May 20, 2022

Meet the new CMO

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Hi folks. I’m Kiernan. Kiernan Patrick. Kiernan Patrick Schmitt. (I once met the comedian Colin Quinn at a New York City pizzeria and he told me I had the worst name he’d ever heard.)

I just started as Clover’s Chief Marketing Officer, but I’ve been a Clover devotee since 2011. Back then I lived in NYC and worked at an agency called Blue State Digital. My favorite client by far was Ayr’s alma mater MIT, and I’d take any excuse to hop an Amtrak north to see my clients in-person. After 4 hours, I’d emerge from the train seeking hearty food and a good drink, which are in short supply inside South Station. The Clover Food Truck was a welcome beacon—all hand-scrawled signage and pour-over coffees that were worth the wait. (Pro tip: if you’re looking to get a Clover sandwich for your multi-hour return Amtrak trip, ask for the condiments/sauces on the side to prevent unnecessary sog.)

In 2016, I moved back to Boston and “Proximity to Clover” made the list of Pros (alongside “Minuteman National Park” and “Snow!”) In Clover consumption terms, 2016 to 2020 are a blur of egg and eggplants, ginger sodas, and a medically questionable amount of hummus. 

When the pandemic hit, I was one of the first in line at CloverHUB to help the company clear out its fridges—a long line of us idled outside, far apart, in the rain, carrying home flats of eggs and gallons of milk, unsure of when we’d return. Later, when Clover started contactless pick-up, I, like many, rejoiced: finally a reason to leave the house and comforting food for an uncomfortable time. Plus, a way to ensure that Clover survived!

Fast forward to 2022 and the company is back on its feet and then some. All 14 locations are now welcoming customers, and the pandemic even drove Clover to create our at-home meal box program which, it turns out, lots of people really like.

My favorite Clover offering? The Brussels Sprout Sandwich. Oh the Brussels Sprout Sandwich. I’m the most zealous subject that King Brussels has ever laid his cruciferous eyes on. Just to illustrate: last fall, when Clover sent out the email that The Brussels was in its final days, I called out of work, headed straight to Kendall Square, ordered two to-go, and took in the latest Wes Anderson flick while munching away on those gorgeous green goblins.(It’s the hazelnuts; I’m an inveterate sucker for hazelnuts.) Long live the King!

To close out, a few words on “Marketing.” Clover hasn’t had a Chief Marketing Officer before. In fact, there was a time when Ayr and the team thought Clover would never have anything called “marketing.” Personally, I don’t like the word very much and I share the allergy to it. I hate when a company keeps trying to force-feed me products I don’t want and stories I don’t believe. 

But that’s exactly why I wanted to join Clover. The products don’t need “spin” because they’re actually delicious. And when they’re not, they come off the menu. Clover does in fact think through the food’s sourcing, its seasonality, its flavor combinations. We genuinely do listen to and respond to customer feedback. We are sincere in our ambition to tackle climate change through changing the way people eat.

And the stories don’t need embellishment because, since its founding, the company’s been an open book. This blog is proof of that. It’s got an “Our Mistakes” tag for godssake: what other company on earth has that?

So here’s what I promise: Yes our food pictures might get a little better and the website UX might get a little easier to follow. Yes the murals in our stores might get a fresh coat of paint. Yes we’ll be starting a Tiktok. But Clover is not going to suddenly become some glossy, Botoxed fast food company. We’re not going to “market” at you (God, just typing that…) Ultimately I’m here—along with Ayr, Lucia, Jane, Cody and all the others you’ve come to know—to keep you all up to date on the food we’re making, why we’re making it that way, and the impact it’s having on the world.

