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Closing checklist

By on 11 April, 2013 in Cleaning, Operations, Team, Training

Screen Shot 2013-04-05 at 6.02.50 PM

The first time I closed the truck, Leah asked me what I wanted to listen to on the radio while I cleaned. I said, tentatively, Emerson Radio? She said, you’re gonna want to listen to 107.9 Kiss FM. It was the most intense workout I’d ever done. And the reggae/folk that Emerson played at night wasn’t going to get me amped up to clean the Clover way. I hauled everything off the truck onto the loading dock, scrubbed everything with hot soapy water, wiped, sanitized everything. Then I put everything back where it belonged.

That was 2009. Back then we had no way of knowing whether we had done everything. You just had it all in your head. Which meant if you were a closer and you forgot something, your colleague was in trouble the next day when they opened the truck. Later we moved to laminated checklists, or Notes on iPods.

A bunch of team leaders are working on checklists using Wufoo, a form-building platform. The great thing is that you can edit the checklist from anywhere. So if we add or subtract a new task, we only have to update it once. It’s a lot more efficient than printing and re-laminating new checklists.

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Fryer Cleaner Machine

By on 6 February, 2013 in Cleaning, Design, Harvard Square, Location, Operations, Team

John working the fry cleaner

That’s John in Blue, Chris in red watching. John is our Director of Finance. Part of his job entails getting his hands dirty. In this case he’s helping Chris consider whether it would be a worthwhile investment to buy fry oil cleaning machines.

John has an intern named Nicole. We all think she’s super lucky Continue Reading →

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More Burlington Sign

By on 17 December, 2012 in Brand, Cleaning, Construction, Design

Thanks all for the ideas about the sign. I thought given the interest I should talk a bit more about the evolving design thinking.

The current favorite idea is to build a sign that would be similar in many ways to a typical sign you would expect to see in a strip mall. These letters would be illuminated from the inside, etc.

We would focus on using materials to signal a stronger sense of permenance. So I’m thinking the letters would be frosted glass, not plastic. Real glass, not sticker-laminated glass. And the frame would be aluminum, a thicker gauge than a typical sign.

I want LED lights behind the sign. They make these lights now that allow you to control/ change the color as you want. We’ve been excited about moving to a color scheme that changes every season for Clover. So at this location the logo could be dialed in to match up with the current color of the season.

The “Fast Food” would be in solid aluminum letters. Drawing less attention than the main logo.

Forgive my really terrible Sketch-up skills. I taught myself over the weekend. On the upside it’s a free program!

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Return to MIT

By on 1 October, 2012 in Brand, Cleaning, Construction, Customers, Design, MIT, Team

Those of you at MIT have been seeing more of me lately. Those at other locations may be wondering where I’ve gone. I have this ambition of making MIT, the truck from which we sold our first sandwich ever, our training center. Sara, our manager there, is an amazingly gifted trainer/ developer of people, and she loves seeing folks grow.

So I’ve been working to make MIT something of a model for the rest of the company. That’s a lot of pressure on Adam, Pedro, Yessy, Randall, Sara, and the other folks who work that truck. But I’m hoping it’s fun for them as well. We’ve been working on very nuts-and-bolts type things. Making sure there is a great check-list for open and close that is being used daily. I’m a huge fan of checklists after reading The Checklist Manifesto, a really cool book. We’re getting all sorts of things fixed. Talking about cleaning standards and how to live up to them. Putting up sandwich cards to help make construction more clear. Refining roles on board the truck, so everybody knows what they should and shouldn’t be doing. We’re training in detail on coffee, talking about where our beens come from, what is different, what they taste like. Killing the line. That’s right, we’re committed to getting the line below 4 long, even at peak, and wait times sub-5 minutes, even at peak.

It’s been really fun to reconnect with all of the customers I got to know when I was running MIT. We’re approaching our 4th anniversary as a company, but I spent almost 1/2 of that time running the MIT truck. So it feels like a homecoming for me. I’ll be at this for another few weeks. In the meantime, see you at the truck!

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Gerry the Painter

By on 14 September, 2012 in Cleaning, Construction, Team

That’s Gerry giving HSQ a fresh coat of paint. Gerry came into HSQ to ask us about the IdeaPaint. This was at a point when we were selling it on our retail wall. He’d been asked by Harvard to paint a large wall. So I spent some time relating our learnings. The main items are below. So Gerry was a natural choice when we got to the point of needing some fresh paint at HSQ. He’s just the kind of person I like to work with, smart, thorough, takes pride in his work, and seems to really enjoy himself. If you have some painting you need done let me know, I’d be happy to put you in touch with him.

