Survey Day: 8/22/19
22 August, 2019: If you received a survey card in line today, please click on this post to get to the survey link. A huge thanks for helping us improve!! Click here for the Customer Survey August 2019 Read More
Watermelon patch
21 August, 2019: We made our first-ever Clover patch! Our new “tactical hats,” made by Brewery Branding, have the Clover logo on them, but in velcro. Our new patches, made by Fully Promoted, have my watermelon artwork on them. Our staff will be wearing them to celebrate the melon microseason, which can be anywhere from early August to late September… Read More
George don’t hate me. I’m making an alt-milk bar
15 August, 2019: Yesterday I was sitting in Acton with George Howell at his roasting facility. I told him about my new idea: ALT-MILK BAR. Clover will get a bunch of milk-drinks: chai, hot chocolate, pourover lattes, shaken iced lattes. All estate coffee (of course). And all non-dairy milk (we’ve been making our own in-house and it’s killer but we… Read More
From the archives
Order system
5 November, 2008: We thought we’d try a new system to track orders. It didn’t really work. I had to reach across the workspace too often, and the buttons got confused. The idea was to move magnets across the board you see in the picture. We’ll keep trying. Read More
Corn is actually in season now
15 August, 2019: Ayr created a bit of a commotion when he posted about corn not being in season in June. Here is a friendly reminder that corn is now in season in MA, about 2 months later. We’re getting all our corn from Steve Verrill in Concord, MA (thanks to them for this pic). We love buying local corn… Read More
Chris Strange breaks the internet
14 August, 2019: You might not know this, but we have an Instagram with a hard-fought 12.7k followers. Not hundreds of thousands like our national competitors. We were kind of late to the game on Instagram. But we’ve also never bought followers. *cough, cough.* We try to tell stories, share mistakes. We post killer Food Dev stories Tuesdays at 3pm. But the… Read More
Death to sealed drinks?
14 August, 2019: I think we are going to kill the sealed drinks idea. As you know we make all our own drinks in house. 100 percent of them. As more customers have been taking their food to-go, we started experimenting with bottling them and keeping them in fridges. A year ago, we got pretty disturbed by the amount of… Read More
Do they have baby name books for this?
9 August, 2019: Have you sneaked a peek? We’re opening a new restaurant at 565 Boylston in the Back Bay. Ever since we opened the second-ever Clover food truck in Dewey Square, and needed to distinguish it from the first food truck at MIT, we’ve added 3 letters to the word Clover. Usually these were based on the T-stop near… Read More
From the archives
Happy 21st Jeremiah!
30 July, 2009: Continuing in our Clover tradition we had another round of free cupcakes today. This time to celebrate Jeremiah’s birthday. This time around: our first ever vegan cupcake. And my ugly frosting jobs are becoming something of a trademark. But oh do they taste good. These were a chocolate cake based on a recipe my grandmother used to… Read More
Tips
9 August, 2019: We’ve turned on tipping. The bottom line: our staff are taking home a lot more money each week. That’s great. And it’s why we’re taking tips now. I’d held off on this for a long time. There is so much about tipping that is nasty. But I think technology has allowed us to avoid most of the… Read More
We’re opening a restaurant in the Back Bay
6 August, 2019: I’m really excited to announce that we’re opening our next restaurant at 565 Boylston St., directly across from Copley Square. I’ve wanted to be in the Back Bay for a long long time. We were counting the other day and I think we have more than 1,200 requests from Back Bay folks over the years. Forgive us… Read More
Cross country in a DIY camper van
31 July, 2019: I just got back from a 3 week road trip with my family. I promised more than once to send pictures along the way but I didn’t. I’m not sure why. I think I was just enjoying being off grid. Just wanted to keep those experiences to myself at the moment. Now I’m back in Boston. Man… Read More
Team outings are back!
20 July, 2019: It was 2:30pm on a Monday. I was sitting on a boat next to Stacia and Jasper. We were all putting on sunscreen. I had a frisbee in my bag, not a laptop. I was NOT in a Clover restaurant. None of us (us = most of our general managers, kitchen managers, and corporate staff) were in… Read More
From the archives
HELP WANTED
6 November, 2008: We need help! If you’re interested in 2 hours of service (11:30am – 1:30pm), have a great smile and love food, talk to us. We’re also looking for some more substantial roles (see craigslist for posting). Also, we’re going to be closed for a few days. MIT is shut down Monday and Tuesday, and we decided to… Read More
“Boba” at Clover
11 July, 2019: We’re testing drinks sealed in the style of boba tea. Credit for this idea comes from Xian Famous Foods in NYC, who make and seal their drinks this way. We’ve always thought it looked really slick. Earlier this year, we found we were wasting tons of plastic using bottles. Chris hunted down a sealer and some post-consumer-recycled… Read More