6 May, 2019: This gentleman was manning the weight station. Trucks are used to transport coffee berries from the mountain to the processing facility. When the trucks arrive they drive up to a full truck scale that is weighted. This weight is used to confirm the amount of berries that are being brought to the processing plant. Read More
6 May, 2019: That’s George Howell’s hand with the seeds of one coffee berry. Coffee typically has 2 seeds in each berry. There is a genetic defect called “peaberry” where a single bean grows instead of 2 seeds. You can notice these in a coffee bag because they look more “round” and don’t have a flat size. Sometimes roasters have… Read More
4 May, 2019: Most of the pictures you see of coffee show a red berry. Or green. Green is unripe. Red is ripe. But occasionally a coffee plant has orange berries. These are also ripe. And they are far less common than the red. They grow side by side. And the berries do seem to taste a bit different (not… Read More
21 September, 2008: OK, this process is getting serious, and it deserves a proper timeline. And here is how the collaboration/ works is going to flow: Joshua and I are going to iterate logo sketches, direction, final Brian will play a creative director role The broader group (Erik, Rick, Dan) will help us with their ideas/ involvement Everyone is welcome… Read More
3 May, 2019: The first day in El Salvador I asked Carlos Batres, the owner of Montecarlos, about his coffee drinking habits. I’m always curious to learn about how people eat and drink. He told me he fills an insulated pot every morning and then takes 2 hours to drink 6 cups. 6 cups!! His wife confirmed. And she said… Read More
2 May, 2019: Chris and I toyed with the idea of bringing a drone to El Salvador. But in the end we opted not to. I didn’t want to attract too much attention. Wasn’t sure it was a good idea. So the closest thing I have to an aerial shot is this picture of a poster Carlos had in his… Read More
1 May, 2019: That picture is an action shot. I just squeezed a coffee bean out of the berry. Coffee is the seed of a berry. Did you know that? It was sort of a revelation for me. That berry is really really sweet. And it has this wonderful exotic flavor. Sort of like a kiwi. I couldn’t stop popping… Read More
29 April, 2019: I snapped this picture when visiting Montecarlos, the coffee farm on a volcano in El Salvador. If you’ve had coffee at Clover in the past few years chances are you tasted Montecarlos. George Howell (roaster) invited Christopher Anderson (head of food at Clover) and me to join him on a trip down there. I’m going to share… Read More
5 August, 2008: I don’t know which if any of these we’ll end up using, but these are my first take at defining Clover’s colors. I spent too much time looking through aisles of stores, looking through magazines, etc. before I realized that the proper place for Clover’s inspiration to come from is nature. And there are some fantastic references… Read More
13 April, 2019: I loved this. A group of advanced ESL students came to Food Dev the other week. They were studying adjectives, and their teacher is a big fan of Clover. Here’s hoping they tasted smokey, sour, infused, herbal, creamy, and savory – but not rubbery or burnt or plain! Read More
12 April, 2019: Back in the truck days there were boats. A boat was for someone who didn’t want the bread with their chickpea fritter. You took a fry boat, swiped it with hummus, and added all the ingredients in a chickpea fritter. Sometimes when we ran out of bread, all items would become boats. Boats became platters when we… Read More
11 April, 2019: Eggplant has not been perfect lately. We’ve seen over-frying, over-and-under salting, and not cutting to the proper thickness. So what does this have to do with improving eggplant at Clover? These are Eggplant measurers! If your eggplant fits in the second-largest slot, it’s been cut to the correct thickness. We have Chris Strange to thank for this… Read More
11 April, 2019: New menus are up! If you’ve been by during the last month, you may have noticed some changes. This is the result of a lot of hard work from Ethan and Joseph, I can’t even admit that I understand all of what they did. But because of their programming work, we were able to put into place some… 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 April, 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