I got a call from another restauranteur the other day asking if our coffee racks were custom, who designed them, and whether I could share the contact of the builder.
Yikes! I’m always wishing Clover inspires. It’s pretty exciting when we see bits of Clover in other restaurants. Especially when those changes (e.g., sourcing the eggs we source) makes more good in the world.
That said, I didn’t react well to this request. I was sort of curt and I think I said the design was my own. Copyrighted by me. And no I wasn’t going to share contact info for our welder.
Has me reflecting a bit. Because I’m normally really generous. Clover runs almost like an open source project. And I like that. Sort of a strange thing for me to say no, you can’t copy my work. I don’t know. Did I make the right call?
(Above image is the prototype for our coffee racks. I designed this because it was 2009 and you couldn’t buy anything commercially. I wanted a design that was minimalist, elegant, durable, and worked well for the trucks. That’s my kitchen circa 2009. And yes, that’s copper pipe I bent by hand.)