, and we'll obviously have Thin Mint ice cream from February right through the fall -- maybe even into next year at this rate. So make sure you come on by when the cookies are in, and order a big dish of Mint Cookie. I know we'll have plenty of it this year!

To try to get some benefit from our massive commitment, we're planning to hold the first of a hopefully annual event: "Mad Maggie's 2008 Girl Scout Cookie Kickoff". The cookies are scheduled for delivery starting February 27th, so on the day before, Tuesday, February 26th, we'll have an open house at our store. We'll have troops of scouts on hand, hopefully with additional boxes to sell for any of you who missed out on signing up.

And, we're planning some store tours for the scouts, hopefully a newspaper or two will be there to take photos, and we'll be giving away samples of our Mint Cookie flavor, made with real Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies. Stop on by, if you can weave your way through the herd of scouts who will be there! And if you know a scout who hasn't been invited to attend, please share this news with them!

Flavor News

My oldest son, Mike, sent me a link to an interesting article about a special flavor made by a store in San Francisco called "Salted Caramel". (You can watch the video yourself at http://www.chow.com/stories/10761) It sounded interesting enough that I decided to take a stab at making it. I haven't yet had the time to try it, but maybe by the time you read this and get to the store, we'll have it.

A couple of other flavor updates:

• Green Tea: I had tried a sample of this back in December, and while I didn't think it was strong enough, we had enough positive response that I decided to order a gallon of the flavoring and start making it to see how it sells. I've been surprised at the number of people who request this -- and it's not just our "hippy" customers either, we've had a number of adolescents who've asked for it.
• Ground Hog Stew: At this time of year, we're always so tired of Winter that we just want to cook that darn rodent, so we do so in effigy by mixing up a batch of this flavor. We use a vanilla malted base, and mix in some crushed "bones" (yogurt coverd pretzels), "brains" (fudge stripe cookies), and "guts" (Kit Kat bars). There's a lot of "stuff" in this, but the combination is pretty good. Come on by and try a scoop and help us send this lousy winter off to an early exit!

Staff Profile

We have a very short roster during the winter, as the number of hours available has shrunken to the point where most work one or two shifts per week. One of our steadiest winter team members has been Emily, so I'll pick on her a bit here this month.

Emily started with us last spring, and I really didn't want to hire her when I first saw her application, as she is the sister of one of my son Michael's friends. Now Mike and his "posse" seem to have the sole mission of upsetting my sleep patterns. On many a summer night after dragging myself home from the store and stumbling into bed for a few hours of sleep, I've been woken up at 3 or 4 am to the sounds of the kids shouting over a video game they're playing in the basement.

Luckily, to the best of my knowledge, none of them has managed to snap a photo of me during one of my sleep-deprived trips to the basement in my underwear (at least, I hope I had them on) to yell at them to keep the noise down.

So, when I saw Emily's application, I thought of her brother and had a "less than positive" response.

Still, one of our best rookies of last summer, Alex, was insistent that I hire Emily. "She'll be great!" she assured me.

Well, I've got to admit that Alex was right, as Emily has turned into one of my favorites pretty quickly. The two of them have anchored our Saturday Night crew for most of the past year, and I tell people that Saturday night is when we have the most fun, as there's a lot of good natured joking around.

Emily is a Junior at Andover High, where she's a member of the track team. She has the distinction of having the longest "official" last name I've ever come across, as her social security card has her French name, which roughly translates to "people who live by the lake in the big house on the hill with the white shutters and green Peugeot in the driveway". Or something like that.

Emily quickly learned the ropes at the store, and is one of our most bubbly personalities. She never seems to complain, even when I have some really dirty job that needs to get done. And she's a great at getting along with the others on the team. And she's attracted the attention of a couple of the teenage boys who stop by, one of whom optimistically slipped her his phone number one night (which has helped keep the kidding going.)

She consistently seems to attract the most tips during her shifts, something she jokingly attributes to "being so good looking", while I kid her that it's because she's the biggest suck up on the team. I spend a lot of time kidding her about her transportation, which is a mini van she shares with her brother -- I tell her she looks like the typical "Soccer Mom" when she drives up.

Emily tells me that she wants to study to be a lawyer when she gets older -- something I keep trying to dissuade her from. But judging from the way she argues, she'll probably make a good one.

All kidding aside, Emily has been a great addition to our team, and we're very happy to have her as part of it. She's in line to be one of our leaders soon, and we're hoping she'll be with our team for a long time.

Newsletter Coupon

Super Bowl Sunday is this week -- come on by the store, tell us you're a newsletter reader, and we'll give you $2 off any ice cream cake. Bring it to your Super Bowl party, and be a hit with all of your friends!

OK, That's it for this week. Think spring, and Go Pats!