15 May, 2019: This May has been a time of anticipation. The soil is warming, but the rain has been incessant. Despite the rain, seedlings are beginning to peek up out of the ground, and that can only mean one thing: CSA signups are live! Don’t miss out on deliveries of produce straight from a farm to your nearest Clover. Signups END… Read More
12 May, 2019: That’s me. I’m drawing Clovers (and a Chickpea Fritter). We’ve hired a design firm to help us with some very specific challenges we’re facing. We never really landed on an “icon” style logo. And we need one badly. For blade signs. Did you ever notice Clover restaurants are sign-less? And for our app. We hired Perky Brothers.… Read More
10 May, 2019: A shout out to Scott who has been doing amazing things at Clover for years now. He’s been promoted to Area Manager, and we couldn’t be happier. If you’re a customer of Clover LMA you probably know Scott. He helped us open that restaurant and has been running it since. Before Clover Scott worked in fine dining… Read More
14 July, 2010: Hot weather + long days + lots of new hires = short term memory loss. Let me explain. Some of you may have met Mary. She’s one of the folks we hired in the last couple of weeks at the MIT truck. She’s a really hard worker, and she’s adapted to the truck really well. In the… Read More
9 May, 2019: I love posters. When I was a student at MIT we were living in this buzzing new digital world. Early text. Early email. Early everything digital. But the way I learned about new events/ lectures/ or just strange and cool things that were happening around campus was strictly analog: posters hanging in the infinite corridor. When I… Read More
8 May, 2019: Carlos has 3 customers. George Howell. A former employee of George Howell. And Starbucks. Starbucks doesn’t blend coffee from Montecarlos. It’s part of a program they have to bring super premium “black apron” coffees to some of their cafes around the world. (Recently it was sold in Tokyo Starbucks for about $30/ lbs. It’s sold out.) Pretty… Read More
7 May, 2019: You’re looking at over 100,000 coffee plants. They will all go in the ground in 2019 at Montecarlos. We stopped by this outdoor plant nursery late in the afternoon. You can see the sun getting ready to set behind the trees in the background. I couldn’t believe the scale of this. Can you imagine? 100,000 plants? Each… Read More
6 May, 2019: This gentleman was manning the weight station. Trucks are used to transport coffee berries from the mountain to the processing facility. When the trucks arrive they drive up to a full truck scale that is weighted. This weight is used to confirm the amount of berries that are being brought to the processing plant. Read More
24 September, 2008: This is Rolando Robledo, Clover’s chef. We’re absolutely thrilled to have him on board. Rolando found his way to Clover by way of The French Laundry, the Waldorf, and most recently, Johnson and Whales as a professor. He’s going to be working the food truck with me full time for the first 6 weeks and we’re going… Read More
6 May, 2019: That’s George Howell’s hand with the seeds of one coffee berry. Coffee typically has 2 seeds in each berry. There is a genetic defect called “peaberry” where a single bean grows instead of 2 seeds. You can notice these in a coffee bag because they look more “round” and don’t have a flat size. Sometimes roasters have… Read More
4 May, 2019: Most of the pictures you see of coffee show a red berry. Or green. Green is unripe. Red is ripe. But occasionally a coffee plant has orange berries. These are also ripe. And they are far less common than the red. They grow side by side. And the berries do seem to taste a bit different (not… Read More
3 May, 2019: The first day in El Salvador I asked Carlos Batres, the owner of Montecarlos, about his coffee drinking habits. I’m always curious to learn about how people eat and drink. He told me he fills an insulated pot every morning and then takes 2 hours to drink 6 cups. 6 cups!! His wife confirmed. And she said… Read More
2 May, 2019: Chris and I toyed with the idea of bringing a drone to El Salvador. But in the end we opted not to. I didn’t want to attract too much attention. Wasn’t sure it was a good idea. So the closest thing I have to an aerial shot is this picture of a poster Carlos had in his… Read More
26 July, 2010: Vincenzo is our new listman. I think he’s going to write about this soon in more detail. You wouldn’t believe how different it is to operate 2 trucks vs. 1. Wouldn’t seem that different, but it is. Add to that the growth of both trucks, and we’re talking about a 4-fold increase in customers served this July… Read More
1 May, 2019: That picture is an action shot. I just squeezed a coffee bean out of the berry. Coffee is the seed of a berry. Did you know that? It was sort of a revelation for me. That berry is really really sweet. And it has this wonderful exotic flavor. Sort of like a kiwi. I couldn’t stop popping… Read More