Howdy, guys and gals, and welcome to this week's edition of Mad Maggie's Newsletter. The newsletter that's a little bit Country, AND a little bit Rock and Roll.

They tell me that today is the first day of spring, though you'd never know it from the miserable, cold, raw commute I just went through. I sure am longing for just one of those warm, 60 degree spring days!

My serving team is gearing up for a big spring, as their winter sports are winding down, and they're all itching to get more shifts in. I've been slowly adding shifts to keep up with the growing traffic at the store, and at this point, I think those lonely nights of me manning the store alone are over for this year. And we actually have had to schedule three team members together for the busy Saturday and Sunday shifts. The kids seem to love the change, as now they're working with others their own age, instead of having to work alongside me, with my big clumsy feet sending them home each night with bruised toes.

Some of our college students have already been home on spring break, and have been stopping in to say hi and set up their plans for the summer. At this point, I have at least 5 college kids who all claim to want to work close to 40 hour weeks during the summer, so it looks like we'll have a seasoned team to serve you this summer.

That's good news for me, but probably not as good news for the line of applicants who have already started queuing up, hoping for a job this summer. With so many existing team members looking for longer hours, I don't think we'll be hiring as many fresh faces as I thought we'd need, though we'll likely add at least a few, just so the older kids have someone to pick on. The kids who were new to the team last year are like a pack of wild dogs smelling fresh meat, as they excitedly dream about having some new "rookies" below themselves on the Mad Maggie's Totem Pole.

(I occupy two spots on the pole -- one at the very top, and one at the extreme bottom. I can make the kids jump when I need to, but normally, as the butt of all of their jokes, I take my fair share of abuse as "the grumpy old guy".)

Funny Story

Speaking of "Grumpy Old Guys", I was waiting on a customer a few weeks back, and the gentleman motioned to his young son -- no more than four or five years old -- and said to me "He wanted to know who makes all of your ice cream?"

I looked down at the little guy and kidded "We have a grumpy old man, who we keep out back, and he makes it all. Do you want to come see it being made?"

I brought them out back, and gave them the dime tour of our ice cream production room, pointing out the bags of ice cream mix, the flavorings, and the batch freezer, busily churning up a new batch. When it was ready, I showed them how I pack it into tubs, and freeze it overnight. And I gave the little boy and his dad a cup of fresh ice cream to taste.

As they were leaving, the boy turned around, looked up at me with big puppy-dog eyes, and shyly asked "Where's the grumpy old man??"

Girl Scout Night

Our "Girl Scout Cookie Kickoff" night was quite a success. We had a lot of fun, as we did tours of the store for somewhere around 150 scouts and their associated siblings, parents, and friends. We bought 75 T-shirts, and were selling them for $7, which was basically our cost. (We still have quite a few left, so if any of you scouts want a nice shirt, come on by!)

The cookies are still coming in, and we're furiously turning them into ice cream (we may have eaten a box or two along the way!)

On a cold, snowy Tuesday night in late February, we had a packed store from about 3pm until 9pm. Although it's unlikely that we actually made any money off the event, after paying for cookies, shirts, and having three times as many of my serving team working as we'd normally have, but we got a lot of positive feedback, and I think we may end up making this an annual event. I'm hoping that the event got enough people thinking about ice cream that we'll have a quick startup this spring.

If you didn't get to the store, you can look at some photos from the night on our website at:

http://madmaggies.com/photos/albums/2008/GirlScouts/

We also got a welcome front page story about our cookie fiasco in the Lawrence Eagle Tribune last week. The "reporter" seems to have aspirations for being a great fiction writer, as she concocted a story of us being saved by a roving troop of brownies, but what can you do. She seemed to take great joy in reprinting my "I'm an idiot" line, but I suppose it's not the first time people have used that line in connection to me -- and any press is good press, right?

If you didn't get a chance to see the story, you can find it online here:

http://www.eagletribune.com/punews/local_story_050010302.html

If you signed us up for cookies but haven't dropped them off yet, come on by -- we'll keep buying until our "cookie cash" is gone.

We're already thinking ahead to next year's cookie sales, and some of our customers have given us some great ideas to chew on.

One suggested that we only purchase cookies from those who actually come into the store to sign us up, and that makes sense, to try to avoid the email "forwarding frenzy" that we encountered this year. Another had a great idea -- buy one box from anyone, but two boxes if they agree to take payment in the form of a Mad Maggie's gift card. Brilliant! We have great customers, and this is just the kind of "out of the box" thinking that I never would have come up with on my own. (Heck, I might even make it three boxes!)

Our Cakes are "Mahvalous"!

Our ice cream cake business is hopping!

We've struggled over the years to be able to consistently have cakes on hand, as we sell a lot more cakes if customers can just run in, grab a cake from our display freezer, and dash off. We do a lot of custom cake orders as well, but requiring folks to think ahead and fill out an order form seems to be too much to ask of some people.

(We still get the customer or two a week who want to order a cake at noon, and have it ready to go by 2pm. We patiently explain that we can't modify the laws of physics, and that dairy products take their own sweet time to freeze sufficiently, but some people don't get it!)

Well, we have a great situation in place now, as we have the display freezer in our parlor, and we have several of our serving team who've become exceptional cake decorators. I still think Carolyn is our best, but Sara is nipping right on her heels, as the two of them seem to have a friendly competition going to see who can come up with the best looking new design. Every day I come into the store, I make a point of looking at the new cakes, and I just about always see something new and interesting that one or the other of them has come up with.

And lately, a few of the others have been pitching in and trying their hands at decorating, and they all seem to be able to do better than I can (not that that's a high standard to reach...) My favorite team member, Rachel, has been spending the quiet afternoon shifts practicing her decorating techniques, and she's gotten to the point where she's really good at it, she's definitely got an eye for making those cakes look great.

