Part two of a three part series about the summer job market as it relates to Brandeis students.
"Did you know," the older gentleman said, smiling as he tossed a small silver coin into the tip jar, "That this is a rare steel penny? They made these in 1943 because they needed the copper for our boys in the war."

Rachel Pfeffer '08 grinned back as she heard his familiar story. "Thanks so much," she said, handing him the small vanilla cone he always ordered.

She handed the coin to Kate, her employee and friend from high school, who taped it alongside fourteen identical others in a long strip down the wall. After they found that the pennies were worth only their face-value, they had decided to collect them as mementos.

The offering was sadly representative of the girls' tips for the summer, which despite the dollar bill they subtly planted in the jar, rarely exceeded $8 a night.

But it was also illustrative of the eclectic clientele the two had met over the summer, including an older man on a bike who introduced himself as James Taylor, overtired moms holding sticky-handed children and a few very interesting personalities.

"The [customers are] a group of colorful characters," Pfeffer said. "It sounds so cliche, but that's what describes them best."

The closet-sized ice cream shop was named "Feff's Freezer" by Pfeffer, its inventor and architect. She brainstormed the idea last winter with a friend, when each decided to open her own ice cream shop.

When summer drew closer, Pfeffer rented a space from her father in her hometown of Greenfield in Western Mass., hired six close friends seeking summer work and, from an Italian restaurant, bought a broken soft-serve machine that her dad helped her clean out and repair.

While Pfeffer said she suspects they never completely got the knack of the machine, it worked well enough to produce the hundreds of vanilla, chocolate and vanilla-chocolate twist cones the girls doled out this summer.

The Freezer initially served ice cream with a lower concentration of butter fat, reasoning that the marginally healthier version would appeal to customers.

But the customers surprised Pfeffer, complaining about the taste and deriding it as "ice-milk." From then on, the Freezer's ice cream switched to butter-fat to give it a richer, creamier taste.

But, Pfeffer added, the Freezer still served a more wholesome alternative for the "health-conscious-fruit smoothies made from a frozen mix."

To advertise, she posted fliers on lampposts, placed incentive ads in the local paper with coupons for free kiddy cones (of which only about 15 were redeemed), and hoped for word of mouth from passersby to increase business. She also printed "frequent Freezer cards," which gave loyal customers their ninth cone free.

Business picked up around mid-summer, when lines could get long and the job grew more stressful.

While Pfeffer said that running a business was fun, it could also be nerve-racking. She found herself fretting in her off-hours, sometimes calling to check in, then struggling to let her friends handle accidents like an ice cream spill in the refridgerator or a fallen tub of sticky caramel.

"I know it's just ice cream-if something goes wrong, no one's going to die or get arrested," she said. "But [the responsibility] was still really stressful."

Pfeffer also confronted some other problems throughout the summer. Since she hired no employees outside of her group of friends, weekends could be difficult to arrange. Pfeffer worked almost every day of every weekend, and often ended up staying behind when the girls wanted to go to a concert.

The Freezer also had a few troublesome customers, like one man who bellowed about the size of his medium cone and demanded a refund. Others complained when their cones plopped onto the sidewalk, which Pfeffer said was mostly their fault for slanting them.

But for the most part, the Freezer served a friendly and grateful clientele. They even had around 20 regulars, some of whom endearingly termed them "the Feff girls."

Pfeffer even earned some local celebrity status, as evidenced when strangers greeted her with a friendly "Hey, Feff" as she walked down the streets of Greenfield.

"It was kind of cool," Pfeffer said of her fame. "I felt close to the community."

All in all, Pfeffer said she broke about even after her business adventure. She was, however, able to pay herself and all her employees, as well as her expenses.

Three weeks ago, the girls closed the shop knowing that they would probably never return. With the stress involved, the competition from an ice cream-selling drug store down the street and the promise of other exciting job opportunities, the experiment of Feff's Freezer has likely come to an end.

To Pfeffer's flattered surprise, Greenfield residents responded to their closing with guilt and disappointment.

Feff's customers offered their apologizes with consoling smiles, believing that the Freezer had gone out of business.

"No, it's OK," the Feff girls responded. "We're just going back to school.