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
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
29 April, 2019: I snapped this picture when visiting Montecarlos, the coffee farm on a volcano in El Salvador. If you’ve had coffee at Clover in the past few years chances are you tasted Montecarlos. George Howell (roaster) invited Christopher Anderson (head of food at Clover) and me to join him on a trip down there. I’m going to share… Read More
26 February, 2019: We had an idea to do carbon comparisons of our menu items. We compared them to other items using a super simple calculation. I think for most customers this has been too tiny to notice. But Lynn told us that some people now believe we serve a Wild Salmon Greens Bowl. So funny. Read More
24 February, 2019: That little pic is a bit fuzzy. But this whole Impossible meatball thing has been sort of a whirlwind right? This drawing was left by a customer. It says: “me without meatball [frown] me with meatball [smile].” I wasn’t sure what Clover would be with a meatball a year ago. We had testing data from CloverHSQ run… Read More
21 February, 2019: See that amazing picture of me? Yeah. Well obviously I’m joking. It’s a terrible picture of me. But it’s here because of the other guy in the shot. That’s Joseph. We just hired him for a tech role. He’s a computer programmer. We have more programming roles open, if you’re interested please reach out. But that pic?… Read More
19 February, 2019: I can’t remember when we first started using A-frames. These are the signs that restaurants and other put out on the sidewalk to attract customer attention. I think I’d seen other trucks doing it. And when we tried they were crazy successful for us. I think the A-frames in those early days drove 10% increase in sales.… Read More
18 February, 2019: I was working on menu stuff over at CloverKND the other day. We’re working on new menu designs. More on that later. A customer came over and said: “Are you the owner? They told me you are the owner.” She was mad about a napkin holder insert card. Lucia, who designed the card, was there. And after… Read More