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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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CSA bag mockups

By on 17 May, 2013 in Design

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Ryan and Adelyn of Harvard came up with the idea to give custom tote bags to every CSA customer. Peter of QRST in Somerville (who prints all our shirts) is going to make these up. The actual bags will be bright colors (pink, neon yellow), not “natural” fabric.

I’ve been having fun making mockups using my free trial of Indesign that expires in a few hours. What do you think?

[If you want to carry one of these packed with produce in a few weeks, we still have a few shares left at Brookline Village and Burlington. Act now to reserve your spot!]

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Food Truck 101 2013 Recap

By on 12 April, 2013 in Construction, Design, Team

Food Truck 101

Food Truck 101 was such a success I think we’re going to make it a national thing next year. Keep an eye on this site, we’ll post with details about the next conference.

I’m just now getting around to posting the presentations, sorry it took me this long! We figured these could be helpful for anyone thinking of starting a truck anywhere.

How to Invent Food on a Truck, Irene Li, Mei Mei Street Kitchen
Social Media for Food Trucks, James diSabatino, Roxy’s Grilled Cheese
How to Build a Food Truck, Patrick Lynch, Bon Me
Food Truck Economics, John Lee, Clover

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Next step in the evolution of Clover packaging

By on 29 March, 2013 in Customers, Design, Environmental, History

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This picture is what is left when I finish my sandwich from Clover.

2008:
When we launched the MIT in 2008 with the goal of testing and developing our food our goal for packaging was simple: hold the food and not cost much. We made decisions like one size coffee cup which helped simplify things on the truck, limit the amount of caffeine we were handing to customers, and I suspected would give us some buying power in the future. We used foil on our sandwiches, common for food trucks. We chose fry boats for cost, because they kept the fries from steaming in their heat, and because they had a fair-reference, which we thought fun.

2010:
As we matured our goals for packaging evolved. I became hyper-focused on waste. It was just sickening to me how much waste restaurants produce, and I was seeing it up close for the first time. We streamlined our packaging and started making decisions to influence customers. This included using butcher paper for sandwiches. Only handing out bags if a customer asked for a bag. Only wrapping to go if a customer asked for to go. Not pre-loading drinks with lids (they are available for self-serve, but we don’t put them on every drink automatically). The largest change we made at that time was moving to 100% compostable packaging. This was a project I’d been working on for 2 years and when Harvard Square opened I believe it was the first restaurant in the country to have 100% compostable packaging. No recycling. No trash. Just compost. Since making this change we’ve consulted with a number of other restaurants about approaching a similar goal and we’re really proud of the leadership role we’ve been able to take here.

2013:
I’m now starting to think harder about convenience. We’ve been concerned about the customer experience since day 1, but there’s not questions we’ve made choices that make the packaging experience less good. If you compare us to McDonald’s or even Chipotle the end of your meal is MUCH less waste, without a question. But there’s also no question that it’s a much less EASY experience. We ask more of our customers. Comparing:

Coffee and breakfast sandwich at Clover
- 2″ x 6″ strip of compostable butcher paper
- 12 ounce compostable paper cup

Coffee and Breakfast sandwich at McDonald’s or Dunkin’
- Styrofoam Cup with plastic lid (if you order small at Dunkin you can get a paper cup, trick one of our contractors taught me)
- Stir stick
- Cream and sugar
- Napkins
- Bag
- Sandwich wrap (12″x12″ waxed non-compostable paper)

So how to we bridge this divide? I’m afraid our current packaging approach has some negative effects:
1) People tend not to buy multiple meals for togo
2) Customer confusion, especially for first-time customers or less bought-in customers
3) Messy meals. I think the eating experience feels overly messy to some.

 

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Food truck timeline

By on 21 March, 2013 in Design

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Ayr and I thought to make a timeline for our Food Truck 101 Conference last month. Did you know that food trucks the way we know them (meaning full kitchens-on-wheels) only dates back as a national thing to 2009? That was the year we started our truck at MIT, and the year of the Kogi explosion.

My friend Ahmed works for a really new platform called Zeega. The idea is that people pull images/videos from everywhere (and cite them under fair use) to make narratives. When I first used Zeega, it reminded me of those Choose Your Own Adventure books. Remember those? You can sort of set up many different paths that users can go down within your story.

I showed Zeega to Ayr with some trepidation. When I had first used Zeega it was pretty new and buggy. But five minutes later Ayr had figured it out. We made 4 separate projects, sent each one to a different active screen at the HUB, and set up auto-transitions. We used our own photos, a CNN video of Kogi, and images we found on the internet.

You might wonder why we used that garish red typeface. This was the default font. I was asking Ahmed about it. He said they set that as the default to sort of shock people into realizing you could change the font.

 

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New catering stickers

By on 18 March, 2013 in Customers, Design, Packaging

Delivery Catering at Clover

Managers got a little gift yesterday. These represent the next phase in Clover catering and our second attempt at branded containers for delivery (the first was back in 2009, and it was a green sticker based on our first T-shirt logo).

This time we used the font that Ayr made of his handwriting, and left a space for the crew to write how many sandwiches are inside. That makes them customizable for whatever kind of order comes in. What do you think?

If you love them so much that you want these boxes to come to you, you can fill out a request for pickup or delivery. Part of the next phase in Clover catering is a more streamlined request form. But we’re still learning. So if you get catering from us, please tell us what you think we could do better or differently.

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Be a part of Clover’s latest experiment

By on 6 March, 2013 in Construction, Customers, Design, Environmental, Operations, Team

Ayr Taking orders outside

You can participate in a new experiment we’re running with the help of a Harvard Business School student.

