Cristina just got promoted to Team Leader at CloverHFI. If you eat with us there, you may know her. She’s awesome. And she’s the beginning of this story.
The other evening I was sitting at the counter at HFI. I overheard Cristina saying to a customer “I accidentally put cucumber-tomato salad on your chickpea fritter when you didn’t want any. I’m going to make you another, but is there anyone you know who doesn’t know Clover and might want this extra sandwich?” I was really happy to hear that. It’s exactly the kind of interaction we want our employees having.
The customer said “Yeah, my son would love that sandwich! He’s actually next door doing a demo of a falafel cart he built.” At this my ears perked up. Within 2 minutes, me and the customer (I don’t remember your name, sorry!) ran down Mass Ave to try to make the end of the demo. And then I got to see what his son, Ethan had created along with his classmates at NuVu. His teacher, Said (who eats with us regularly), is from Syria and had the idea for the students to create a falafel stand.
They created this beautiful circular falafel cart that rolls on wheels. It’s like a big hamster wheel and the “employee” stands inside. Each of those tubes contains different ingredients. There are motors in each tube that allow the ingredients to be dispensed. There’s a conveyor belt that moves the pita underneath the tubes.
More pictures after the break. Ethan, come see us in 4 years. You can have a job in product engineering at Clover.
The prototype. 30 students worked on this phase of the design.
Ethan’s dad
The motors that control how fast the ingredients are dispensed.
