You’re looking at a prototype of our stools for the restaurant. Ignore the blue, that’s just tape. We’re really excited about these. There simple, shockingly strong and durable, and not going to cost much.
Read on to learn more about the development
You are currently browsing the archive for the Design category.
The counters on the MIT truck were OK, for the 6 weeks we were planning on using them. You see the Clover Food Lab was only supposed to last for a few weeks, and we were only supposed to feed a few people. Here we are, nearly 2 years later. And the 3 coats of urethane I put on those counters wasn’t enough, and the counters never stuck in place (as those of you who have leaned on them know). And it was only months before employees burned rings into the counter (I wont name names, Chris).
With the Dewey truck I had a new counter design. Thicker, better finished New England red oak. They were cut from a single board, which gives a very integrated look. But the rails just weren’t working well from day one. And it was only week 3 before somebody (I wont name names, Bobby) tore it off it’s footing.
So now it’s time to fix all counters tops. I finally found the perfect way to secure them: a window sash lock. And I skipped over furniture rails to something much more precise and powerful from McMaster Carr. Late Thursday night I finished the left counter of the Dewey truck. Next week I’ll finish the right counter. Then finally, we’ll get to the MIT truck.
I’m thinking when we have a fleet we’re going to need a maintenance guy…
Those of you who have been eating with us for a while know that things are always changing. We experiment constantly. We are always trying to improve. Your patience and encouragement is what makes this work, because I know better than anybody that we don’t always get it right.
Many of you have seen the evolution over time at the MIT truck, from no napkins, to a dispenser that never worked, to another dispenser that didn’t work, to another dispenser that didn’t work, to a rock, to a potato. Now we have real napkin dispensers. I did a ton of research and finally figured out the right dispenser. They are Torx, which are more friendly to most napkins than the last dispenser we had. They are a style that can fit a larger “cartridge” (meaning less fills, easier to pack), and they even let us put our logo on the side : )
We’re making a huge number of improvements right now. Running 2 trucks is pressure testing everything. And having amazing truck managers means every single detail is getting ferreted out. So thanks for your patience, and bare with us. If you notice something we should improve just mention it to us, we’ll thank you. Food, operations, anything. It’s our best chance at getting things right.
We did it. 3 events in 1 week. Food Project last Saturday, Arboretum last Sunday, and TEDxCambridge today.
Not sure how the money ended up today, but my guess is that we broke even at Food Project, made a little money at Arboretum, and lost some money today. Hopefully not too much. But it was beautiful today, and I was talking at the conference, so made sense. And everybody came out at the sametime so we had to be heavily staffed.
No cops this time around, so we’ll call it a success.
I think the talk is available online somewhere, or will be soon. I rehearsed it once for Clementine, my 4 year old. Hope the final one came out OK.
Last time we were at Stata it was a disaster. Look up “earth day” on the blog. Uhgg.
We’re returning this Sunday to the same spot. This time to serve attendees at the TEDxCambridge conference. Should be really fun. We’re going to be there from 11am – 2pm. The conference runs 12:30pm – 5pm or something. Hoping we don’t have to deal with cops and stuff this time around…
Starting Monday (5/17) we’re launching a new experiment. The folks at the Media Lab have approached us about finding a way to feed the building. There are 3 obstacles to a cafe:
(1) The cafe is on the 5th floor, ensuring nobody from outside of the building would be eating there
(2) When fully occupied (which probably only happens at 2am) the lab houses 300 people, not enough to support our prices
(3) There is no kitchen facility
So we put our thinking caps on and came up with a few ideas. We’re going to test one next week. Here’s what we’re going to do:
- Just made Clover sandwiches, drinks, and some other fun stuff will be available at 2pm, 3pm, and 4pm each day next week
- Food will be priced same as the truck
- First come first served
Read on for more…
I don’t have a large car. To get the new truck up in time I had to do some serious running around last week. Including driving to 3 different places to track down the right plastic for the awnings. When I finally found what I was looking for it was 10′ long. I strapped it to the Mini. Not a great idea. About 1/2 way across the Zeekum bridge (is that what it’s called?) the plastic folded in 2 in the wind. Uhg. Another trip…
That’s me. It’s a terrible picture. I took it myself, with the iPhone. You’re not going to notice dramatic changes between the current and the new trucks. But they are there. The counter this time is from a single slab (last time both were from the same tree, but not continuous). The counters are also a bit less deep, and thicker. And I’ve done a better job finishing them. But they are the same wood (red oak).
