22 August, 2019: (This survey is now closed – we hold these surveys about once a month, so if you’re lucky you’ll come to Clover during a future survey day!) If you received a survey card in line today, please click on this post to get to the survey link. A huge thanks for helping us improve!! Click here for… Read More
21 August, 2019: We made our first-ever Clover patch! Our new “tactical hats,” made by Brewery Branding, have the Clover logo on them, but in velcro. Our new patches, made by Fully Promoted, have my watermelon artwork on them. Our staff will be wearing them to celebrate the melon microseason, which can be anywhere from early August to late September… Read More
15 August, 2019: Yesterday I was sitting in Acton with George Howell at his roasting facility. I told him about my new idea: ALT-MILK BAR. Clover will get a bunch of milk-drinks: chai, hot chocolate, pourover lattes, shaken iced lattes. All estate coffee (of course). And all non-dairy milk (we’ve been making our own in-house and it’s killer but we… Read More
15 October, 2008: Rolando had this idea: we should have fresh stocks steaming away at the restaurant. I wasn’t sure. First, I wasn’t sold on the whole soup idea. I was still wed to the “fresh” qualities of my “non-lettuce” salads (still need a better name). But I’ve been wondering how on earth we will sell salads in the winter.… Read More
15 August, 2019: Ayr created a bit of a commotion when he posted about corn not being in season in June. Here is a friendly reminder that corn is now in season in MA, about 2 months later. We’re getting all our corn from Steve Verrill in Concord, MA (thanks to them for this pic). We love buying local corn… Read More
14 August, 2019: You might not know this, but we have an Instagram with a hard-fought 12.7k followers. Not hundreds of thousands like our national competitors. We were kind of late to the game on Instagram. But we’ve also never bought followers. *cough, cough.* We try to tell stories, share mistakes. We post killer Food Dev stories Tuesdays at 3pm. But the… Read More
14 August, 2019: I think we are going to kill the sealed drinks idea. As you know we make all our own drinks in house. 100 percent of them. As more customers have been taking their food to-go, we started experimenting with bottling them and keeping them in fridges. A year ago, we got pretty disturbed by the amount of… Read More
9 August, 2019: Have you sneaked a peek? We’re opening a new restaurant at 565 Boylston in the Back Bay. Ever since we opened the second-ever Clover food truck in Dewey Square, and needed to distinguish it from the first food truck at MIT, we’ve added 3 letters to the word Clover. Usually these were based on the T-stop near… Read More
22 October, 2009: We’ve talked about it before, but it took Jeremiah’s initiative to make it happen. We create a lot of citrus waste when we make our orange juice and lemon juice every day. So instead of throwing it away (or composting it) we’re making it into marmalade. Enjoy some with your next pop-over or muffin. Read More
9 August, 2019: We’ve turned on tipping. The bottom line: our staff are taking home a lot more money each week. That’s great. And it’s why we’re taking tips now. I’d held off on this for a long time. There is so much about tipping that is nasty. But I think technology has allowed us to avoid most of the… Read More
6 August, 2019: I’m really excited to announce that we’re opening our next restaurant at 565 Boylston St., directly across from Copley Square. I’ve wanted to be in the Back Bay for a long long time. We were counting the other day and I think we have more than 1,200 requests from Back Bay folks over the years. Forgive us… Read More
31 July, 2019: I just got back from a 3 week road trip with my family. I promised more than once to send pictures along the way but I didn’t. I’m not sure why. I think I was just enjoying being off grid. Just wanted to keep those experiences to myself at the moment. Now I’m back in Boston. Man… Read More
20 July, 2019: It was 2:30pm on a Monday. I was sitting on a boat next to Stacia and Jasper. We were all putting on sunscreen. I had a frisbee in my bag, not a laptop. I was NOT in a Clover restaurant. None of us (us = most of our general managers, kitchen managers, and corporate staff) were in… Read More
3 October, 2008: Thought I might prototype the joint. This took me about 10 minutes over at MIT. John, Jinhee and I were expecting Phil to take this on, he’d told us such. But after 3 weeks of waiting I decided to do it myself. Functional, I’m not totally happy with the lateral strength, but it works, is fast, and… Read More
11 July, 2019: We’re testing drinks sealed in the style of boba tea. Credit for this idea comes from Xian Famous Foods in NYC, who make and seal their drinks this way. We’ve always thought it looked really slick. Earlier this year, we found we were wasting tons of plastic using bottles. Chris hunted down a sealer and some post-consumer-recycled… Read More