When we opened Clover HSQ I heard again and again that we needed color in the store. Our idea was that the restaurant would serve as something like a stage for the food and people inside. We brought along the color scheme from the trucks (white on white on white).

It felt really cold when empty, but we stopped hearing this comment as soon as the restaurant started to fill up with customers.

And now, almost 2 years later, we know how white works. Time to play with color. You may have noticed the uplights went color back around December. We loved the feeling they brought and went ahead and changed every bulb in the restaurant to bring along a totally different color temperature. That was sort of painful. I was on a ladder for 3 hours changing hundreds of bulbs.

Now we’re playing with booth color. The idea is that we’d change these booths once a quarter. We think a lot about these little details. I’ve always loved how art galleries change between shows. It’s such a feeling of energy to see the space re-imagined to showcase a new artist. We’re drawing inspiration from that and aiming to change our store color 4 times a year. I don’t know of any other restaurant doing something like that. And it’s much less painful this time because our new painter friend Gerry did the work.

The color, red, will match this quarter’s T-shirt. The T-shirts will be available 9/1/12. Any guess what vegetable or fruit they will feature?

(Oh yeah, that’s Antoria. If you eat at HSQ you probably know her, and she probably knows you. Here she is explaining her new Clover Comic. It’s the only good picture I had of the booth colors.)