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!
We have a few apologies to make. It was a beautiful day yesterday. We had 3 order-takers outside the truck so we were killing the line. And everyone was fired up about the new parsnip sandwich we launched in the seasonal slot.
So we took some orders for parsnip sandwiches without realizing we were running out of parsnip ingredients on board the truck. It was bad communication on our part. It meant that we had 16 parsnip sandwiches in the queue, and only enough ingredients to make 6 sandwiches. By the time we realized this, many of you had already been waiting for about 10 minutes. We got everyone replacement sandwiches, but it meant that many of you waited nearly 20 minutes for your food.
So a huge apology from us. We never, ever want anyone to wait that long. If you were on that list in the picture, please reach out. Your next parsnip sandwich is on us.
As you can see, we’re getting used to 70-degree days and more and more customers trying Clover for the first time. Which brings me to an exciting announcement: we’re hiring order-takers and lead order-takers. Know any happy, extroverted people who love food and hard work? Send them to the Careers tab on the website to fill out an application.
Whenever we get national press, we’re always somewhat excited because it means our relatives in other parts of the country might finally understand what our jobs are.
On Monday 3/25 a photo and video crew from USA Today will be at the MIT truck during lunch shooting a piece for the Money section about small businesses. Wednesday 3/27 the NECN show TV Diner will be at CloverHUB for breakfast. They’re doing a show about breakfast, lunch, and dinner in Inman Square and picked us as the breakfast spot.
So come by Monday (MIT) or Wednesday (HUB) to show your support for Clover to the world!
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!
My first year at Clover I remember scrubbing the sandwich stations at night, my soap turning to ice on contact, having to boil water and carry it from a loading dock onto the truck just to clean, and thinking “What is this job I have gotten myself into?” But also feeling strangely lucky to have landed in a very cold, very adventurous situation, totally unlike anything I would have expected my life to look like.
Which is why last year’s warm winter felt sort of depressing. And why I’m really happy we had some snowy days this winter. Doesn’t the truck look awesome in the snow?
I think we have one more snowstorm in our future. We’ll be out there!
When I was in 7th grade my Algebra teacher celebrated Pi Day. We all got to bring in round foods. I think it was the one day in Algebra where I excelled. I brought in kumquats.
Last week Karen, an MIT regular, wrote to our catering page asking if we would cater whoopie pies Thursday 3/14 in honor of Pi Day. We thought it was such a great idea that we’re going to make chocolate whoopie pies and run them EVERYWHERE at lunch tomorrow.
We’ll have 1 batch of whoopie pies for sale at all Clover trucks and restaurants Thursday at lunch. Keep an eye on your location’s Twitter feed to find out when they’re live (you can use this neat link to find out your location’s Twitter). I told everyone we should sell them for $3.14159 but John (finance) told me that was entirely impossible.
Pi Day at Clover
$2 Whoopie Pies for sale at all locations
Follow Twitter to see when they hit
When I was 5 or 6, there was a Peach man who parked in the parking lot of Randall’s, a grocery store in Austin. He would drive in, probably from Fredricksburg, during peach season and sell peaches to everyone.
I had completely forgotten about this until I was reading Re-thinking A Lot, the first-ever urban planning book about the role of parking lots. Eran is a customer and head of urban studies at MIT. We invited him to be a panelist at the Food Truck 101 Conference we’re helping organize, so I went and bought his book from the MIT Press Bookstore.
I’m always happy whenever I see a little kiosk or truck in a parking lot. I always have to stop. When my friends road-tripped to Maine, I made everyone go to the lobster-roll shack in the parking lot of this outerwear store. I read Ayr’s post about an ATM restaurant before I ever started working at Clover.
Do you love parking lots, food trucks, or just want to learn about the direction of street food in our cities? There are still a few tickets left for Thursday’s Food Truck 101 conference. Signups end tonight at midnight. We’re featuring top food truck operators (Roxy’s, Bon Me, Mei Mei), Edith Murnane (City of Boston Food czar), Christine Liu (one of the first writers to identify the food truck trend in Boston), Merry White (food anthropologist), and Zenovia Toloudi, an architect who thinks about food and public spaces.
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.
Most of you who eat our food daily know Vincenzo.
Enzo was one of our first employees. He was a former student of Rolando’s working at the Four Seasons. He would help us with the truck here and there. I remember meeting him at Nuestra (now called Crop Circle Kitchen) at 4am, our regular routine at the time, showing him how to open the truck. The next day I had him open, and he had a list of improvements for me.
Enzo has always been conscientious, a hard worker, committed to what we’re trying to do with Clover, completely in love with food, and perhaps above all that a larger than life personality. You know when Enzo is coming. If you’ve met him you’ll never forget him. I know nobody who is anything like Enzo. I don’t expect I ever will. And we all love him to death.
Back in those early days Vincenzo brought me a salad he was really excited for me to try. Some of his family is from Calabria and this salad was based on a traditional salad their family enjoyed. The salad had potatoes, eggplant, and roasted peppers. It was familiar, but different from anything I’d had. The combination of textures and flavors was really vibrant but comforting at the same time. Like Enzo?
We’re going to get to have a lot of fun with wordplay because Enzo has translated his salad into a sandwich and we’re calling that sandwich the Enzo. It launched yesterday at CloverMIT. This Enzo has an Italian sweet pepper relish with a hint of spice, fried eggplant, provolone cheese, and fried potatoes. It’s totally different than anything we’ve done in the past.
If you try this at MIT let us know what you think. We’re in the development stage.
Whatever you do, don’t call this sandwich “The Vinny,” at least not to his face.
Believe it or not we’re on the way out of winter. By March the cold is mostly gone, and that’s only 6 weeks away. If you haven’t been by, we still have 3 trucks operating in this weather: MIT, DWY, LMA. The rest come back on line around March.
I spent an hour at DWY this morning. My lips are a bit chapped. Guess I’m not as tough as I was that first winter we were open at MIT and worked 14 hour days in the cold. That winter, 2008 – 2009, there wasn’t a single mobile operator who ran year-round. Gooseberries (now momogoose) watched what we were up to and decided to give it a try the following winter. And now here we are, lots of folks freezing in the cold.
My lips are chapped but I feel invigorated. My favorite things about operating in the cold:
- People come out for us, just like rainy days, it’s a really warm feeling to see people braving the elements for what you’re doing
- You feel sort of tough. Especially at the end of the season when you’re comfortable in a T-shirt at 34°F
- Feeling the elements. I suspect this is part of what most of us who love the trucks enjoy. You’re outdoors. And so what if it’s in the city surrounded by concrete. You’re still feeling nature act upon you. It fills you with humility and wonder.
- The sunrises: they’re awesome in the winter
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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