That picture is of a make-shift gift certificate Mary made for a customer using the bottom of a paper bag. I love it. The picture was taken and tweeted by a customer. Doesn’t have anything directly to do with this post but was the only recent picture I have of Clover and money.

So what is this post about? We made some changes to prices today and added a new item to the menu. I guess we could do this silently and hope not many people notice, but that’s not really our style, is it?

Last price change was in the direction I like, down. We changed oatmeal from $3 to $2. These price changes are in the other direction, up. This was what was in the email I sent to all clover Managers last night:

ALL LEMONADES $3 – all lemonades are now $3

GUEST COFFEE $3 – change all guest coffee pricing, leave local coffee (Barrington, Speedwell, Matt’s) at $2

OATMEAL $2 plain, $4 with fruit

GRANOLA WITH MILK $3 – new item!

GRANOLA WITH YOGURT AND FRUIT $5

PLATTERS $6

I could go on with some sappy story about how expensive stuff is blah blah blah. How coffee prices are up across the board and lemons are super expensive right now. But I’m going to spare you all of that.

More simply I’ll let you know that we’re committed to low prices for one simple reason: we want everybody to eat at Clover. It’s always a balancing act for us because we use expensive ingredients and a ton of labor. We’re going to try to keep prices as low as we can, and hopefully with scale everything will come down. We’re not at that point yet, but hopefully soon.

With all of these changes we’ve made sure there is a less expensive option for you. For example: you can get the new Granola with milk for $3 (actually lower than what it used to be, and yeah, the milk is local and organic). Or you can spend a bit more and get the yogurt (from Narraganset Creamery in RI) and fruit (varies seasonally).

If you’re mad, happy, or have mixed feelings about this feel free to leave comments. Or you can always talk to your server.