FAQS

 Q: Are you open all year?

A: Yes! Or, at least, “mostly”. We generally close for most of the month of January, both to give us a little time to do some annual cleaning and maintenance tasks that we can’t do when customers are around, and to give us a bit of a mental break from the day to day grind of opening the store in the slow winter months.

Q: What are your hours?

A:  Our hours vary throughout the year, but generally:

In the slow winter months, we close on Mondays (and in February, Tuesdays), and open from 1pm until 8pm (an hour later on Friday and Saturday nights.)

During the spring and fall (from around April 15th through Columbus Day in early October) we’re open 7 days a week, typically noon to 8:30pm (again, open an hour later on Friday and Saturday nights)

During summer vacation period (June 20-ish through Labor Day) we’re open every day at 11am. We say we close at 9:30, but that’s just a suggestion — we keep serving until the customers are all served and our cleaning tasks are done, typically closing somewhere around 10:30 or so on a busy summer night.

We ALWAYS keep our “official” hours updated on Facebook, so visit us there to get accurate hours.

Q:  Hey! Google says you’re open, but I came there and you were closed! What gives?

A:  As explained in the previous answer, we adjust our hours with the seasons — our hours lengthen during the busy summer season and shorten in the slower off-season periods.

As much as we would like to believe that we’re a huge, powerful business that can control the online information about us, that’s just a fantasy. In reality, our annual sales are maybe the budget for employee massage expenses for a big company like Google, and they surprisingly pay us little attention.

While we have a Google Business page, and keep our hours there updated whenever we change our schedule, the information returned by a Google search (especially Google Maps, for some reason…) tends to lag our published information by about 3 months. So in the spring, customers will report that Google says that we’re closed on Mondays, even though we’re open, and the opposite in the fall.

(When an angry customer complains that “your website says you’re open!!!”, we know they’re mistaken, as we don’t publish the hours on our website — too easy to mess up the hours, as our web developer has many higher priority clients to deal with than us, and our change requests frequently get delayed or just forgotten!)

For accurate hours, check our Google Business listing, our Facebook page, or our store answering machine message (yeah, we still use one — I’m old…), all of which we keep up to date as our hours change. Or call us during business hours, and we’ll be happy to tell you our “official” hours. But don’t blame us for not controlling what Google tells you.

Q:  Where are you located?

A:  Our store is in North Andover, at 1025 Osgood Street, on the shores of Lake Cochichewick and directly across the street from the Butcher Boy Plaza and the Lawrence Municipal Airport. You can find detailed directions (including a map) here.

Q:  What kind of ice cream do you sell?

A:  The good stuff. Homemade. Rich in butterfat. Our own recipes, using the best ingredients, and made right here, on site.

Q: Do you make ice cream cakes?

A: YES! Not only do we make them, but they’re also the best ice cream cakes you’ll find! You can read all about them on our Cakes page.

Q: Hey! I brought my ice cream cake home, left it on the counter overnight, and it melted! What’s up?

A: Yep. It’s Ice Cream. You need to store it in your freezer, just like it tells you on the box.

Q: Why don’t you carry my favorite flavor?

A: Well, we try to make a wide selection of flavors, with enough variety to appeal to everyone. But we have only limited storage space for flavors, so sometimes have to sacrifice one or two of the more common flavors in favor of being able to offer some of our more unusual flavors.

But if you have a favorite that we don’t carry, or if you’ve discovered an exciting new flavor that you think would be a hot seller here, send us a feedback request, asking us if we’d consider making a batch. We frequently rotate in “test” flavors throughout the year, and sometimes those test flavors end up being so popular that they end up on the regular menu.

Q: What do you have that’s healthy for me?

A: Nothing. It’s ice cream. It’s a “reward” food. Enjoy it in moderation. If you want healthy food, we’re directly across the street from the Butcher Boy Market. They sell carrots. Go buy some.

Q: Do you sell any sugar free ice cream?

A: Believe it or not, there’s no such thing on this big green Earth. To be legally called “Ice Cream”, it needs to contain a defined quantity of sugar. What many other places call “Sugar-Free Ice Cream” is technically supposed to be sold as “Sugar-Free Frozen Dessert”. In our experience, it tastes awful, and we don’t sell it.

