Hey everybody! We had such a great time at SoWa. We’re hoping to call this our new Sunday home. What a start. I didn’t expect much for the first day. After all, our formula usually gives us a slow start: zero promotion, avoid press, focus on building relationships with customers one at a time and delivering really good food. Normally we have something like 8 customers to start. Then, if we do our job right with the food and the experience (they don’t have to wait too long, we’re friendly, etc.) they come back. And if we’re lucky they bring a friend. So day 2 we might have something like 7 return customers + 5 friends. And the cycle happens again. You get the idea. We grow, but slowly, one day at a time.

So we were really surprised by our first day at SoWa. We served almost as many mouths as we do on a regular day at one of our existing (already built-up) locations. We’re thrilled for the chance to meet so many new people, and I hope we’re giving you a great experience. We’ll know we’re doing OK if you return next Sunday we’re up (market is closed for holiday this weekend, so it will be on the 12th). And we’ll know we’re really hitting it if you bring friends.

Thanks everybody, looking forward to seeing you again!

I was over at City Hall yesterday. This is a picture of the plaza they are talking about parking trucks on. If you haven’t been following there is a food truck challenge the City of Boston has launched. We’re entering an really excited about the potential.

So yesterday there was a public hearing. I was contacted by some folks at the City (sorry, I’ll admit I don’t know exactly who you were when you called) and asked if I could attend. I was really glad they called because I wasn’t following this too closely on my own and wouldn’t have known about the hearing otherwise.

When I got to the City Council chambers I didn’t know what to expect. There were 2 log-in sheets: one for “Attendees” one for “Testimonials.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to present a testimony, but I think the person who called an invited me asked if I would. So after a bit of deliberation (sorry to who ever was behind me in line) I put my name on the testimonial page. But I was a little concerned because I was near the bottom of the list (arriving early is another thing I’m not good at), and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stay all the way through to the end of the meeting due to some other commitments.

So then the meeting started, Michael Ross (I think he is City Council President? Sorry, I don’t mean any disrespect, I just don’t know much about City politics yet), asked me to speak before everybody. It was an audience of food vendors (including Speeds, M&M, Frosty, etc.). I’ve never been to a public hearing before and didn’t know what to do. They told me to come down to the microphone, which worked pretty well. But you all know I have a pretty loud voice. Not sure I needed amplification.

I kept it simple. Spoke a bit about Clover’s experience with the city (the G-rated version). Fact is Boston doesn’t really have any food trucks. There’s Speeds, M&M Ribs, and some ice cream trucks. Correct me please if I’m missing anybody, but that’s all I’m aware of. Then there are these upstarts, the newcomers like Clover and Fillbelly, etc. But there really aren’t trucks in Boston. Compare this to even Cambridge, a city that isn’t too friendly to trucks (they’ve had a standing moratorium since the late 1990s). Cambridge has at least 9 trucks that operate daily.

So from my perspective, as a lover of street food, it’s exciting to think that there might be more of it in Boston soon. We’ll see what happens. I hope it’s an open, transparent, and fair system that allows a diversity of operators to enter. I’m a fan of a simple fair open process. I’ll stand against any system that “locks up” the market. We don’t need one operator here, or one powerful business running this thing. The ideal would be a process that is open to everybody.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? That post title doesn’t sound very Clover, does it? Sounds more like something I would have said in my previous job. Well, at least we’re doing this at a table at a restaurant instead of in a sterile conference room.

I know you’re dying to know how this order system we use got developed (about as exciting at the title to this post, right?) Well that system (called a point of sale or POS system) is one small part of much larger plans I have for Clover’s IT. A lot of the stuff we do with computers isn’t going to be directly visible to you all, but it will show up in less obvious ways: like maintaining low prices, serving you quickly, keeping track of fresh local produce, making sure we keep the time from harvest to service as short as possible.

I’ve taken some flak from people who don’t understand why we use iPods to take our orders. Comments suggesting it’s unnecessary and a gimmick and disorganized, and confusing. I hope you all know us well enough to know we’re not into gimmicks. The order system evolved because we couldn’t keep up with demand with paper and pencil. We just couldn’t get past a certain number of customers/ minute. And, with paper and pencil we didn’t have a good record of sales. And, paper and pencil had us always yelling at everybody in the truck, which created confusion and was stressful. The order system eliminates all of that and lets us take more than one order at a time, which, if you’ve noticed, makes us much more relaxed when we’re talking to you. Now we can take time to answer your questions because the line isn’t waiting for you, it’s being processed by another order taker.

That’s Sean in that picture up there. He’s helped us a ton with our system development, basically for free. We’re really happy to have the help, my skills in this area are very limited. And we’re really excited about what is around the corner. We’re going to have the best IT system of any company in the world. I’m not joking. It’s going to be cheap, efficient, and massively enabling.

Those of you who know me know that I’m not always the best at dealing with bureaucratic processes. Well, there are a lot of things I’m not good at dealing with (the press comes to mind), but I’m particularly bad with bureaucracy. I don’t know if it’s the engineer in me demanding efficiency, or my inability to follow rules, or impatience when it comes to details. Whatever the case, I’m just not good at this stuff.

I got a call the other week regarding our building permit for 7 Holyoke. You may remember we had to file for a variance with the Board of Zoning Approval (BZA) back at the beginning of this process. “Fast food establishments” are not allowed in Cambridge without a variance. That was a long process, but with some help we navigated it.

