23 January, 2020: I wanted to get a picture up of the Quick Lunch from P&E (pictured). Lucia beat me to announcing the Quick Lunch because she’s so… quick! If you haven’t noticed, this is at Clover KND (Kendall Square) as of yesterday. In testing. A bowl of Hearty Vegetable Stew, a salad featuring locally grown greens, a piece of… Read More
21 January, 2020: We’ve been trying to think of ways for you all to eat more soup. Paul and Elizabeth’s is a family restaurant in Northampton that Ayr loves. They do something called a Quick Lunch – for $9.50 you get a salad, a soup, a dinner roll, and a tea! The “quick” part isn’t a lie – all the… Read More
20 January, 2020: You may have noticed that our new hats have the Clover logo, but made in Velcro so that we can stick patches to them. We made a special patch for the new crew at CloverBBY. Nobody else at Clover got one. It’s the least we can do for putting them in a brand new space with all… Read More
10 February, 2012: We load our trucks every morning. My first day in 2008, I met Ayr at 5am at Nuestra in JP to train on opening the truck. We rolled a green cage packed with prepped food to the loading dock, loaded individual food items by hand, and drove off. The second phase was this crazy picture. We would… Read More
17 January, 2020: We sent out a few salads we were not proud of over the holidays. If you got a salad from the retail fridge that was missing dressing or had greens that were a little on the dry side, please reach out (you can write to us at info@cloverfoodlab.com) and we’ll make you whole again. We’re about 6… Read More
15 January, 2020: In 2015 Paul and Bryan started talking about inventing a jalapeño popper sandwich. We were all skeptical. At that time Bryan was running CloverKND and Paul had been my intern and was running our Whole Foods account. They both grew up on the South Shore, going to a tavern in West Bridgewater called The Charlie Horse where… Read More
14 January, 2020: We did a Pay What You Want Day for our opening of CloverBBY. We ended up raising $3500 for the Stone Barns Young Farmers Initiative. When 11am hit and the line started to do this, it was all hands on deck. Will works on our accounting team. He’s usually face to face with Excel spreadsheets. That day… