Mad Maggie’s Ice Cream

We LOVE Mad Maggies, it is our go to place for great ice cream and wonderful helpful staff. The staff may get overwhelmed at times, as it is such a popular place, however they all always have a smile on their faces.
Even the kids size cone is loaded with ice cream. Now if they would open a shop in Andover and always save me ginger ice cream I would be even happier. It is so nice to be able to support a local business. Got to run they are closing soon and I NEED ice cream.

Big selection of creative flavors and classics. Nice texture good service.
I had a huge three scoops (well, half of that, the hubby had to finish what I couldn’t) maple oatmeal, maple bacon and coffee. While the creative selections were great, it was the coffee that was by far the best. Not too sweet, and perfect coffee flavor. The hubby had a peanut butter cup three scoop that was excellent.
We’ll be back.

Located across from the airport this ice cream place makes all of their flavors onsite so they are very fresh and authentic. While looking for ice cream /​frozen yogurt at 8:30 PM on a Tuesday night in May it was hard to find a place open. Drove by Mad Maggie’s and even though Unilocal said it was close the neon «OPEN» like was flashing. When I pulled in the gentleman at the counter explained that they had been short one employee the entire night and it had been busy. As long as they saw a customer he didn’t want to turn away business. That is a sign of a smart business person!
I had a Coffee Chip Frappé and it was very good. The milk to ice cream ratio was perfect. However, the coconut caramel didn’t appear to have any caramel in it. When asked the employee stated, «trust me it is in there.» If I have to trust you that it is in the flavor it might not be enough or it is not in there! He was nice enough to get a new tub from the back but it was not much better.
The service is generally very slow here during the summer and the ice cream is good but it is NOT Richardson’s which is amazing!
This is a fallback in my opinion but not the «go to» place! I think that locally you have many options, this just happens to be very convenient.

Being a resident in the area I decided since my day was kind of one of those days, that I would get a frappé. The service was great but the ice cream was lacking. I got a coffee frappé, and it was nothing more than a frothy cardboard tasting glass of milk. It was made with coffee toffee frozen yogurt. It unfortunately was the worst frappé I have ever had.
100& no flavor, and was over blended.
I can’t really give much more of a review than that because I was in and out quickly with my order

I have to give them five stars. Their employees are friendly and accommodating. Just this morning I asked if it were possible to create a coffee cake ice cream for a friend’s 40^th birthday party. It’s now a little past 5pm and ready to be picked up (typically they want a 48 hour notice, but they’ll work with you!).
Their prices are a little higher than most ice cream spots (I’m looking at your Treadwell’s, Hayward’s and Findeisen’s!), but you have to figure that it’s in the Andovers, they probably bump up their rent, and if you REALLY think about it, you’d probably be paying the same thing if you went to Boston or Nashua for ice cream anyway.
They DO run out of flavors; ’tis true. They do warn you about this and ask that you try another flavor that you’ve never tried before. Samples are free and, like any local ice cream spot, you can get as many samples as you want. Just don’t get Massachusetts Mud Chip. Don’t. That’s my flavor. Never runs out when I go to get it.

I needed to update this because this year they are constantly running out of flavors. Just because it’s on the board doesn’t mean they have it. Don’t waste your money on a pint because they never push the ice cream down so you will have empty space in the container.

The young female staff inside the store kept serving one single customer for a long time and kept me waiting for more than 15 minutes and didnt even talk to me or apologize for keeping me waiting. I almost turned around and left.

I’m obsessed with their Black Raspberry Chip ice cream! I’ve been to Mad Maggie’s many times and I’ve never had a negative experience

Love the ice cream, hot fudge and I guess I’ve been lucky to have great service there every time!!!

LOVE THIS PLACE! They have great creamy ice cream with huge chunks of chocolate (I always get the mocha chip or coffee chip). We also order ice cream cake from them for the office and everyone loves it. 2 flavors of ice cream with thick fudge in the middle!

Mad Maggie’s has so many great flavors. What happened with Vanilla Caramel Turtle? There was one teeny tiny turtle in the entire scoop — no exaggeration. Definitely need a new recipe for this flavor. M&M is awesome — loaded with M&Ms and chocolate chunks. Put that creator in charge of re-​doing the Vanilla Caramel Turtle. You’re better than this!

This place has fantastic Frappes. I typically get Frappes now versus a cone simply because its easier and I can usually finish it.
I got the Maple Walnut Frappé and it was so good and so smooth. It had a good quality taste and was super fresh.
I will definitely be back this summer! Try the Maple Walnut!!!

