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Packaging and rehydrated oat product

By on 16 May, 2013 in Construction, Menu, Operations, Packaging

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I’ve been at Starbucks Burlington since 6am.

I got a note from our construction supervisor last night saying there was a problem with the trenching they’re doing. Apparently the drawings we had from our engineers (BLW engineering) were not accurate. So I’m meeting him up here to review the situation.

I’m waiting for him at Starbucks. I tried to find an independent coffee shop in the area and had no luck. I’m constantly trying products doing my best to learn where competitors are and what they do. And while Starbucks isn’t exactly a company we think of as a competitor, there is a lot to admire and learn from them.

I bought a medium latte and an oatmeal. It was the oatmeal that really caught my attention. Check out that picture. That’s the packaging I got for ONE OATMEAL! Isn’t that sort of amazing? Really! I count 7 pieces of packaging for this product: a bag, a plastic bag wrapped plastic straw, a nut pack in plastic, “fresh blueberries” in plastic (packaged 4/27/13, they actually list that on there which I think is sort of cool, but not exactly fresh as they are almost a month old and from California), a packet of sweetener (that I didn’t ask for) and the oatmeal itself with a lid. Wow!

I don’t know if this amazes anyone else, but I’ve been really obsessed with packaging lately. We’re trying to make our food better togo. And I think we’re on a great track. But do you know how many items you get when you order oatmeal from us? 1. A cup of oatmeal. To be fair most customers will help themselves to a spoon. That’s 2 items. What do you think about the excess packaging you get when you order food out? Does it bother you? Do you think about it at all? Where does it go?

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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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Rethinking takeout

By on 17 November, 2012 in Brand, Customers, Design, Operations, Packaging

We know our “to go” options need some work. Is this a barrier to any of you eating with us? I don’t know. But I suspect we have a bunch of South Station customers who stop coming by once the weather gets cold because our takeout isn’t the best. And there are a few of you who have started asking for stuff “extra wrapped to-go.”

I think our food will always taste the best right as we hand it to you, but we’d be fooling ourselves if we thought all our customers will experience it this way all the time. And we want to make Clover’s takeout cheap, convenient, simple, and maybe even fun.

So we’re planning a re-work going into this Winter. This means now is your chance to chime in. Have you gotten anything “to-go” from us? What has your experience been like?

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HOT SAUCE 101

By on 8 September, 2012 in Customers, Menu, Packaging

The other day we hosted a hot sauce class at the HUB. This is something we’ve been asked to do for a long time, and not surprisingly it was sold out. We’ve added another class (TICKETS).

We tried something else for the first time, we made little take-home kits so people could make their own hot sauce at home.

To be honest we don’t really know how these classes are going to work out. The first class we ever taught was a soup making class at the MIT truck way back in 2009. I remember Justin, still a customer, and a friend showed up, that was all. It was winter, it was outside, it was earlier than most people at MIT are awake. But we still had fun. I feel like we have a lot we can teach/ share. And I know from my own experience that the more comfortable I’ve become with knives and trying new recipes, the more food I make for myself. So there’s this sense that the opportunity to educate is massive. But I just don’t know how it will connect with what you all are looking for/ want.

So like everything, we’re going to stumble through this one experiment at a time, with the hope that we come out the other side as the best non-professional food education in the world.

Our first knife skills class at MIT during IAP 2010 sold out and we had to add another session. 2011 doubled that again, in the snow. This hot sauce class sold out and I think everybody had a great time. If you sign up for the upcoming class (9/19) you might see a slightly improved version. And if you took this last class don’t be surprised if we reach out to you to ask what you loved and what could have been better.

But I can’t help but feel the bigger nut to crack here is more of a social/ behavior thing. The folks at the event obviously had a great time, a number of them buying beers, coming with folks from work. But I’ll admit I’ve never signed up for a cooking class myself. And there’s something about a cooking class that doesn’t entice me. So that’s what we have to bridge. How to make this something that sounds as exciting to folks as other stuff they devote their time to, realizing you’re all busy and realizing you’re not all as food obsessed as we might be.

EDIT: Here’s the recipe for the hot sauce kits. If you bought the kit, you have most of these things:

INGREDIENTS
2 quarts dried chile de arbol
1.5 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1/3 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup water
2 garlic cloves
6 fresh habanero chiles, stems removed, seeded and rough-chopped (optional)

PROCEDURE
Soak dried chiles in water in the fridge for 2 days.
1. Toast coriander
2. Put all ingredients except coriander in a blender. Run on high in 3 separate stages, 1-2 minutes each, until chunky/smooth. May need to use blender stick to move puree while blending.
3. Mix in coriander.
4. Store in refrigerator and eat within 2 weeks.

