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No sanitary line

By on 20 May, 2013 in Burlington (BUR), Construction, Design, Operations

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I checked in with Al, our construction supervisor on the Burlington restaurant the other day. We have an issue. They finished trenching, which means tearing up the concrete floors (see image above). But they didn’t find the sanitary waste line where they thought it was going to be. Uhgg.

There are a couple of problems here. First, our landlord built bathrooms for us. That sounds great on the face of it, like it would speed our project up and reduce costs. But that’s not how it’s turned out. I’m going to make sure we never have landlord build bathrooms in the future. They aren’t the way we want them to be, so we’re going to re-do them (the landlord is helping us with that). But we have other issues, like this sanitary line. We had bad information from our engineers. Anyway, turns out the sanitary line is right beneath the bathrooms. The landlords contractors dug it up, connected to it, then covered, poured cement, and build bathrooms over the line.

Of course these issues will all be worked out. Al’s a pro. But it has me thinking hard about our approach to construction and how to avoid things like this. It’s crazy to think we’re going to have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to uncover a pipe that was just sitting there open to the air a month ago.

I’ll keep you posted on our progress. In the meantime we’re parking in Burlington with the truck this week!

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Packaging and rehydrated oat product

By on 16 May, 2013 in Construction, Menu, Operations, Packaging

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I’ve been at Starbucks Burlington since 6am.

I got a note from our construction supervisor last night saying there was a problem with the trenching they’re doing. Apparently the drawings we had from our engineers (BLW engineering) were not accurate. So I’m meeting him up here to review the situation.

I’m waiting for him at Starbucks. I tried to find an independent coffee shop in the area and had no luck. I’m constantly trying products doing my best to learn where competitors are and what they do. And while Starbucks isn’t exactly a company we think of as a competitor, there is a lot to admire and learn from them.

I bought a medium latte and an oatmeal. It was the oatmeal that really caught my attention. Check out that picture. That’s the packaging I got for ONE OATMEAL! Isn’t that sort of amazing? Really! I count 7 pieces of packaging for this product: a bag, a plastic bag wrapped plastic straw, a nut pack in plastic, “fresh blueberries” in plastic (packaged 4/27/13, they actually list that on there which I think is sort of cool, but not exactly fresh as they are almost a month old and from California), a packet of sweetener (that I didn’t ask for) and the oatmeal itself with a lid. Wow!

I don’t know if this amazes anyone else, but I’ve been really obsessed with packaging lately. We’re trying to make our food better togo. And I think we’re on a great track. But do you know how many items you get when you order oatmeal from us? 1. A cup of oatmeal. To be fair most customers will help themselves to a spoon. That’s 2 items. What do you think about the excess packaging you get when you order food out? Does it bother you? Do you think about it at all? Where does it go?

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Burlington ready to trench

By on 15 May, 2013 in Burlington (BUR), Construction

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Over the past couple of years I’ve had this problem: when the most exciting stuff is happening at Clover I have the least amount of time to write. Sorry I’ve been a bit quiet here these past few weeks. These are exciting times for us at Clover. Thankfully I have Lucia and Rolando keeping the posts current.

This is a picture of the floor of our Burlington restaurant ready to trench. When you have a construction where concrete is laid on top of earth it’s called “slab on grade.” And if you want to run plumbing you have to cut up the concrete, lay the pipe, then cover it all up again. It’s a pretty expensive job and seems sort of crazy to me, but that’s how it’s done. We had to do this over at the HUB as well (HSQ has a parking garage underneath).

They’re cutting this floor our tonight. I’m going to check it out in the morning. We have building permits now for both Burlington and Brookline. I’ll keep you updated as well as I can manage.

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Amy from Burlington

By on 23 April, 2013 in Burlington (BUR), Customers, Location

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This is Amy. I met her at 20 Blanchard St., Burlington last week. We’ve been parking at that site every Wednesday and it’s been really fun. Like the early days of Clover again. So many of our customers up here have heard of Clover but haven’t tried us before.

Amy is an example of somebody who hadn’t even heard of us. She was driving behind our truck, on its way to our site and started wondering what Clover is. She texted friends and one of them knew us and encouraged her to eat with us. So she checked our website, found our operating location in Burlington, and came over with a half dozen colleagues, all first timers.

Amy — hope it was awesome and that I’ll see you back tomorrow!

FULL BURLINGTON SCHEDULE:

Lunch 11-2pm

MON: 44 Mall Rd, Burlington, MA (near Fidelity)
TUE: 168 Middlesex Turnpike, Burlington, MA (Northwest Park)
WED: 20 Blanchard Rd, Burlington, MA (our oldest site now)
THUR: 113 Hartwell Ave, Lexington, MA (POSTPONED TIL 5/2, WAITING ON TOWN INSPECTION)
FRI: 168 Middlesex Turnpike, Burlington, MA (Northwest Park)

 

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New Burlington Truck Schedule

By on 22 April, 2013 in Customers, Operations

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We’re still waiting on our building permit from the town of Burlington for our restaurant that will be at 100 Burlington Mall Rd. In the meantime we’re parking our food truck at local office parks hoping to introduce you all to our food and build awareness for the restaurant. The response has been awesome. I’ve been at 20 Blanchard St. each week, and each week our most recent customers return with friends, and new customers find us.

