Truck

some people might get a haircut or buy some new clothes for their first national TV appearance. at Clover the equivalent involves cleaning the fryer and scrubbing tight spots. Rolando sent up a handful of his students, Enzo came over, a new guy Jonathan showed up. This cleaning stuff, doing it well, is hard work. Ir’s the type of work that leaves you proud if you have the right attitude.

Expect to see a truck tomorrow that is even cleaner than usual.

And did I hear somebody say something about cupcakes?

I remember how excited I was to go through the old records, receipts, etc to try to learn a bit about the former owner and the car’s previous life.

Today I picked truck #2 up from getting the generator installed. I found this package, the truck used to be a bakery truck, ATV bakery, Reading PA (where I went to buy it).

The truck has a bunch of systems: fresh water, waste water, propane, ac power, dc power.

We use a super quiet Honda generator to power the AC. Last week ours died ;explaining the morning start issues Monday and Tuesday. We bought a new generator. And the best thing is that this one weighs 1/2 of what the last one weighed!

Saw this the other day. Sort of wacky isn’t it?

Where have we been? Having adventures.

We’ll start with this one: the other Fay somebody (it was likely me) drove under something too low. Was it a tree? A hanging clearance sign? We don’t know. It knocked our vent off.

So this image is of me on top of the truck, replacing the exhaust fan.

That’s the new whiteboard folks.

So you’ll notice we’re undergoing a transition to a more branded Clover. More about where that’s all going later. But you may have noticed our logo on the banner of this blog. I have real business cards if you’ve come and asked for contact info. We’re wearing Clover hats. And now the whiteboards are getting an update.

I have a stencil on order for the logo at the top of the whiteboard. So here I am getting the boards ready for that, and for some more legible menus.

When I was at MIT we worked out all of our ideas, big and small on whiteboards. So it was a natural place for us to post the daily menu for the truck. Problem was that once the way wiped away off of the paint the marker started to penetrate. A bunch of you were telling me I could use Windex, etc. Really the paint was stained and nothing was going to help.

But I found this cool whiteboard paint. It’s a 2 part system, must be some sort of epoxy. 4 coats later the whiteboard looks like new, better than new. We loved the fuzzy blue, but are excited to move forward with clean read-able boards.

Clementine helped me wash the truck this weekend. We gave it a thorough bath in preparation for the new whiteboard paint job.

When I built the truck I did a silly thorough job on the plumbing. We can carry 24 gallons fresh water, have a grey water tank, a full 3 bay sink and a hand washing sink. We have full house-hold pressure water, hot and cold on tap.

But then winter hit, and I discovered there is no possible way to keep this type of plumbing live.

And despite my best efforts to anti-freeze (food grade) our pump busted, and our water heater broke.

So even though it’s been hot for a while we’ve been running on our alternative water system. So this weekend I finally had the time to get back at it. I replaced the pump (after the break), fixed some leaks, and replaced the water heater. Happy to say we’re back up running the way we should be.

Oh, and a little sprinkling of Clover philosophy while we’re at it. People have told me I should get some sort of skirt to cover the plumbing. But we love the plumbing fully exposed. Clover gladly says goodbye to the Victorian-inspired days of hiding life’s most critical systems, and hello to transparency. We love knowing where our food is grown. We love the fact that you can see your food being prepared. And we love knowing where our water comes from, and where it goes.

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OK, hands down, the award for best customer name goes to Yoda. Can you believe that? I’ve always loved my name, well mostly loved my name. And I never knew another Ayr. (There’s a complicated story behind my name, if you’re bored and we’re slow ask me someday.)

But Yoda? Come on, that’s the coolest.

And Yoda, I hope you don’t mind all of this attention. And I’m not making a joke, we really all think your name is super exciting. And now I’m really really glad we instituted our “order/ name” order taking system.

We’re at Stata today, about 200 yards from our normal location. Special one day thing for MIT’s earth day.
Already it feels different. A ton of foot traffic over here. We’ve already had a bunch of people ask foe breakfast. Come by and say hi!

This is the “dry storage” behind Clover. There you see organiz oats, organic chickpeas, organic sugar, organic flour, organic agave syrup, salt, packaging, equipment, and a bunch of other stuff. We get shippments from unfi every couple of weeks.

No avoiding this. The other day Chris accidentally set a hot soup pot atop the counter. Melto presto and the counter is branded.

I figure I’ll have to work on the finish of the counters a couple times a year. In the meantime we’ll consider it a battle scar.

The icicles are starting to drip. We’re almost through the winter. So we have an exciting few months ahead. Along with flowers and sunshine you can look start thinking about Clover food. Some of you have already started. I’ve been getting your emails and comments. And we’re getting ready to come back better than ever. This is going to be great.

So mark your calendars for 16th March.

We’re not open yet. Sorry, I’m getting your notes and messages, we’ve just got to wait until it’s a bit warmer out there. Those of you who haven’t taken off for January might be noticing the truck parked there, almost teasing you. We’re still paying for the spot, and this is the best place to keep it for now.

So here I am digging us out after one of our recent snow storms. Yeah, that’s a tiny travel shovel I pulled out of the back of my car. I’ve been apartment living so long I don’t own a good full-sized shovel. My clean shoveling job after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

You might not all be aware of this, but we pay MIT monthly for our spot. And it’s a lot we pay. Comes out to the first 30 customers or so everyday. I’ll refrain from ranting here, but 1 out of 3 days somebody is parked in our spot. And not yet have I seen a single ticket on any of these vehicles. It’s a total pain because it delays our start times.

Today I called MIT police, waited 45 minutes (I’m not exaggerating). And when we finally got up and running I asked the MIT officer whether he would mind helping me move the generator (a 2 person, 10 second task). He told me I’d have to wait, got in his car, and pulled away 15 minutes later.

Don’t worry, a really nice guy walking down the street offered to help, and we’re up and running.

If you came by the truck today you might have seen my little warning. We’re in a transitional week. Starting next week we have some full time folks coming on. In the meantime I found myself today alone on the truck.

So I reduced the menu to 2 sandwiches instead of 4. And Tom (my father in law) was kind enough to come over during the lunch rush. And Rebecca, a friend of my sister and a regular at our truck was awesome enough to jump behind the counter and take orders. All turned out well. Thanks everyone for your patience. We’ll be back to normal tomorrow.

And for those of you who tried a soy BLT or a BBQ wheat for the first time leave us your thoughts.

Some of you have been asking about the music. Here I’m posting the current playlist. The goal is to get to the point where we’re playing all local music. For now we’re going a different route. I’ve always thought the absence of country/ bluegrass/ folk music in retail is conspicuous. We decided to start with the Black Keys and focus on the intersection of pop and country and folk. This is defined loosely as you’ll see from the list. And, we have some oldies thrown in there as well.

Going forward, if anyone has a local band they are really into let me know. I used to go to shows a couple nights a week, but it’s been some time since I’ve been on top of the music scene.

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Isn’t this awesome? A giant fort of empty produce boxes at Russo’s. I’m picking up your food.