Truck

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

The truck and I are having fun at Brookline Coal and Ice. This is where we fill our Propane tank every couple of days. We have extremely efficient appliances (50,000 btu each for the fryer, 30,000 btu for the oven).

Today the fill pump at the station isn’t working, making an already long day longer. They’re working on it, but I’ve been waiting 20 minutes, which means I’ll miss Russo’s and will have to get produce tomorrow morning very early.

Ok, we knew the day would come. Our truck refused to start this morning in protest of the cold. AAA is on the way. I had to renew my lapsed membership over the phone to get them to come. Hopefully they will not have hangups with the fact that it is a truck.

Rolando and I fired up the oven while we wait. We’re trying out various popover recipes.

If you’ve been with us for a while, you know we had questions when we faced the first rainy days: “would people be willing to wait in the rain?” This past week we were challenged by freezing weather. I mean middle of January weather, coming right at the heels of balmy 65°F days. It was cold, cold, cold. But people still came.

Many simple operational details have become difficult. Water freezes to the floor when you mop, which makes a nice little skating rink. As a solution we’re using super hot water, squeezing the mop out ’til dry, and following the mop immediately with a dry rag. Butane burners will not burn properly at too low a temperature. We’re doing what we can and hoping the oven will help heat things up a little.