This week’s Burlington schedule:

Lunch 11-2pm

MON: 44 Mall Rd, Burlington, MA (near Fidelity)
TUE: OFF
WED: 20 Blanchard Rd, Burlington, MA (our oldest site now)
THUR: 113 Hartwell Ave, Lexington, MA (LAUNCHES 5/2, WAITING ON PERMIT)
FRI: 168 Middlesex Turnpike, Burlington, MA (Northwest Park)

AT THE RESTAURANT (100 Burlington Mall Rd):

FRI: 3-6pm
SAT: 9am-2pm

 

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CAPTURED!

By on 19 April, 2013 in Customers, Operations, Team

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We’re back. As of Saturday 4-20-13 Clover will be back in business. We’re open this weekend at:

Clover HSQ (Harvard Square), 7am – midnight
Clover HUB (East Cambridge, right near the action), 7am – 10pm
Clover MIT (Kendall Square), 11am-3pm

All trucks will be up Monday. See our locations page for more details. This photo is courtesy of Floyd, one of our employees at the HUB. We’re a block away from Norfolk St. And like all of us, he was pretty surprised and shocked when the nation’s eyes turned on our little part of Inman Square.

 

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ALL CLOVER LOCATIONS CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE DUE TO SUSPECT AT LARGE. OFFICIALS ADVISE TO STAY HOME, STAY INSIDE

By on 19 April, 2013 in Customers, Operations

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This is one of the happiest photos I could find. That’s Enzo at 5:20am (a year ago) showing off some skills between trips loading his truck.

Those times will be back again, but for now we’re shut down. Please join us in staying home until City Officials tell us everything is clear.

ALL CLOVER LOCATIONS CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE DUE TO SUSPECT AT LARGE. OFFICIALS ADVISE TO STAY HOME, STAY INSIDE.

FRIDAY 4/19/2013

Stay safe Clover Nation.

 

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Clover North: Find us in Burlington, MA

By on 9 April, 2013 in Burlington (BUR), Operations

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That’s a Clover truck, parked in a parking lot in Burlington. This site may look like an empty lot, but it’s going to be packed tomorrow (Wed). Well maybe not packed, but I’m hoping everybody who was there last week comes back with at least 2 friends. That would be enough to keep us busy.

I’ll be there tomorrow with Mike and Rolando. It’s going to be great. Hope to see you (or your suburban friends) there.

FIND CLOVER IN BURLINGTON, MA:
Follow on Twitter: @cloverBUR

Mondays
11am – 2pm
44 Burlington Mall Rd

Wednesdays
11am – 2pm
20 Blanchard St.

More sites to be added soon…

 

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What does a Burlington customer look like?

By on 8 April, 2013 in Brand, Burlington (BUR), Customers

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We’re easing into our Burlington world tour. We’re hoping to generate excitement leading up to our new restaurant launch in Burlington. We’re not Bobby Flay, so if we’re going to have a line around the block it’s going to be because we’ve been working really hard to get to know you all and get the word out.

This picture was from our first day ever serving in the Suburbs. Those are customers queuing up for Chickpea Fritters and Fries. I think we were all a bit surprised how many people found us in what had seemed to us like a desolate parking lot. Can’t wait to get back.

Today (Monday) we’re parking at the Fidelity Building on Burlington Mall Rd.  We’re at Blanchard St. on Wed. Soon we’ll have a full schedule including the parking lot of the Plaza where we’re building our restaurant: Burlington Marketplace.

FIND CLOVER IN BURLINGTON, MA:

Mondays
11am – 2pm
44 Burlington Mall Rd

Wednesdays
11am – 2pm
20 Blanchard St.

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Clover, USA Today, and PR

By on 4 April, 2013 in Brand, Newspaper, Team

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We’ve had some fun press lately (NYT, Globe, etc.) but nothing that was more exciting to us than USA Today. I was surprised at the reaction I got from customers and even employees. When USA Today was interviewing and taking pictures people were saying things like “who reads USA Today?” “where can you even buy that?”

The thing is, I’ve stayed in too many hotels, and flown on too many planes to not know that USA Today is everywhere. Their distribution is enormous. It’s just a little different than local papers we’re more used to seeing on corners around town. I knew a lot of people would read this. And I was really excited we were getting written up in the Business section (USA Today Money).

The story they decided to write was about our speed. We think that’s great. This is something we’re obsessed with at Clover. And while I know there are times we’re lagging, on average we’re really not too far behind a McDonald’s. We measure our speed throughout the day and every manager has access to that data on a real-time basis.

I’m hiring a PR firm for our Burlington launch. This isn’t something I would have thought of doing in the past. But it’s something I’m taking seriously right now. Our coverage by the press has been awesome over the past 4 years, really more than we could ask for. But we haven’t pitched a single story, it’s all been organic. And I have no idea how to work actively with the press. For Burlington we have so many great stories to tell I think it would be a shame if some of them were lost just because I’m not good at this PR thing. So we’ll be working with 451 Marketing. Stay tuned, I’ll tell you more about that process as it unfolds.

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