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You can read along with the Clover book club

By on 13 June, 2013 in Purpose, Team, Training

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Clover managers are in a little book club together. Want to read along with us? Get yourself a copy of Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us.

Have you read this? It’s about the processed food industry and links to the obesity epidemic. I think it’s going to raise some interesting questions among our leaders. What does “processed” food really mean? Why does it taste so good? Can we glimpse a future where fast-food is A.) not processed, B.) accessible price-wise to everyone, C.) delicious?

Some of us are reading on a fleet of Kindles, others have the hard copy. If you want to join, start reading. Leave your comments here.

 

 

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Closing checklist

By on 11 April, 2013 in Cleaning, Operations, Team, Training

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The first time I closed the truck, Leah asked me what I wanted to listen to on the radio while I cleaned. I said, tentatively, Emerson Radio? She said, you’re gonna want to listen to 107.9 Kiss FM. It was the most intense workout I’d ever done. And the reggae/folk that Emerson played at night wasn’t going to get me amped up to clean the Clover way. I hauled everything off the truck onto the loading dock, scrubbed everything with hot soapy water, wiped, sanitized everything. Then I put everything back where it belonged.

That was 2009. Back then we had no way of knowing whether we had done everything. You just had it all in your head. Which meant if you were a closer and you forgot something, your colleague was in trouble the next day when they opened the truck. Later we moved to laminated checklists, or Notes on iPods.

A bunch of team leaders are working on checklists using Wufoo, a form-building platform. The great thing is that you can edit the checklist from anywhere. So if we add or subtract a new task, we only have to update it once. It’s a lot more efficient than printing and re-laminating new checklists.

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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 face of CloverBUR

By on 15 March, 2013 in Burlington (BUR), Location, Team, Training

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Mike has a really impressive resume. Before coming to Clover, Mike was Chef de Cuisine at O Ya. Some of you may have remembered the New York Times article naming O Ya the best new restaurant in the US. If you’re lucky enough to have eaten there, you know it’s amazing. We’ve eaten Mike’s food, we can tell he cares about it a lot, which means we all have a ton in common.

Mike is going to run our Burlington, MA restaurant. The special part is that Mike’s a native of Burlington and knows the town really well.

A couple of months ago we rolled out a new fast-track-to-manager program. Up until now, 100 percent of our management has been grown organically. We still expect most of our managers will be created from existing team members, but we are also ready to consider hiring really experienced managers. Mike is one of the first to go through the program. He’s training under our most experienced managers at MIT and HSQ. Say hi to him next time you’re by. And if you’re reading this, have 3-5 years restaurant management experience, and think you might have what it takes to run a Clover, apply here.

 

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Not your blogging fingers!

By on 19 February, 2013 in Team, Training

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Megan surprised us all at the last manager meeting when she said we were going ice skating and drinking hot chocolate. It’s a tradition Ayr started last year when we went candlepin bowling at Sacco’s. The idea is to do things we aren’t good at, so that the next time we’re training someone, we can remember how hard it is to do something for the first time.

Well, that analogy might work for some activities. But I took Ice Skating as an elective at BU. When you grow up in Texas, it’s a pretty exciting thing to see Ice Skating 101 in the Course Catalog. So I was feeling pretty arrogant when all 19 of us got out on the ice at the Charles Hotel. That red blur is me sailing by Sara (MIT) and Julian (PRK). I was skating on one foot, doing Figure 8′s, etc.

I challenged Julian to 3 laps around the rink, and thrust my iPhone in Chris’s hand so he could man the stopwatch. I was about to close in on my third lap, and Chris said, “Do a hockey stop!” I skidded to a stop right into Chris. I fell. He fell into me. I felt a lot of pain. The weight of both of us came straight down on my good hand. It was really embarrassing to ask the ice rink attendant if he had any ice for my hand.

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Enzo, the sandwich. Now playing at CloverMIT

By on 29 January, 2013 in History, Menu, MIT, Team, Training

Enzo, The sandwich

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.

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We love you Antoria!

By on 28 January, 2013 in Team, Training

We love you Antoria!

I spend a lot of my day looking for what is wrong, what could be improved. It’s a drag. But I feel like it’s my job.