(Gory details follow)

We apparently there was a signature on the BZA approval that I needed before our building permit could be reviewed. I was surprised, and it took me the better part of the day, and a visit to the county court house to sort the situation out. Get this: we were issued a letter a couple weeks after the hearing the confirmed the decision: an approval for the variance. The letter had instructions that I was to wait 20 days, then return with my letter to the City Clerk to file the decision. I did that. Then (I missed this part) I was supposed to file this decision with the Registry of Deeds, which is at the county court house. So why on earth would you set up a system that requires (1) that the applicant (me) comes back in person after 20 days? To what end? And, after that, why should I hoof over to the county court house? Couldn’t those things be handled by the city much more effectively? I don’t know if it’s because “this is they way it’s always been done” – basically nobody has tried to improve the situation. Or whether it’s because each agency wants its own check (oh yes, there is a check associated with each of these errands).

I just tell myself this is an adventure. I’d never been to the county courthouse before, have you?

We work really hard to keep track of the dates and freshness of everything we deal with. But it’s rare that you get to see these out front. I love that somebody started labeling the ketchup. Most companies wouldn’t do this sort of thing. It’s a symbol to me of the back of house/ front of house separation, a dynamic that mirrored in the split/ discord between grocery and distributors, restaurants and supply, etc.

Anyway, I love that you can see this. I’m proud we’re showing it off (but can’t claim credit for the innovation). And I think you should be happy about it too.

This is Betrous. (Sorry if I’m mucking up the spelling.) I love this guy and I love his falafel. As a student I lived across the street from his truck and would enjoy his $2.50 Falafel with hot sauce, Soda, Baklava combo at least 2 times per week.

If you haven’t tried his truck you should. It’s at 77 Mass Ave, right at the heart of MIT’s campus (we’re at the rear end). Tell him Clover sent you.

I love Betrous’ business. He knows his customers. He cares about his food. He works hard. Now I know exactly how hard. He’s been doing this for years with little attention. What more can you ask for.

I stopped by today to say hi and chat a bit. Here’s my favorite quote from the day: “People ask me… they say do you want to advertise… but I don’t spend money on advertising. Spend it on the food. Food is the advertising.” Couldn’t say it better myself.

Not everyone knows this next part… (after the break)

When Rolando and I were trying to figure out how to develop a menu for our restaurant we really didn’t like the idea of focus groups. I had the idea of hiring a food truck, and using it to do “mini” focus groups for a couple of months. I approached Betrous with this idea, offered him a lot of money. He said no, and now I completely understand why. He loves his business, as I’ve come to love mine. Instead he told me to come back and meet him at the end of the day. He took me for a tour of food-truck-land. Betrous taught me how licensing worked, where to get food, where canteen trucks park, and much more. There’s no way Clover would be trucking without his early help.

So next time you’re over on Mass Ave. say hi to Betrous for me.

You might have seen me the past couple of weeks with my laptop out asking people what their favorite blues songs are.  We have been working really hard to update our playlist, but we are really picky.   If you have any ideas we are looking for upbeat blues songs similar to what we play on the truck.   Write your ideas down on a piece of paper (must be written down)and hand them to me next time you come by the truck!

We used to have everyone store their bags on the truck dashboard when they came to work.  As volumes grew, we had to hire more staff and…… you guessed it, with more staff came more bags.  They started to pile up on the floor and get in the way so we came up with the idea of placing hooks over the driver’s seat to utilize this unused space during service.   This made a huge difference and the improvement only cost  $2.29 for the hooks!

Vincenzo is our new listman. I think he’s going to write about this soon in more detail.

You wouldn’t believe how different it is to operate 2 trucks vs. 1. Wouldn’t seem that different, but it is. Add to that the growth of both trucks, and we’re talking about a 4-fold increase in customers served this July vs. July last year. That means more dishes, more smallwares, more food, more employees, more of everything. We live by lists these days.

We’ve all been spending a lot of our time lately on operations. And it’s not about making these 2 trucks work. It’s about setting Clover up with the systems we’ll need to support many trucks. That’s right, if you haven’t noticed yet we’re ambitious.

Hat, one of our favorite employees from last summer, came back to work 2 weeks ago. I asked her yesterday what she noticed today vs. last summer. Her answer: “It’s soo much easier.” While the current crew would have trouble believing that, it’s true. And great to hear. We’ve been working hard to make everybody’s jobs easier. Still a long way to go, but we’re making great progress.

Exciting news: the MIT whiteboard is finally re-painted. Chris did this late Thursday night. We use this special whiteboard 2-part epoxy. It’s the best solution I’ve found, but it has 2 problems:

(1) It oxidizes in the sunshine (which is why the board looked so muddy)

(2) It loses it’s erasability after about 3 months of use

The solution is that we need to re-finish the board once every 3 months. Last time I painted it? 26th of August (you can look for that post). OK, so we’re not quite hitting once every 3 months. Something to improve.

By the way, the observant out there will notice some other changes. With our whiteboard, as with everything at Clover, we make changes constantly. Early on I tried many different whiteboard presentations. We’ve settled on this for the following reasons:

• Dollar signs are LARGE: what are we doing if we’re not proud of our pricing.
• Least ink to achieve the communication
• Short descriptions encourage (force) conversations with staff
• Date must be there every single day (that’s how you regulars know if the morning menu hasn’t yet been updated)
• Credit cards are represented, but with our hand-drawn graphic. I don’t like co-branding. But you need a way to tell everybody that we take plastic. This is my compromise.
• Operating times are included (this is a relatively new addition)
• Logo is written in permanent marker because it’s the one thing that doesn’t change. This too has evolved over time. Of course we could paint it, and many recommend we do. But the sharpie is more in line with our DIY approach to everything. And it’s cheaper and easier to handle. You’ll notice our re-supply van has the same treatment. I think it’s great.
• You’ll notice the logo is now much larger. I think I like the new size/ position. It gives more room for the stuff that changes. And it’s easier to read for the visually impaired : )