I'm going to have to take some photos of our cakes and make a gallery on the website. I'm really happy with the way these kids are cranking out cakes now, so hopefully we'll be able to keep the display case filled, and keep those cakes selling.

If you've got a special occasion coming up, think about purchasing an ice cream cake to take along with you. I know we'll be able to make a great one for you. Just be prepared for the sudden rush of attention you'll undoubtedly receive, since everyone knows, a delicious Mad Maggie's ice cream cake is to hot members of the opposite sex like catnip is to cats!

(That hasn't been scientifically proven, but I'm still pretty sure it's true -- I think I read it in the Inquirer.)

Flavor News

Coconut Caramel Cookie: This is the flavor we came up with to use our "Caramel Delight" girl scout cookies in. We made a coconut based ice cream, mixed in crushed up cookies, and swirled in a thick streak of caramel. It tasted so good, that we also made a version of this in gelato, and BOY did it sell fast!

Banana Peanut Butter Cup: We've had a few persistent customers over the past months asking us to make Banana flavored ice cream. So last week, while I was at the restaurant supply store, I picked up 20 lbs of bananas, and left them on a shelf under the counter for a few days. When my serving team started complaining about the smell, I knew they were ready (you really do want very ripe bananas to make a good banana ice cream!)

We've made a "Banana Pudding" in the past, by mixing in some crushed "Nilla Wafer" cookies, but I wanted to try something new. As the batch of banana ice cream froze, my production manager, Janae and I debated what to add to it. I know other places that add a peanut butter streak to banana, and Janae wanted to add chocolate chips. As it froze, I had a stoke of genius: "Let's add mini-peanut butter cups!"

So we did. I checked on Google, as I had a vague memory of something made with bananas and peanut butter, and sure enough, there's a flavor of milkshake known as the "Fat Elvis" -- supposedly, Elvis loved bananas and chocolate and peanut butter mixed together.

The mini peanut butter cups work well, as the chocolate and peanut butter are a nice contrast to the strong banana taste. Banana ice cream isn't one of my personal favorites, but this really is an interesting combination, it'll be fun to see how our banana lovin' customers take to it!

Blondes and Math: A Dangerous Combination

During our Girl Scout Cookie Kickoff night, we were selling T-shirts at our cost of printing them, which was $7 (OK, our cost was slightly less than that, but I rounded it to the dollar to not have to deal with the change...) As I was making ice cream, one of my serving team came back to where she'd hung her coat and exclaimed "someone just bought $91 worth of T-shirts!"

"Wow, they bought 13 shirts?" I asked.

"Yeah, how'd you know how many they bought?" she replied.

She was rummaging in her coat to find her cell phone, so she could use the calculator to check if the cash register had multiplied the total correctly... (yes, she's one of our blondes ;^)

Staff News

We had our first full-team meeting of the year this past Saturday, as we needed to sit down as a team, and figure out what worked, and what didn't during last summer's short season. We went over a bunch of item preparations, to make sure we are all consistently making things the same way.

I warned the kids that participation was MANDATORY, but it looks like they don't teach vocabulary in the schools anymore, as one blonde, one brunette, and one somewhere in-between missed the meeting.

Their loss, as instead of the hour long "Food Safety" lecture that I had told them we were going to have, we all piled into cars and drove up the street to the new "Laser Craze" facility at the old Western Electric plant (now "Osgood Landing").

Fun was had by all -- although the "Blue Team" suffered 4 consecutive defeats to the "Red Team". Undoubtedly, it was my superior marksmanship and ingeniously devious strategy that brought victory to the Red Team, although Alex and Emily continue to remind me that I didn't even figure out where our home base was until the third game was nearly over.

In other staff news, we're already fielding piles of applications for summer jobs, although we haven't actually hired anyone yet. We have promised spots to a couple of 14 year olds who have ties to us through their parents, but those that young really can't do a lot of work, as they're limited to 3 hours per day while school is in session.

We mainly hire them so the rest of the team has someone to boss around. Plus, they're so cute and cuddly, it's like having a litter of warm puppies wandering around the store, without the puddles (at least, most of the time!)

In all seriousness, we've received around 20 applications already, and we're expecting a lot more. In the past I've gone through the applications in pretty much the order in which they got turned in, but this year I'm thinking that I'll have to modify that a bit, as we have a lot of college kids, and a lot who play fall sports, so I'll likely give some preference to those who tell me that they'll be able to keep working through the fall.

Hiring new team members is one of the really fun parts of the business, as it's interesting to sift through the piles of great candidates and find the ones who will fit in best with the existing team. I tell my friends that I feel like a Hollywood director, casting an upcoming movie as I try to fit the right personality into each of our "starring roles"!

Newsletter Coupon

We're going Bananas!

Ever had a Banana Split? I never had, up until a day last fall when I made one for a customer who then changed their mind. Rather than letting it go to waste, I started eating it, and ate nearly the entire thing! I now understand why Split lovers order these!

Here's the offer: You bring the banana, we'll make it into a split, and charge you the price of a normal sundae (a small sundae for a half split, a large sundae for the full split).

With all the extra toppings that go into a banana split, I think that's a pretty good deal. So grab a banana on your way out the door, bring it to the store, and tell us "Hey! Banana Me Up!"

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OK, that's all I can wring out of this twisted little brain this week.

Think ahead to the long lines that we'll have at the stand in a few weeks, and get yourself down to the store NOW along with the other "Professional Ice Cream Lovers" before the novices who only eat ice cream when it's warm out clog up the place!

Thanks for reading, and we hope to see you soon,