Other changes include a gravity-fed water system (vs. the current electric pump-operated one), a separate self-contained hand-wash sink (very cool), a much larger sandwich station on the left hand side, room for up to 9 employees in the truck (we max out at 6 right now), double the fryer capacity, better placement of everything in the truck, about 10x the propane we can currently carry, and a killer generator that allows us to keep the refrigerators running even while the truck is driving. Oh, and did I say awning? More on that shortly.
Are those shoes purple? Are they sparkling?
Yup, and yup. And check the lace job. Some of you may remember when we ran a survey last month. I wore some flashy shoes from Concepts and asked those of you who took the survey to deliver the secret code: “I like your shoes” if they wanted their reward.
This time around Brian is wearing the shoes. And I’m jealous. Just look at those sparkle! And I never knew you could lace like that. Awesome.
The new truck is starting to show up at MIT. We’re getting excited, we’re days away from this guy serving on the street.
I thought this entry would be about Kogi as the antithesis of Clover. All hype, all image, no community, all meat, annoying capitalization of Ls on website.
And while those things are true, after having visited a couple of their trucks, there’s a lot I admire about the Kogi machine.
If you haven’t heard of Kogi, they are a food truck in LA that got started shortly after we did. They got a ton of publicity right away (publicist?) and were all over the place (CNN, etc.)
What did I love so much about Stumptown? First, the door to their roastery was wide open, welcoming us in. Everybody in there was hustling, and there were a bunch of folks working. The place was stacked, floor to ceiling. The roaster wasn’t huge, but is was working non-stop. We learned they fire it up at 6am and shut it down at 8pm every day.
The lists vary slightly, but talk to coffee folks and the following will typically show up on lists of “top roasters in the US”
- Stumptown (Portland)
- Intelligensia (Chicago)
- Verve (Santa Cruz)
- Barefoot (San Jose)
- Ritual (San Francisco)
- Four Barrel (San Francisco)
- George Howell (Acton, MA)
- Barismo (Arlington, MA)
- Barrington Coffee Roasters (Lee, MA)
Stumptown has some crazy status that I’ll admit I don’t fully appreciate. They’ve been at it for a while (10 years +) and have a ton of respect from new and old roasters. Their coffee is really yummy and we loved the folks there (more later).
This post is about Intelligensia, or at least their most recent flagship shop. They must have hired some MBAs recently. Intelly started in Chicago but are on a crazy expansion path.
Our sandwich boards are getting a bit ratty aren’t they? I need to find a more durable solution.
That said, we really don’t want them to look like the example on the left above, or like anything that would ever be anywhere near a Starbuck’s. Don’t get me wrong, I’d really like them to be cleaner than they are.
That said, I’m very proud that we write on our boards daily. They’re far from perfect, some have even complained about my handwriting. But they reflect where we are on a day to day basis. That’s the timescale on which our food is made, that’s the timescale our communications should obey.
I made the trek down to Berkshire Products. This place is about as far as you can get from Boston and still be in MA. But they mill some of the most beautiful wood anywhere. It’s just amazing. I’ve always loved wood. In the context of Clover I think wood can bring warmth to what is going to otherwise be a very cold and modern aesthetic. There are other things we do to ensure things don’t feel to sterile (e.g., breaking up planes and rectangles). But the wood plays a huge role for us. Those counters carry a lot of weight design-wise.
We went with a New England red oak. Well, there’s no way to be entirely sure it’s New England based. I pressed these guys on this issue this time and they admitted that they don’t track. So “almost all” maple, ash, and oak is New England in origin, but they can’t be certain.
They had a production sander this time. They either didn’t have it last time, or I just didn’t see it. Awesome. For $40 they ran it through for me down to 120 grit. That means I got a board that had been planed and sanded. Awesome.
