May 20, 2022

Meet the new CMO

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

September 18, 2023
One of the dishes in our upcoming Apple Box is wobbly, sweet, eat-with-a-spoon, kind of ugly, and so yummy. It’s Baked Apples. We used to make them every morning at the original Harvard Square restaurant. It would fill Holyoke Street with the smell of brown sugar and cinnamon and the first apples of fall. Turns out their history in Harvard Square is even older than our restaurant – our favorite former grocery store owner Tony Russo remembered going to diners in Harvard Square for them when he was a kid. Along with everything you need to make baked apples, the Apple Box has my favorite…
September 12, 2023
If you’ve seen a Clover truck out of the corner of your eye, your eyes are not deceiving you. We’ve been popping up at select events around the city. This photo is of an event at a farm, The Food Project in Lincoln…
September 6, 2023
Sara (kitchen) here. Ok, we haven’t started offering ice cream at the restaurants but there IS a way to get ice cream from Clover in your own kitchen. If you head to the Meal Box area of our app before Thursday at 5pm, you can order a No-Churn Corn Ice Cream Kit. I’ve never had too much of a sweet tooth, but I’ve always had a soft spot for ice cream. I’ve been making a lot of it at home this summer, and I always bring some in for the Clover team. When we were thinking about a corn box, I couldn’t stop thinking about corn ice cream.
September 1, 2023
Clover folks sure like the yellow stuff: Our Corn Box sold out in just 36 hours! Wow. If you’re still hankering for something to husk, fear not: we just opened up a 2nd delivery date: Sat, 9/9. If you haven’t tried one of these yet, the Corn Box is the latest in our home delivery meal box series spotlighting the best of seasonal produce. We work with our network of New England farms to pinpoint exactly the right weekend to deliver veggies at their freshest, and we do most of the prep for you…
August 28, 2023
Clover is now on DoorDash and Uber Eats. Pre-pandemic we were really wary of these platforms – they take big fees from restaurants and can cause a lot of harm to smaller operators, and we were worried about people first encountering us on a third party platform, rather than in-person (we love to talk to you!) But then we talked to a few industry friends and we found out…
August 24, 2023
We’ve been fielding so many sweet emails and DMs asking if the Zucchini is back. And finally we can say it is! This sandwich is one of my favorites we do all year. There’s a thick slice of glazed tofu from Heiwa in Maine. Basil mayo (Red Fire Farm basil). Fresh raw zucchini we cut into half-moons. Snappingly fresh corn (right now it’s coming from Verrill Farm). And shiso which is a Japanese herb that tastes like a cross between mint and basil, with slight licorice-y notes. It’s sweet/salty/fresh and (I think) super addictive.
August 24, 2023
Our Clover restaurant at Copley Square, the one we call CloverBBY (Back Bay) is closing immediately. I’m pretty sad and really shook up, and just bummed. This is the second Clover we’ve ever closed, the first was in Brookline Village. That one was peaceful. This one is violent and really stressful. We signed the lease for CloverBBY in 2019, taking over from a failed outpost of Honeygrow. The space was newly renovated, our neighbor Dig Inn was doing $5m a year in sales (or so we’d been told) and we all expected this to rocket to be our busiest, highest volume restaurant ever…
August 13, 2023
Fresh tomatoes, baked tomatoes, tomato jam, tomato butter, tomato soup. What is your favorite way to eat tomatoes? We’ve been playing with the idea of doing meal boxes dedicated to ONE seasonal veggie/fruit – but with tons of different recipes you can make at home. Now that tomatoes are coming in from Red Fire and Next Barn Over, we’ve dreamed up our first annual Tomato Box.
August 1, 2023
August 15th is Julia Child’s Birthday, and the Clover kitchen crew decided there was no more fitting way to honor our former neighbor than with a French-inflected meal box packed with Julia-inspired fare.. Our neighbor? Yes! Julia lived in Cambridge about one mile down the road from CloverHUB and shot her famous TV shows right from the kitchen of her house—but don’t try to pop in now: her kitchen was disassembled piece by piece and shipped off to the Smithsonian. Inside the Julia Child’s Birthday Box you’ll get…
July 31, 2023
Bowls are now in-testing at two locations: LMA (360 Longwood Ave) and NTV (825 Washington in Newtonville). This is a big change – requiring lots of new containers, prep lists, training. We’ve been seeing people coming in over and over to eat them. We’ve been learning a lot from your feedback and have already made tweaks (more farro in the Romesco Bowl, the addition of a Beet Poke Bowl). Stop in and let us know what you think of these when you try them.
July 17, 2023
In all my years of camping, my favorite campsite was located in a field of blueberries. It wasn’t near a farm or anything, just a field of wild blueberries. With berries available year round at the grocery store, sometimes you can forget that they have a season and it’s right now! Tart, sweet, creamy. Yay Blueberries! We’ve been working on this idea to make…
July 7, 2023
We just announced Clover’s brand new “Celebration Box”—what we call our at-home meal boxes that are worthy of a special occasion with friends or family. As a born-and-bred Yankee, I’m particularly pumped for this one.