7 February, 2017: Our breakfast sandwich features a 6.5 minute egg. We boil it, shock it in an ice bath, then hold it warm. We serve something like 12,000 of them each year. We make eggs in very small batches. A while ago, Ayr brought up the idea of using a circulator to keep the temperature of the warm bath consistent.… Read More
27 January, 2017: Don’t worry, the classic breakfast sandwich isn’t going anywhere. But now it has some new friends. 3 seasonal breakfast sandwiches have hit the menu the past few months. Peppers and Queso Fresco in September. Delicata Squash and Smoked Cheddar in October. These are sunchokes. Winter is their season. A customer told me sunchokes grow wild in his backyard this… Read More
27 January, 2017: These guys signal the beginning of what might be the best item to come out of Clover in 2017. If you haven’t had Mezze before, it’s a way of eating that exists all over the Middle East. Creamy dips, chunky spreads, preserved vegetables, cooked vegetables, pickled things, raw salads, and pita bread. It’s often eaten while drinking alcohol,… Read More
22 April, 2010: I’ve been sneaking a few Truck #2 posts in here lately. Soon that truck will have its own Blog. For now they will show up here. I met this week with the folks over at the City of Boston business development office. They are doing a ton to help us with the new truck. Not least of… Read More
19 January, 2017: I am at CloverLMA right now, and we’re trying the Hungarian Beet Sandwich. Alshane just tried it and said, “If you don’t like beets, this sandwich is for you.” Michael Docter, the best beet farmer in MA, will be joining us at CloverLMA today at lunch. If you think you don’t like beets, come down to 360… Read More
19 January, 2017: Lucia here. If you were handed a Survey card in line today at Clover, click here to take the survey. Thanks again for taking the time to help us build a better Clover. (Note, you need to click on the post in order to click the link.) Read More
13 January, 2017: I keep wondering how can we do this better? Our coffee is really beautiful. We’re so careful with it. And it’s helped us develop a reputation in the City of Boston. I taste coffee everywhere I go and our cup is really head-to-head with anything anywhere, which is something we’re really proud of. A lot of this… Read More
11 January, 2017: We do employee surveys periodically, but this was different. The other day I was sitting at CloverLMA scribbling away plans for 2017. And as I was writing ideas of how we can make Clover a better place to work I looked around and thought: I should just talk to some of the folks working here and see… Read More
29 July, 2010: Alright everybody, it’s working. We’ve launched an entirely new approach to ice coffee. Expect to wait 60-90 seconds. Expect a better cup. That’s right. We think this is tasting straight-up better than the cold brew method. And we’re very happy to announce that caffeine levels are closer to where they should be. I did some quick estimates… Read More
9 January, 2017: We haven’t done a great job in the past making it clear to Clover employees what jobs are available and when. We promote tons of people internally. We’d always prefer to bring an existing employee into a new role rather than hire externally. But I don’t think that’s always clear to folks. It’s something we just aren’t… Read More
9 January, 2017: That’s Chris tasting daikon radish straight from the field at Michael Docter’s farm in Hadley, MA. It was a really really good crop, better than Michael had expected. And this created a big problem. This November, there were 10,000 pounds of beautiful spicy sweet daikon lying under the soil. But there are not a lot of restaurants in Boston that would know… Read More
4 January, 2017: I have this growing feeling that Clover is about to transform. I’m not sure when I started feeling this, it might have been a background sense a couple of months ago. I did a bunch of customer research for Order Ahead Beta end of November/ early December, and that probably had a huge impact. It’s no longer a… Read More
23 December, 2016: Our goal next year is to teach 1000 customers to cook at home. We’re teaching all the skills we know. Soups, sodas, pickles, hot sauce, and the foundation of everything: knife skills. Classes are happening weeknights, they’ve gone down in price, they’re at a Clover near you. When you cook even 1 meal a week at home, you have the power to… Read More
16 November, 2008: We’re still working on the logo. At this point I’m just really eager to order some cups for the coffee, and can’t get that done until this is figured out. Good news is that I think I’m getting a clear sense of where it needs to end up. Now I just need to find someone to help… Read More
5 December, 2016: A beautiful soup can be transcendent. Inhale. Taste. Rolando was our chef when we first started. He learned soup when working at the French Laundry with Thomas Keller. He taught me the joys of a beautiful soup. Our soups are made in-house daily, even the soup stocks. We never freeze anything. This makes us entirely unique in… Read More