We do sell a couple of flavors (Vanilla and Coffee) of “No Sugar Added” ice cream, that we make specifically for those customers with dietary concerns about sugar. But it does contain sugar (Lactose — natural milk sugar found in dairy products), so don’t think you can just gulp down a gallon of it without concern if you’re diabetic, or if you have other health issues that are affected by sugar intake. Consult with your doctor to be certain, rather than relying on the dietary advice of a bunch of neo-hippie ice cream scoopers!

Q: Who is Maggie? And why is she “Mad”?

A: Maggie is one of the owners, and she can sometimes be spotted around the store during the day — it seems she decided to unofficially retire, and forgot to tell us. The “MAD” part of the name is actually the initials of our three children: Mike, Amanda, and David. Mike makes most of the ice cream. David was the brainchild for our ‘Candy Store Floor’ flavor. Amanda now is one of our store managers and likes to think that she’s in charge, but I’ve yet to tell her all of my secrets to keeping things running smoothly.

Q: Do you sell any vegan ice cream??

A: No, and neither does anyone else. There is no such thing — to be legally called “Ice Cream”, a frozen dessert must contain dairy. Period.

That said, we do make a non-dairy frozen dessert using a coconut non-dairy base. The base is vegan certified, and we previously listed it on our website as a vegan option. But… we add various flavoring ingredients to make the choices we offer — Black Raspberry, Chocolate, and Coconut Fudge, with occasionally-appearing seasonal flavors mixed in throughout the year.

At one point I got a call from what I would describe as a fanatical, angry Vegan, berating me for not knowing whether all of the manufacturers of the flavoring ingredients we use were using strictly vegan-certified ingredients. I don’t. Up to that point in my life, I was so blissfully ignorant that I wasn’t even aware that there was such a thing as “vegan sugar”, but this person was happy to point out how woefully uneducated and morally lacking I was for not knowing that fact!

Our non-dairy offerings are an extremely niche product, amounting to less than 2 percent of our business. We originally added these as an option for customers with dairy allergies, and the fact that it was a vegan base was a serendipitous side-effect for some of our Vegan customers. We intentionally made (what we naively thought were…) flavors that didn’t use any animal by-products. But after that interaction, I gave up and just removed any mention of it being vegan — I have neither the time nor the desire to contact all of my ingredient suppliers to find out what type of sugar they use.

So… after reading all of that you can make your own decision as to whether our non-dairy offerings work for your diet.

(Can you tell I’ve gotten this question often? 😉)

Q: Why can’t I order your non-dairy flavors in a frappe / sundae / banana split?

A: As discussed in the previous entry, our non-dairy offerings are intended as an option for those with dairy allergies. Since we don’t stock dairy-free milk, and since many of our toppings (hot fudge, whipped cream, etc.) contain dairy, it’s a bit silly to make a sundae or frappe using non-dairy ice cream. But some people order our non-dairy flavors, then want to top it with hot fudge, whipped cream, etc. (Not sure why — some misguided sense of virtue signalling?)

We could obviously create a list of menu items that we will make with out non-dairy flavors, and those that we won’t, but since our non-dairy is priced differently than our ice cream, we’d need to have a completely different set of prices for every menu item that we offer in a non-dairy version.

And, we have somewhere between 20 and 30 teenagers working the counter during the summer. Those of you with kids will understand how difficult it can be to educate a single teen as to what toppings are ok for non-dairies and which aren’t, nevermind educating 30 of them.

So the simplest solution we’ve come up with is to not offer our non-dairy flavors in anything other than a single or double scoop. (We will add jimmies/sprinkles, since those are dairy free.) If you want to order toppings “on the side”, and use them to make your own concoction, we’ll be happy to serve the toppings in a separate cup, and you can do whatever you like from there.

Q: What’s the difference between Ice Cream, Sherbet, Sorbet, Slush, Soft-Serve, and Gelato?

A: Various ice cream makers use similar terms for very different products, but there are a few basic accepted definitions. (As well as some legal definitions.)

First off, the USDA mandates that frozen dairy products (among other requirements…) MUST contain at least 10% butterfat content to be legally sold as “ice cream”. (Note that this doesn’t seem to stop the donut shop across the street from advertising “Soft Serve Ice Cream Cones”, even though they’re selling a 3.5% butterfat soft serve mix.)

That said, here’s what the terms mean here at Mad Maggie’s:

• Ice Cream - Contains at least 10% butterfat content. Most of our flavors are made with a 16% butterfat mix.