I had to dig up this goofy picture to make a point. Please bear with me.

This picture is from 2010. Our MIT truck had been moved due to construction. It turned out to be the first of 5 moves that had us going up and down the block for nearly a year.

Our breakfast sales were near zero because nobody saw us in our normal spot when they looked down the street and figured we were closed. This is something that is very different for trucks vs. restaurants. So I stood outside near an A-frame looking goofy and took orders. It worked pretty well. I got some strange looks of suspicion (“You want me to give you my money and you’re telling me my food will be ready around the corner? Yeah right…”). But by this point a lot of our customers knew me pretty well and trusted I wasn’t playing a con.

Anyway, this slightly successful experiment got me thinking of bigger things. What if a Clover order taker showed up in your office. Yeah. It’s lunch time. You get a call on the intercom that Clover is in the building, and an order taker is right there in your office lobby, iPod in hand, ready to take orders. We would then send the orders out by a runner.

When I worked in offices I rarely got my order in with the person at the front desk before lunch. That meant when it was busy I’d find myself falling back to a convenient if not satisfying lunch solution. The idea here is that you can procrastinate as much as you want. You don’t even have to leave your building. We’ll show up the same time every day of the week (e.g., 11:45am) ready to take your order. Then we’ll deliver the food to you and your colleagues.

OK, so that’s the pitch. Will it work? You can be part of that answer. With the help of an HBS student who is doing an Independent Study we are launching a trial version of this program. You can sign your office up. You can give us feedback. Eat some great Clover food. And who knows, maybe you’ll come up with a name for this thing that will stick. I’m a bit lost on that front.

We’re targetting offices that have a minimum of 15 people who might (no obligation) eat with us. More is better. And we’re focusing on offices within a 10 minute walking radius of our truck at Dewey Square. Tell your friends! Thanks all.

SIGN UP FOR OUR OFFICE EXPERIMENT

(Oh, that featured image in the slideshow? I didn’t think you’d all click through to this story by looking at this picture of me standing outside, so I featured a picture of our “Order Taker Royale” at Harvard Square, Antoria)

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Get your Food Truck 101 tickets, Sales end tonight at midnight

By on 25 February, 2013 in Construction, Customers, Design, Environmental, Team

photo-best?

I was in NYC yesterday. I wanted to see Lunch Hour NYC at the Public Library, but I missed it by one day. I was really bummed. They had a full replica of the original Automat! And there was information about how lunch grew up side by side with industrialization in New York.

It’s hard to avoid street food when you’re in New York. It’s part of what makes walking around there so interesting. The carts are part of the landscape of the sidewalks. You see and smell hot dog carts, pretzel carts, the Tasti-D-Lite trucks. There’s the great dosa man in Washington Square Park. And there are all the halal carts and the falafel and schwarma carts. This one was right in front of the movie theater we went to in the West Village. There must be over 1000 of them in the city. Does anyone know how they get to their spots each day?

FOOD TRUCK 101: THE CONFERENCE is Thursday, 2/28. Sales end at midnight. Culinary anthropologist Merry White, who writes really interesting articles and books about food, and journalist Christine Liu, who organized the first food truck festival in Boston, are both speaking. Tickets are on sale here until midnight tonight.

EDIT: I’m extending ticket sales to end of the day today (2/26). So many people signed up while I was asleep last night that I figured we could take signups for another few hours.

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Burlington model

By on 22 February, 2013 in Burlington (BUR), Design, Location

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That almost looks real, doesn’t it? Not yet, right now it’s just a scale model we’re using to explore ideas.

My architects and I have this plan for wood paneling and ceiling at the Burlington restaurant. The restaurant is really long. And most operators would just draw a line at the 2/3rd park, that’s 1/2 to 2/3rds of space behind the wall, the remainder (1/3 to 1/2) of the space visible to customers. We do things a bit differently. Our kitchen is open. Everything is open. The only space customers will not have access to will be the mop closet and the back hallway. So instead of a space with a rectangular footprint we have a space Continue Reading →

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In-store CSA sign-up

By on 14 February, 2013 in Brand, CSA, Design, Operations, Team

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Last year we printed out sheets with lines and hung them on a clipboard on the wall. We kept chasing pens, didn’t have good materials for customers to browse, and when people signed up we didn’t have any way to take payment on the spot.

You know we’re always experimenting. Sometimes we’re stacking experiments. This time around we wanted to try for a more vibrant CSA “retail wall,” and we wanted to fix that sign-up thing. So now you can sign-up from home, or sign-up in store.

We found this iPad mount for $90 or so online. I drilled 2 holes in it and mounted it on the wall (it’s meant to be a cash register type thing). There’s a pretty ugly extension cord running below to power the device.

We made a page for our website that shows up well on this device. I set-up the iPad as a Kiosk with some Kiosk software I downloaded from the App store that focuses the iPad on a single page or set of pages and goes full-screen. I combined that Kiosk app with a trick I read about online that allows you to lock the home button. (You activate some Assisted Access settings on the iPad.)

And voila! You can read about farms right here at our “retail” display for CSAs. And you can actually sign-up for farms. You can even read (and laugh at) my made up FAQs. Don’t worry, we’ll make these real soon. But I didn’t really have a true list of FAQs so I had fun with them and used my imagination.

Obviously we’re not the first to use an iPad in-store. Our CSA program is pretty much unique, but more importantly we’re learning. We’re learning how to bridge the digital and face-to-face. How to enable you but still make the experience real, lasting, and personal. Tell us what it feels like to you.

 

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