 

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“We’re from Fall River Too!”

By on 6 September, 2012 in Brand, Customers, Design, Packaging, Team

This is the first test of an idea I had last year. I thought it would be fun to offer the opportunity for customers to take our food to a picnic. We’re going to keep it up for another 1-2 weeks.

So I found a place in Fall River that made picnic blankets from 100% recycled plastic. That’s a pretty unusual thing. A funny story: when I gave them the art which says something like “made in Fall River, MA” they called me up and said “what a coincidence, we’re in Fall River too!” I’d written that because I knew they were in Fall River, and they were making the blankets, so it only seemed right. But I guess they are so used to people in their industry claiming credit for stuff they don’t make that they assumed I was only writing that because that’s where I was based. I thought it was really funny.

We put this map up, and have been selling picnic meals ($20 for 2 people), and blankets. It’s been really well received. We’re almost out of blankets and we already had to order more boxes.

Any good Clover picnic stories?

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Back to school catering

By on 14 February, 2012 in Customers, Operations, Packaging, Team

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We’ve been working into more catering orders at MIT now that school is back. We’ve been going into classrooms at Sloan, meetings on Main Campus. We’ve had folks come down from the Media Lab and pre-pay for whatever their group wanted to order. Most of the time, this works out pretty well. Here’s a picture of 60 sandwiches from last week, we made them up in about 40 minutes.

If you’re interested in us catering your class, check out the catering tab on the website. We ask for at least 48 hours notice on this. That way we can ensure we have proper staffing and the kitchen is notified that they’ll need to prep extra hummus, pack extra bread, etc.

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Lucky pita

By on 4 February, 2012 in Packaging

Anyone who has worked for us should understand why I took this picture. Every bag of pita comes with 5 pitas. Today during lunch rush at Harvard Square we found a pita pack of 6 in one bag! Maggie yelled out, “You found the four leaf clover of pita!”

I wonder which of you got to eat the lucky bread…

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Our very own cups

By on 4 February, 2012 in Brand, Design, Packaging

It’s going to be a new era. These are samples that our distributor brought in. We’re going to fork over a lot of money to order some cups that are labeled with Clover. We’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. Or should I say Antoria who stamps most of the cups has been wanting to do this for a long time. But while the cups themselves don’t cost more, there is an enormous up-front commitment of cash to order stuff, and we didn’t have it.

So that’s what ordering custom cups looks like. 2 months from now they’ll make the trip across the ocean. Can’t wait.

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Wondering why Matt’s Coffee is sometimes missing labels?

By on 27 January, 2012 in Boston University Bridge (BUB), Brand, City Hall (GOV), Customers, Design, Environmental, Greenway (DWY), Harvard Square, HUB, Location, Longwood Medical (LMA), Menu, MIT, Operations, Packaging, Suppliers, Team

Matt just stopped in. Matt, of Matt’s Coffee. We found his coffee in 2010 and got around to visiting him this past summer. He uses the wood-fired roaster you might have heard us talk about.

While here he said: “I didn’t realize you show my bags like that! I’m going to have to be more careful on the labels.” If you frequent HSQ you may have noticed bags with funny label placement, or no label at all. Matt says he makes the labels on his laser printer, but that his house is a long drive from his roaster. So if he forgets a label here or there he just pulls out the old sharpie (something we’re all too familiar with). We love the sharpies bags, but I think Matt is going to try to send us more “official” bags in the future.

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Retail Wall v.2

By on 23 January, 2012 in Design, Menu, Operations, Packaging, Team

Retail wall #1 was pretty much a failure. I had this idea of creating a 3-D version of a menu board. Thought that would be really fun. It breaks some retailing rules: people like to buy when things are heavily merchandised (big piles of stuff to sell, all over). The sparse display/ limited inventory typically doesn’t work that well. People generally like descriptions of new products. We had none. I knew these might be obstacles, but I thought we’d give it a try.

Well, it didn’t work. We sold a few T-shirts, a few bulk-coffees, a few filters. But nothing near what I think we’re capable of. So this is version 2 of the retail wall. This time we have a brand new idea-paint wall (I spent too much time learning how to skim-coat the brick wall to make this wall). New items, new prices, and new descriptions. Let us know what you think. I’m going to play around with product up there (as easy to change as pulling out a dry-erase marker). Better packing (e.g., moving from delis to paper bags for bulk coffee sales). If this doesn’t work we’ll have to get more normal with our retailing in the next version.

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