Here’s what we’re looking at for the next 4 days. Most locations are open regular hours tomorrow. Monday the PRK truck and both restaurants are open regular hours. You can get more details on exact hours of operations by clicking on the Locations tab of this website, or by following the Twitter feed for your location.
Have a great holiday weekend everyone!
If we handed you a survey card at Clover today, click here to fill out the survey.
The survey will take you about 2-3 minutes. Your answers are going to help us serve you faster, better food. And as promised, there is a reward in it for you too.
A huge thanks for helping us with this!
SATURDAY 2/9/13: ALL LOCATIONS CLOSED
SUNDAY 2/10/13: RESTAURANTS OPEN
MONDAY 2/11/13: ALL LOCATIONS OPEN (HSQ, HUB, MIT, DWY, LMA)
All Clover restaurants and trucks are closed today. Stay tuned to Twitter for updates. We plan to re-open the restaurants tomorrow and return to normal operations Monday pending MBTA operations and a lift of the driving ban.
Hope you’re enjoying the snow. I just finished a pancake breakfast with my family. We’ve already been out to play in the snow and plan to spend as much time as we can having fun today. Violet (not 2 years old yet) has never seen anything like this. It’s all new for her and really fun.
That picture? We skipped out manager meeting this past Tuesday and took everybody ice skating. When we take outings we try to do things that are new/ different for our managers. Given how much time we spend teaching new things to employees and customers, I think it’s great for us to remind ourselves once a month or so how it feels to do something that is new and hard. Only a few of us knew how to skate, for the rest this was a new-ish experience.
We’ve made some updates to the teachers guide. Largest change is that we’ve added Assistant Manager Training. Here’s the latest v.10.12:
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.
If you’re a Lindentree member, here’s what you’re getting in your CSA box this week. If you’re not a member (and this is making you hungry), we’re already in the planning stages for next year’s CSA program at Clover.
That pile of leaves at the top is edamame. I’m really excited to go home and cook it tonight.
Oswin (KIT) was really proud of these fried green tomato kits. From the bottom, you see corn flour and aleppo pepper for dredging, green tomatoes we’ll slice up on board, and a sauce for dipping with mayo, capers, and mustard.
We’ll be frying these up this afternoon. This is a 3pm special we only get to do in late summer when tomatoes come in. If you try it, let us know what you think.
Did you get a bad basil sandwich from us this month? If so, we’re really sorry. This sandwich should be really, really awesome, and it hasn’t been. Couple issues we’ve had: 1.) the quality of the basil spread has varied a lot across locations. Some spread was really fibrous, some was sort of bland. The recipe wasn’t being followed correctly everywhere (bunch of people weren’t adding salt). 2.) A bunch of you were saying the sandwich wasn’t filling or satisfying enough.
So we’re making some changes to this. You should be able to see these changes today:
1.) Basil spread is going to be made every morning in the kitchen and sent to locations rather than being made on board each location. This means you won’t smell basil in the morning on the trucks, but it will let us keep an eye on the quality.
2.) We’re going to be adding mayo and adding another slice of havarti
3.) More salt on the cucumbers.
Let us know if you have this today if it’s improved. We’ll be taking note of these changes for next year when this sandwich comes around again. And for those of you asking, the rumor is true. There’s a new seasonal sandwich coming on soon.
We spend a lot of time answering questions. Here’s Lou (cloverLMA) walking through our sometimes confusing menu. Here’s your chance to answer a few of our questions. You can help us become better at feeding you. (And maybe it’s your opportunity to make that menu a little less confusing for every other first timer!)
If we gave you a survey card when you last stopped by please complete the survey below. We really appreciate your help here. In the past we’ve had as many as 9 out of 10 customers we invited to the survey respond. That’s amazing! This stuff helps us plan, helps us focus on problems, makes us scratch our heads and figure out new problems. It’s been a critical part of our development since day one.
Thanks again!
One result of the food meetings we’ve been having is that the 3pm special slot is getting a lot more attention. Some of you might have tried the blueberries and cream rotating around Clover this week (if you didn’t, we’ll be making them at HSQ tonight).
Another idea we’re trying is crudite with the summer produce that’s coming on this time of year. The crudite and the sauce will change as the season goes on. Right now we’re running radishes, pickled turnips, celery, and bok choy. The sauce is a romesco, one of Chris’s favorite things to make.
It’s not quite as easy a sell as the fried 3pm specials. But we think these could work really well. We’re just in the beginning stages of this, so we need lots of feedback. Try this. Tell us what you like, what you don’t like, what you’d like to see in this slot.
We're here to make food you love, the kind you talk about and look forward to eating. The Clover Food Lab is serving up a new type of fast food. This food is local, it’s just-cut, when we can it is organic.
You can learn more about
our origins,
our food,
our mistakes,
and everything else about us at this website.
Ayr Muir
Founder and CEO
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