What of the moments when I look at everything we’re achieving and smile? Those are more often than not private moments of reflection.

I found this picture of Antoria while looking for something else. I didn’t even take it, which makes it all the better. That’s Antoria our lead Order Taker training a new OIrder Taker at Harvard Square. If you frequent CloverHSQ I don’t have to tell you how amazing Antoria is and what a critical part of the Clover family she has become.

So here I am at 6am in a semi-dark office, muffled sounds of Domingo getting the restaurant ready to open below, headphones on my ears playing Adele (no, that’s not a joke). And instead of quietly smiling I thought I’d share this with all of you. What makes me so proud of Antoria?

- I know she’s doing a great job with this training. And that means she’s putting a lot of herself into making this a better company for the future.

- She’s clearly having fun and spreading that (as she always does). It’s a fantastic quality Antoria brings, it elevates us all

- That hat may not look like Clover uniform, but she does have a Clover cap under the face, and if she was at a different angle you would see the logo peeking out carefully. And the T-shirt is Clover, and clean. It’s an Antoria style that respects what we’re trying to do but still brings forward her personal style.

- Looking at this picture, don’t you want to be working with us? (We are hiring, at all levels, check the careers tab)

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Why open in winter?

By on 28 January, 2013 in Brand, Team, Training

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There is snow in the forecast for today, but it’s not suppose to start until after lunch (fingers crossed) and we’re all going to benefit from warmer temperatures all week.

We’re working extra hard to be very very fast with the service. And we’re packing everything to go. If you come by today thank your truck operators, they’re doing an amazing job keeping everything humming and dealing with the difficulties of winter in stride.

Winter is a rough time for food trucks. Our first winter at MIT (2010) followed over a year of operations. I wasn’t sure I could make winter work, but we were only aiming for break-even. And I needed to train some new managers for the spring. So we gave it a go. Since then others have followed, so all you Food Truck employees out there who feel like icicles, you can blame me. Folks were more sensible pre-Clover and just shut down for 3 months.

At one point we thought of bringing the truck to a warm climate in the winter, say Florida. But I wasn’t sure we’d be able to work out all of the legal details.

So here we are, winter 2013, still hoping for break-even operations, still focused on training our next round of leaders. You don’t need to be an experienced operator to know that December and January are the two slowest months of the year for food trucks. That said, we’re still surprised and thrilled to see the lines develop, despite falling snow. It’s a great feeling.

 

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Total Re-Org

By on 9 January, 2013 in History, Team, Training

We’ve been working hard over the past month or so assessing our organizational structure. The topic of organizational structure may seem a bit abstract to you. It did to me when I first heard about it in business school. And there aren’t too many metrics you can throw at it that stick. But for many companies, especially in people-heavy businesses like food, it’s central to everything we do. This is how we answer the questions: Who do you report to? Who is responsible for what?  What’s next for me?

So we’ve been working hard, spending hours talking about what we love and what we don’t like about our current organization. We’ve been studying what others do, in and out of our industry. And we’ve come up with a plan that we think will carry us into the future.

It’s a bit complicated, so this is going to be a long post. The short version is that our managers are going to make more money in 2013 than they did in 2012, which is really exciting. We now have more career paths for managers within the company. And there’s a huge emphasis now on people development. You can’t succeed in the new structure without developing future leaders.

(more after jump)

Continue Reading →

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Raises for all hourly employees

By on 1 January, 2013 in Team, Values

I’ve got great news for the new year: effective today all hourly employees (excluding provisional) will get a raise of $0.25/ hour.

The last pay increase we put in place was a $1.00/ hour increase for Team Leaders that is linked to monthly inspections. That was back in September. Since then I’ve been wanting to put in place something for everybody.

It’s always been our goal to pay everybody as much as we can, and to keep moving that mark upward. And we’re able to do that because everybody has been doing such a great job. This is something like the 7th pay increase in the 4 years Clover has been in operation. Great job everybody! You’ve earned it. Happy New Year!

NEW PAY RATES:

Provisional Employee: $8.00/ hour

Team Member: $9.75 – 11.75/ hour

Team Leader: $11.25 – 15.25/ hour

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