After the break I’ve included pictures of the counter getting sanded and packed on top of my car. I spent the weekend building and finishing the counters. I’ll post the final product when it is installed.
OK. I owe you a ton of posts on the new truck. I’ve been meaning to set-up a new page, I have an entire architecture in mind for our web communication. But it hasn’t happened yet. And in the meantime you’re missing a ton of great stuff.
So here it goes, First real post of Clover truck #2. Sad thing is that picture doesn’t capture everything that’s going on. It’s really a 3 dimensional beast.
The quick catch-up: we’re doing a second truck, it’s being built right now. The City of Boston has invested in the truck, which is awesome. We’re going to reward them with 20 new jobs in under 9 months, a very nice ROI. So the new truck is going to be in Boston. Sorry Cambridgians. We’re still working out the location.
My architects have all sorts of ideas about this truck. Those window angles were a bit of a leap of faith for me, but the architects (SSd) spent hours making sure they were just right. And they are. This thing is gorgeous. There’s a crazy awning planned, and this one is going to actually get completed, I promise. And the truck itself, well we’ve learned a few things. We’re expecting no less than 2x the current throughput. You read that right. When the MIT truck hits 160 customers in an hour, we’re expecting this one can hit double that. Double the friers, double the sandwich stations. Double the staff ? : ) ? It’s going to be crazy.
So what’s with these shoes I’ve been wearing?
If you took the our online survey the other week you already know. But I thought I owed the rest of you an explanation.
We’re going to be surveying you all once a month going forward. It’ll help us serve you better food faster. This most recent survey included a free fry/ free soup offer for those who completed the survey. I didn’t want to get caught up in some silly matching of customers to numbers etc., so for those who completed the survey, I emailed a “secret password.” I told them to say “I like your shoes” next time they came by the truck and we’d hook them up with the fries/ soup.
So I thought if I’m going to have hundreds of customers noticing my shoes, they better be something worth noticing, right? So I found myself at Concepts in Harvard Square. I actually love this shop. It’s run by a friend of a friend named Tarik I think, but I’ve never met him. For those of you not into the whole sneaker culture, these guys are one of the top shops in the country. A feat given Boston leads nationally in almost zero retail. Actually, in my opinion, this may be one of the only world-class retail shops in Boston. They didn’t invent what they do, but it’s a business that’s all about what happens behind the scenes: shoe design, promotion, social networking. And these guys do it with relatively little gimmick.
I went in and bought the most showy shoes I could find. So that’s the story of my comic book shoes. I sort of like them, do you? (you’ve got to be honest now, the survey give-away is over)
There’s an IAP design class at MIT that’s working with Clover for one of their projects. I’m hoping it’s going to be their most memorable project of the class. But I’m not doing a great job so far. I didn’t promote the class last week (TLC edged them out), and I was late for our first meeting today. I’d gotten held up at the bank, more on that later.
Our goals for packaging are simple: least negative impact to the environment while delivering a quality experience to customers. Secondarily we’re focused on aesthetics of course.
So I thought I’d post here a quick overview of the packaging we’ve used to date, with some comments. Those who read us often know:
(a) We’re excited about the idea of eliminating trash cans from our restaurants and moving to 100% compostable packaging
(b) I’m skeptical about the environmental benefits of re-usable packaging
Keep reading after the break if you’re interested in more detail about who we’ve worked with to date:
One of the first things Rolando went out to buy when we were getting started was “Delis.” This is the affectionate term for these plastic containers. They come in 1 cup, 2 cup, and 4 cup sizes. We use them for everything, from storing food to measuring flour.
After playing around with a bunch of different salad containers, including some expensive square containers, we’ve come back to delis. They’re just so simple and universal. So we’re asking our packaging supplier to throw some PLA pellets in the hopper and fire us up a bio-degradable version. Add a biodegradable sticker on the lid and we’ll be in business.
This is one of the greatest vending machines I’ve ever seen. You can find it at Brookline Ice and Coal. Why am I posting it here? For some reason food trucks and vending machines aren’t too far apart in my mind, and we get our propane and ice from Brookline Ice and Coal every day.
Recent comments