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Kickoff meeting with 451

By on 12 May, 2013 in Customers, Environmental

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We’re working with a PR team to publicize our Burlington store opening in June. It’s a first for us. But there are a lot of stories to tell. Street food heads to the suburbs…high-ranking cook from NYT Best New Restaurant joins fast food leadership team… startup company rethinking how America can eat…

We decided to work with 451 Marketing. They have a ton of experience representing restaurants. Ayr and I met with Nancy and Jessica to kick everything off.

They’re going to be sending press kit to journalists flung all across the country. And we’re going to include a little Clover gift with each one (a hot-sauce-making kit).

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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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Meet the Farmer Night: 3/28, CloverHUB, 6pm-9pm

By on 20 March, 2013 in Customers, Environmental

Leeks at Drumlin Farm

I was just at Drumlin Farm, one of the farms participating in CSAs at Clover. Hard to believe these are going to be leeks come June.

We are offering Clover as a pickup point for 6 of the best CSA farmshares in the state. Curious about CSAs? Want to meet the farmers before you make a commitment? Meet the Farmer Night is Thursday, 3/28 at the CloverHUB in Inman Square, 1075 Cambridge St.

Farmers from Drumlin, Red Fire, Next Barn Over, Kitchen Garden, Flats Mentor, and Enterprise Farm will be in attendance to talk to you about their Summer 2013 CSA shares. We’ll also have information on a special heirloom grain CSA being offered to Clover customers only from Valley Malt in Hadley. We’ll have snacks and music and a spot to sign-up for shares.

[At 8pm, we're going to have Dann and Martha, brewers at Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project, early supporters of New England grain and malt, pouring a brand new spring batch of their Fluffy White Rabbits ale. Tell us you're coming here.]

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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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6°F MIT Lunch Rush

By on 3 February, 2013 in Customers, Environmental, Team

MIT Truck 6°F

This is what a lunch rush at MIT looks like in 6°F weather. It’s sort of funny to me how, as I’m lying in my warm bed typing this out it really doesn’t look that cold to me. And then I saw that kid in the T-shirt in this picture. No kidding.

For a minute I thought maybe I had the wrong picture, but the timestamp says 1/23/13, and check the whiteboard, 1/23/13. I double-checked that date on weather underground (the official Clover weather resource), and sure enough, that was the morning it was below zero when I woke up at my house, and 6°F as we were going into lunch on the MIT truck. Everything, and I mean everything, was frozen. The 8-Qt. container we hold water in was frozen. We had to run the water through the pipes every 5 minutes to keep them from freezing. The faucet froze for a few minutes. We were all freezing (and I wasn’t even there long).

If you’ve been reading for a while you’ve heard me say it before, but I love rainy and harsh days. It’s just so awesome to see customers brave the elements for our sandwich. And in this case I’m afraid that one customer may have braved frost bite for a sandwich. Wow!!

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Learning from CSA Pilot Year

By on 16 January, 2013 in CSA, Customers, Environmental

CSAs at Clover Learnings from Pilot Year copy 2

A lot of customers have asked me where I’ve been. I’ve been working on Year 2 of the CSA program at Clover. This means calling up farmers, researching farm storage bins, and meeting with Edible Boston, WBUR, and The Boston Herald (more on why later).

This has been a really exciting project for me. I’ve gotten CSAs since I was a junior in college, and now I get to be involved in something that might dramatically affect the amount of local produce entering the Boston area. We’re partnering with 6 of the best/most exciting/most diverse farms in New England: Flats Mentor, Next Barn Over, Drumlin/Mass Audubon, Red Fire, The Kitchen Garden, and Enterprise Farm.

February 1 we launch sign-ups. I thought I’d share some of the lessons we learned from last year’s program, and what you can look forward to this year.

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Fork in the catering road

By on 15 January, 2013 in Customers, Environmental, Menu

Clover loves MetroPedal

We’re busy planning for this coming year. One of the topics we’re trying to figure out is catering. We’ve always been a bit hesitant about catering. We don’t want to chase catering at the cost of developing our daily customers. But thanks to all of you we keep getting requests. And what started as a totally informal program is growing into something pretty substantial.

So now we’re asking ourselves some important Continue Reading →

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I was taking pictures of the bathroom while Chipotle’s CFO and co-CEO were tasting rice!!

By on 20 December, 2012 in Brand, Construction, Customers, Environmental

Yesterday I was in Burlington checking out our new space. I’d gotten a call from the Assessor’s Office that our abutters lists were ready for pick-up, and Lucia and I had a meeting scheduled, so we both hopped in the car, talked business on the way, and took the opportunity to see the new space.

Of course, one of our soon-to-be neighbors is Chipotle. So after checking out the Starbucks, b.good, etc. we walked into Chipotle and grabbed a bite. I noticed two folks interviewing a staff member. And after a bit it hit me that they didn’t look like they were from this area.

I’ve been checking out bathrooms everywhere I go these days, because I think we can do better than we did at HSQ and the HUB (more on that later). So I was snapping some pictures for my architect.

When I came out I noticed the two out-of-towners were behind the counter tasting everything. I’m talking tasting in the way we do when we visit a site. Diving into base ingredients, in their case: rice, fajitas, lettuce, and tasting. They used their guac cups to do the tasting, we use spoons. But it was the same activity. (Although I wondered why they don’t have tasting spoons handy at their restaurants.)

As Lucia and I were walking away I started wondering if those guys were executives. I noticed a Black Escalade with Livery plates idling outside. I pulled out my iPhone and looked up Chipotle executives and sure enough, those guys were Chipotle CFO John Hartung and Chipotle co-CEO Monty Moran. By the time I’d realized they’d already jumped in their Escalade, but it was still really exciting for the two of us. The two of us being Lucia and myself. Obviously John and Monty have no idea who we were or what a big deal we’ll be someday!

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Get a Winter CSA at Clover

By on 27 November, 2012 in CSA, Customers, Environmental, Menu

Do you want to pick up the best-tasting carrots, beets, turnips, radishes, and potatoes at your Clover restaurant this winter? Winter Moon Roots farm in Hadley is partnering with us to offer a Winter CSA that you can pick up at the Clover restaurants in Inman Square and Harvard Square.

That’s Michael, the farmer. He does something pretty crazy: he ONLY grows winter vegetables, which means he spends all year working to grow the best-tasting organic carrots, beets, parsnips, and radishes from the fertile farmland of the Pioneer Valley. Megan and I went to his stand at the Somerville winter market every week last year, and we just couldn’t believe how good the food tasted. Look at the color of those beets, they’re crazy, right?!

Michael is going to start supplying Clover with carrots, so we thought it would be fun to offer a special Winter CSA for customers. Couple other exciting things: we’re piloting online ordering, and we’re going to offer pickups at Clover HSQ. You can find everything (facts, pricing, pickup locations, dates, and the full online ordering) on the sidebar of this website.

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