As I’ve been building Clover I think about the capabilities we’re building as a business. I think of our company as a complex organism. I imagine myself an observer: what is this organism capable of?

We’ve been working really hard on building the ability to respond really rapidly to bumper crops. The idea is simple: when farmers have a bumper crop they need somebody to buy it. And those moments, when something grows really well, it usually tastes the best. So we love buying items when they are at their peak. This isn’t something our industry knows how to do.

This year peppers are amazing. The dry heat agrees with them. The picture above is from my home, Violet, my daughter helped me pick these.

We learned this about 3 weeks ago. Chris brought a ton of peppers into food dev. We tasted. Fresh local peppers are amazing. So flavorful. They sort of snap in your mouth.

We came up with a bunch of recipes. There is a simple pepper and feta salad that kicked things off. Then pepper breakfast sandwich (our first seasonal breakfast sandwich). And now we’re testing the Mexican Sweetpotato Sandwich at CloverFIN. We have a pepper sauce on the Bridgewater Sandwich. We’re making our own hot sauce for Clover (to replace the Sriracha). We’re playing with pepper soups. Peppers all over the place.

You are a part of this process. Whether you’re a Clover customer, or a Clover employee, you’re helping make this development happen. Look for items on the menu with a little lab beaker symbol next to them. Those are the ones we’re testing for the first time.

We’ve been building the pieces to make this happen over years. But I think this is the first time we got to put them all together. Pepper crop + 2-3 weeks = Peppers all over Clover’s menu. They taste absolutely amazing.