TIPS FOR IDEAPAINT APPLICATION:

  • You need a SUPER smooth surface to begin, sand to 220 grit or smoother, clean
  • Start with a coat of KILZ 2, don’t use any other primer. Even if you’re going over a previous coat of IdeaPaint you need primer.
  • Allow KILZ to dry for 24 hours, smooth with sand paper, clean
  • Mix IdeaPaint, we use the Pro product. Make sure you’re ready to go before mixing, you’ll only have 30 minutes to work
  • Wear a gas mask, I have one from my days working in Organic Chemistry labs at MIT
  • Apply something a little thicker than you would with normal paint, but not super thick
  • Work quickly, left to right or right to left, full vertical columns. Don’t roll too fast and keep pressure even
  • Make sure temperature is more than 65°F
  • Wait 7-10 days before you write anything (VERY IMPORTANT)
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Customer experience checklist

By on 12 September, 2012 in Boston Common (PRK), Boston University Bridge (BUB), Brand, City Hall (GOV), Cleaning, Cleveland Circle, Construction, Customers, Design, Development (DEV), Environmental, Greenway (DWY), Harvard Square, HUB, Location, Longwood Medical (LMA), MIT, Operations, Team

We had an idea: each Team Leader gets a bonus worth $2 for every hour they work in any month they score 100% on the customer experience check and sanitation check. This could be huge for Team Leaders. Like enough money to buy a nice bike each month.

But to make it work we had to come up with a “customer experience check” and a “sanitation check.” We’re pretty new to this being a larger company thing, and believe it or not we didn’t have anything like this in place. Lucia and I sat down to put together a checklist for customer experience. We wanted to focus on the stuff that matters the most. And we didn’t want anything to be debatable. So each answer should be black or white, it either happened or it didn’t. No in-betweens.

This was our first draft. Since we’ve gone through a few iterations. And we put together an online form using this tool called Wufoo (terrible name but it works well). And we did inspections for August. Today Lucia is going to announce the results. I hope everybody aced it, but to be honest I’m not sure I would have first time around when I was running MIT.

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Hi from up above

By on 5 September, 2012 in Brand, Cleaning, Construction, Customers, Design, Team

This post is about that guy right there in the collared shirt. I was moving the electronic A-frames at HSQ, which requires moving the wiring on the ceiling. I probably looked a little shaking with this large ladder, and this kind customer offered to help. That’s Lucia in the red shirt looking very concerned.

It’s a little disorienting up there isn’t it? But even atop this shaky ladder I wanted to take a minute to appreciate what we have here. I mean, it’s just a crazy and beautiful thing that we have customers who offer to hold my ladder. It’s because Antoria has made him feel comfortable, Domingo has won him over with killer breakfast sandwiches, Brett has answered any questions he’s had in a thoughtful way, Lucia has written daily messages that help him understand what we’re up to. And the result of all of these actions is this really amazing community that I feel lucky to work within.

Anyway, thanks for your help, all of you. As you all know we’re a work in process. Our success has everything to do with the things you do to help make us better every day.

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Chris with the powerwasher

By on 4 September, 2012 in Cleaning, Construction, Design, Team

I’m thinking every day about what kinds of things we need to be doing to make sure we’re thriving 6 months, 18 months, 2 years from now.

One of the biggest puzzles I’m facing right now is cleaning and maintenance. We just don’t have a good way to scale this. Currently it’s me (check the recent post where I’m on a ladder), or one of our managers (here Chris).

We love doing things ourselves, as you know. It allows us to make our own mistakes and keep learning. But when it comes to maintenance we could use some help. Anybody out there looking for a job? You’d need to be handy with tools, painting, fixing things, problem solving. You’d have to be excited about working on our growing food truck fleet and helping our restaurants run well. And you’re going to have to love food.

If that describes apple on our “Join the Clover Crew” tab.

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Fries and a movie

By on 21 June, 2012 in Brand, Cleaning, Customers, Design, Team

It’s too hot today. We’re closing all Clover TRUCKS early, 3pm. And I bought movie tickets for all of our employees. Lucia thought of this clever way to let everybody know what was happening. That’s a screen shot of the fry station on a truck. She sent through a dummy fry order to let everyone on board know what was going on.

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The dark side

By on 11 April, 2012 in Cleaning, Location, Longwood Medical (LMA)

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There has been a dilemma going on at the LMA truck. We haven’t been regularly using degreaser on some of our surfaces, and a film has developed. It’s pretty hard to see, but once I saw it, it’s all I can think about.

We have been working on an area of the truck each day to get rid of it. I took a picture to remind myself of how different a perfectly clean surface looks next to one with grease build-up. Left: greasy area. Right: shiny, clean area. I love how the light hits the dark side and the light side in different ways.

 

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