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July 29, 2017

I closed the trucks today

By ayr

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I closed the trucks today.

Actually, I started this post yesterday, Friday. It’s now Saturday. So I closed the trucks yesterday. I wasn’t ready to post it until today.

I’ll write on this more in the future. But for now I wanted to let you all know the basics.

CloverDWY (parking at Dewey Square) will remain open through Friday 8/7/17. We will have a little celebration for the last day. CloverNEW (parking at Newbury St.) is closed immediately. We’d hoped to keep it open until Friday as well, but this past week it developed a mechanical issue and the replacement parts don’t arrive until end of next week. Sorry to our NEW customers to make the close so sudden for you.

This is the end of a process that started a few years ago. It was back in 2014 or so that we stopped using the trucks to drive the sales and bottom line for Clover, and shifted their role to marketing and site selection. As I look at Clover today I want to focus our attention on the restaurants. I love trucks so much, it was how I started. But they add a lot of daily complexity. We’ll be a better company if we’re more streamlined and more focused.

We’ll keep truck # 1 (the one I built myself), and one more to use for events and catering (probably #6). We’re going to be selling the other trucks so that they can be used to help ambitious entrepreneurs test new ideas.

We have incredibly talented folks working on the trucks, and they will all be staying with Clover. Manlio, the General Manager of the truck that parks on Dewey Square will be at CloverFIN (about a block from DWY). And Marcus, the General Manager of the truck that parks on Newbury St. will be running our restaurant at 1075 Cambridge St., Cambridge, where we operate our commissary kitchen. Their teams will stay on as well in various roles throughout the company. We are growing fast at all of our restaurants and are eager to bolster our ranks with additional talent.

Thank you all for the wonderful love you shared over the years. I’m sure I’m not the only one who will feel mixed emotions about this move. But I think it’s the right thing as we look forward to our future. I look forward to seeing you all in the restaurants.

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