When I used to work dinner at the MIT truck every night, I met Sean and his girlfriend Alex. They had just moved to Cambridge and they stayed and talked for a long time the first night. They bought an iced tea, but we convinced them to get a chickpea fritter. Then they started coming by pretty much every day for the next 2 years. Sean ended up writing a case study about Clover, back when we just had 1 truck and were in the process of opening the 2nd truck at Dewey. We were dealing with all sorts of scale things back then, it was crazy to have 2 blenders instead of one.

Sean came by the other day to sell Vincenzo (MIT truck manager) his bike. I asked why he was selling it, and he said it was his last day in Cambridge forever.

I don’t know why this was extra sad to me. It’s sort of funny, we get to know customers in a way I don’t think a lot of people get to. We are a part of their lives in this really limited, but really meaningful way. But it’s sort of hard to quantify. We’re working on the next version of order-taker training right now. Is there a place for this kind of stuff as we scale? At the end of the day it’s about the food. How important are the relationships we build with customers?