2016 Annual Report to Customers
Hot off the presses: our 2016 Annual Report to our customers.
From the introduction:
For our ninth full year, we considered writing an Annual Report that shared interesting numbers about dishes served, grocery stores reached, gallons of Maine milk churned, and pounds of strawberries hulled. But then we realized that we’ve been sitting on a wealth of funny, poignant, and delightful stories submitted by our employees at our Maine locations each day.
At the end of every shift, an employee fills out a digital report with answers to a few questions, including this one: “Each day should matter. What was the BEST part about today for our customers or our company?” Those reports get sent to the management team immediately (usually resulting in a late-night chuckle, raised eyebrow, or resolve to fix something), but also get beamed to the cloud. We’ve reviewed a year’s worth of those comments and compiled our favorites on these pages.
At the end of the day, our business is about the little things — the gelato maker at our Flavor Foundry caring as much about the 200th pint of the day as the first pint of the day, the scooper proudly sharing our desserts with an excited customer, the customer who shows a little extra understanding to a staff member overwhelmed by a sudden and surprise crowd.
We hope you’ll enjoy some of the stories and snippets that follow; some consequential, some random, most plain fun. At the end of 2016, we think they prove something, too — it’s the tiny moments of kindness and delight in our daily lives that go a long way toward making our communities special. Thank you to you, our customers, for helping to write these stories, and to our employees for jotting them down over the past 365 days.