Recent Posts

March 22, 2023
Survey Day is a tradition that harkens back to the first days of the food truck. We hand a card to everyone in line on a specific day. Then we look at the results when we’re trying to make important decisions about Clover’s future. It’s not an exact science, but it gives us good insights and keeps us from making too many assumptions : ) A big thanks from all of us for helping make Clover better!
March 15, 2023
That photo is corn fritters drizzled with maple syrup. We just started frying them up for a 2pm special – and they’re an element of our Maple Meal Box. If you head away from the city this time of year, you’ll see signs for sugar shacks, where maple sap gets boiled down into syrup and little restaurants pop up to serve pancakes, corn fritters, cider donuts, and dill pickles (to cut through the sweetness of the fresh syrup).
February 28, 2023
You’ve been asking! And finally we can announce: sunchokes are here, starting tomorrow, 3/1. Thanks to Pete’s Greens in VT for getting us local sunchokes. At breakfast we’ll be making The Sunchoke Truffle: fluffy house-baked pita, creamy truffled butter, caramelized onions, a 6.5 minute egg, and thin, crispy sunchoke slices. At lunch and dinner: The Sunchoke Mushroom: scallion-black-pepper mayo, fresh arugula, roasted crimini mushrooms, fried brined onions, and roasted sunchokes. But what IS a sunchoke?
February 27, 2023
Oh no – 2 of our favorite items are leaving the menu on Wednesday! Stop by today and tomorrow to get your last Bridgewater (lunch/dinner) and Carrot Lox (breakfast). These were both blockbuster items but the good news is they’re leaving to make room for a very special ingredient that only comes into season in ~deep winter.~ Any guesses what that could be? It starts with the letter S…
February 21, 2023
Join us this Friday for pizza (and excitement) at the HUB! If you’ve been reading for a while, you know Enzo. He worked at Clover for 9 years and is responsible for some of our best innovations (like the Japanese Sweet Potato Sandwich, or the thing we do with ninth-pans to hold up our fry timers). Enzo has always been really passionate about pizza. For the past few years he’s been working on a new kind of dough. It’s sort of foccaccia, sort of Sicilian, baked in a deep Lloyd pan.
February 15, 2023
Remember when Pushpir came into the kitchen at CloverHSQ and schooled Ayr on Northern Indian cooking? That was 2013. A different CloverHSQ than the one you visit today. But I still remember the smell of the cilantro, mint, jalapeños, and orange juice in the blender. We hadn’t smelled that exact combo before. It was so cool to see one of my culinary heroes in our kitchen.
February 9, 2023
Have you had the Medlar Sandwich yet? The star of the sandwich is a jam we make from medlars. A medlar is a fruit that grows on a tree and comes into season in the winter. You can’t eat medlars right from the tree – they have to be fermented (or “bletted” – definitely in the running for worst word ever!) in order to become delicious. We undertake that deliciousness-process at the HUB in East Cambridge. But this year there was a little mishap…
January 26, 2023
The Pizza Friday Box gave us an idea: calzones! Ayr has been making these at his house and texting us photos. They’re big and saucy and so good. Basically a stuffed pizza/turnover situation with origins in 17th century Naples.
January 13, 2023
Thanks all who joined for the first public food dev meeting after Covid. Phil did a great job pulling it all together. If you’re a customer, farmer, vendor (or Clover staff member) reading this, you are invited to Food Dev! These happen Thursday afternoons at the HUB and they’re where all new food ideas are born. Just make sure to sign up – spots are limited.
January 5, 2023
House-made carrot lox, hearty vegetable stews with bread and pickles, Tunisian breakfast bowls, a pizza party kit, and a dream of snow, all in one box. Our Snowed In Box is back. This was Greg’s idea back in 2020. He thought it would be cool to make a box that was equally whether eaten after snowboarding or cozied up on the couch watching a movie.
December 21, 2022
We’ve been getting a lot of requests for the ability to gift a friend Clover Meal Boxes. After a lot of late night tech sessions, we have a way to do this! Yay! I’ve been looking and seeing a few of you have started to discover this feature and are starting to gift away. So cool to see.
December 16, 2022
If you’re a weekly meal box subscriber, you may have noticed way fewer plastic containers in your deliveries recently.When we started the program, we were in the pandemic, new to this whole home delivery thing, and a big concern was making sure that nothing spilled inside the boxes. So we relied on post-consumer recycled containers (aka plastic deli containers) for a lot of the items.