So I have now come four times over two summers. Never any strawberry ice cream. That means waiting in one of the most inefficient lines ever to find out they have none (since it is clearly on the menu). Slow service with lame options.
Off to Carters I go.

Stick with traditional ice cream flavors. I want to give it a 1 but based on past experience with Candy Store and a chocolate brownie flavor being decent I added stars.
The 3 of us tried the following today and each flavor was worse than the next. We couldn’t eat it and threw it all away. The 1^st 2 listed are specials.
1. Maple Bacon ice cream. There is not even a hint of maple flavor. Maybe it’s just vanilla. Drab tasting and very weird with the bacon pieces in it due to the hard texture. This bacon is hard and inedible.
2. Brown Sugar Oatmeal. Drab, no flavor, not sweet. At least add cinnamon to add flavor. They put raw oats in it! They should have cooked the oats to soften them. So you swallow the ice cream and what’s left in your mouth are raw oats. Yuck!
3. Vanilla no sugar added frozen yogurt. Awful. No sweet flavor. Actually tastes odd.
We were left feeling like no one taste tested these flavors before marketing them. We were disappointed about wasting money and we will not returning anytime soon. Never had this issue with Jim’s Ice Cream in Salem, NH.

Miss the treadwells being here but this place is great too … Has a lot to offer and the icecream is very very good. Stop by on a hot summer day and try it out you’ll love it.

No complaints here. Best ice cream on the North Shore. Huge portions, fair prices, many delicious flavors. My personal favorites are Oreo and Pumpkin Gingersnap (seasonal flavor). They definitely aren’t shy with the cookie chunks in the Oreo-​bonus! Service is friendly, environment is clean and as cool as the ice cream.

I will give this place five stars when they fix the chocolate soft Serve machine that has been broken since forever. I drive almost an hour to visit my mother and without fail stop in for my favorite soft serve.
What’s the deal? Fix the machine!!!
The chocolate sprinkles are also amazing!!!
UPDATE: 5 stars, choc soft serve

This says it all: real chocolate jimmies (read as «sprinkles» for you PC types). An ice cream stand that puts this kind of quality as a charm most likely covers the rest of their bases well, and Mad Maggie’s does.
Clean inside with plenty of parking outside.
Still, it’s just ice cream, people. If it’s hot and you’re close, stop in and give it a shot.

I was riding with friends from Haverhill taking a group of us out for ice cream. I was thinking, «This is a fairly long drive, and we’ve passed other places. So this place must be good.» It was. It has a great blend of atmosphere and ice cream, and even gelato!
The ice cream flavors are a variety of basic and more interesting or complex. Their signs say they make all their own ice cream, and the available flavors will change from time to time. I opted for a 2-​scoop cone of more «complicated» flavors, one scoop each of their Mad Moose and Massachusetts Mud. The latter is really quite appealing to me — a base of coffee ice cream, dark chocolate, almonds, caramel, and a hint of cinnamon! I’ve only had ice cream with a hint of cinnamon at 2 parlors, both in Massachusetts. I’m going to look for it more often. Another person had Maple Walnut and also Pumpkin Gingersnap, another interesting set of flavors which worked well together.
They have outdoor and indoor seating, both adequate and very clean. Indoors has a lot of tables which can be moved around to set up for larger groups. The gelato case is indoors.
The rest rooms are clean and spacious.
They also have a small but fun set of T-​shirts you can buy. They’re not quite as amusing as the really fun ones by the Cows Ice Cream folks in Canada, but the best I’ve seen in this area.

3.5 stars
I guess the one good thing about eating at Joe Fish (
) was passing by this place. I knew exactly where I was going to have dessert after!
I think they were about to close but let my coworker and I come in. They were very nice and patient with me. I wanted to try everything they had! I tried the coffee oreo (I guess Boston has a thing for oreo), North Andover maple walnut, double dark chocolate, banana pudding, and coffee and donuts.
All were very delicious. It wasn’t as creamy as Christina’s but better than JP Licks in my opinion. I ended up with the scoop of the double dark chocolate. It was very smooth and the richness reminded me of Dove’s dark chocolate. I also liked the banana pudding with the chunks of vanilla wafers in it. I liked it but had to compare it to the banana cream pie ice cream I had in LA (
) and thought it was pretty good.
It was a happy ending to what was a ‘blah’ meal and Joe fish.
So far my ice cream list in Boston:
1. Christina’s
2. Mad Maggie’s
3. JP Licks
My next trip I hope to try Richardson’s and Toscanini’s to complete the list.