You might have heard, I took an unintentional dig at one of our beloved local weeklies the other day. Unintentional because I meant to draw attention to the way our employees understand Clover. I was excited to find that folks aren’t getting all over excited about getting an award. It didn’t come out that way, mistake number 8,901 for the year.

So I met with Jeff the other day. Jeff owns The Weekly DIG. I poured him a coffee. It was a Kenyan coffee from Intelligentsia. A sample they sent us that I just learned costs $24/ lb wholesale!! Out of our league. They’d told us it would be $9, but then said oops. OK, that’s another story, but I’m easily distracted by food.

Back to Jeff and the DIG.Jeff is a nice guy, and cares a lot about his business. He felt attacked by a post I put up, and I didn’t mean that, and felt bad about it.

We’re not really going to agree on everything. But that’s not as bad as it might sound. I disagree with some of my best friends.

Specifically, we don’t advertise. We just don’t. We’d rather spend our money on food and talent. Despite that, Jeff pitched me. It was a soft pitch, but it was a pitch. But we just don’t spend money on advertising.

We talked a bit about the best of awards. He told me some crazy stories of what they have to do to manage advertising clients who get mad when they get in one but not 2 categories, etc. He asked if I had any ideas for their next best of year. I told him my biggest issue is that I think when people read “Best Restaurant in Boston” they think it means best restaurant measured equally against all of its peers, not based on a publication’s need to bring in dough from advertisers. That’s the disconnect between customers and media that I think just doesn’t feel right, and doesn’t jive with Clover.

I’m not sure I’m much help on this at all, but I think labeling best of winners that are DIG advertisers would be a start, and maybe a little blurb to kick stuff off that explains the process (like those stories about advertising clients).

I also learned that Jeff is part owner in Notch, a brewer we love and are pouring at HSQ (for the next few hours at least). So Jeff, I’m going to have to insist next time that it’s beer not coffee. Thanks for coming by, hope to get to know you better in the future.