• Gelato - an upscale product containing roughly 4 to 6% butterfat, very intensely flavored, and denser than ice cream, as the goal is to whip less air into the finished product. In ice cream terms, this is a “low overrun” product.

• Sherbet - Contains roughly 4 to 6% dairy product. The dairy is replaced with water, making a lighter, cleaner tasting product.

• Soft-Serve - Generally a low-end product containing anywhere from 2.5 to 10% butterfat. There’s no craftsmanship to making it — we pour mix in one end of the machine, and something cold and white (or brown) comes out he other end. We have to bite our tongues when a customer tells us that they’re an “ice cream connoisseur”, then orders soft-serve.

• Sorbet - Contains no dairy product. When we call a product “Sorbet” here, it means it was made using real fruit, either fresh or freshly frozen.

• Slush - In various regions of the US, this same product is known as ‘Water Ice’, ‘Italian Ice’, or simply ‘Ice’. Contains no dairy. At Mad Maggie’s, our slushes are flavored with extracts, making them a cheaper product to produce.

Notice that the only difference between Sorbet and Slush is what we use to flavor them — fresh fruit both costs more and takes more time to prepare properly. Other producers are bold enough to sell products flavored with extracts as “Sorbet”, but we don’t feel that that’s a fair thing to do.

(This leads to a common joke among ice cream vendors: What’s the difference between Slush and Sorbet? Answer: 75 cents a scoop!)

Q: Do you sell gift cards?

A: Yes! We have plastic, reloadable gift cards available at the store. If you need a bunch of them, please call the store first and we’ll load them up before you get here. (Unless you like watching us swipe gift card after gift card…)

Q: How long does it take to make a batch of ice cream?

A: The preparation time to gather the ingredients together varies, depending upon the flavor being made. (Vanilla is easy. Chocolate Peanut Butter takes a while.) But once the ingredients are poured into the batch freezer, it takes between 8 and 13 minutes to turn the mixture into something resembling ice cream.

The semi-frozen (about the consistency of soft-serve) ice cream is then extruded into 2.5 gallon containers and cooled in our hardening freezer at -20F or so for at least 10 hours. This fast freezing reduces the chance that large ice crystals will form, and is part of what makes our ice cream so smooth and creamy.

After hardening, the ice cream is so cold, it’s like a block of ice — not scoopable! So we move the ice cream into our tempering freezer to “warm it up” to scooping temperatures of around 6 degrees F. That takes about 4 hours.

Q: Do you offer tours?

A: While we don’t have any formal tour program in place, we frequently do tours for scout troops, small school groups, playgroups, or other assorted friends, and we’d be delighted to share a peek at our production process.

Just contact us by email or by speaking with us at the store, and we’ll work out a time that works for both us and for your group. Be aware that there are times when we’re just too busy with either production scheduling or customer traffic and can’t have a group of people in our back room, so please be a bit flexible in working with us to schedule a time.

Q: Can you make a donation to my fundraiser?

A: We do our best to be good community members, and frankly rarely say “No” to a donation request, but there are definitely priorities — we’re a tiny business, and just can’t say “yes” to every single request we get.

We prefer to donate locally, so school organizations, local law and fire departments, children’s groups, veteran’s groups, seniors, and other community groups are all high on our list of preferred targets, so long as the group is based in our general geographic area.

We’re much more receptive to requests from our regular customers, as we believe in supporting those who support us. We tend to not respond to form letters, as we receive many mailings each month that begin with “Dear Business Owner”. Those normally end up in a low-priority pile on the office desk.

Our most frequent donation is a gift certificate for our store, something that the organization can raffle off to its supporters. But we try to choose two or three causes each year to support financially. And we have a few “big ticket” fundraiser ideas that we’ve run over the years, so when a cause hits close to home and we really want to throw our support behind it, we dust one of those off.

We LOVE to support groups that seek to bring people together, especially those that encourage young people to get involved and become good contributors to the community. We do NOT donate to political groups, nor any group that we feel fosters hate or has a generally divisive purpose.

Q: My daughter/son/nephew/niece/grandchild/neighbor is looking for a job. Are you hiring?

A: No.

Q: I’m looking for a job. Are you hiring?

A: Yes! We’re always on the lookout for self-motivated, positive, outgoing workers, and we’re keen on those who are responsible enough to look for a job on their own. You can find ALL kinds of information on our jobs page!