I’m sitting in CloverHSQ. This is our first restaurant. We opened it going into 2011 and now, a little more than 4 years later, we’re going to have to close it down. Carolee at Harvard Real Estate Services had a certified letter delivered to my home address this past Saturday just to make sure I wasn’t going to forget. Harvard is gutting this building and moving all tenants out (including the iconic Au Bon Pain).

Thankfully Harvard has worked with us to find a relocation, and it’s a really awesome spot. I think we might do even higher sales in the new location than we do in the current.

But that doesn’t make it easier to leave. The tiny shared office I’m in has IKEA floors that I remember buying (because they were on clearance) and working over a Christmas break to install myself. This is where we learned how Clover could become a place that is important to people. It’s where we experimented and failed. I remember the indoor garden that Chris Anderson built and installed on the mezzanine, the project Antoria took on to care for the garden. I remember tearing out all of our ivy on the back wall, twice. We finally got the variety and irrigation right. We thought that ivy would grow for 100 years.

This place is full of memories of all of the people who worked here. There aren’t many of Clover’s early employees who didn’t work at HSQ. And it’s full of memories of customers who have become friends.

The street outside is a total construction zone. Not sure why Harvard couldn’t have waited until Clover and the other tenants were out. But we’re still open! And we’re still packed in here. Lynn and her team is hitting record numbers.

In 3 weeks we’ll be moving 50 feet up the street. And the new place is awesome. Wait ’til you see what we found. It’s just incredible. But in the meantime, say you goodbyes to CloverHSQ(1).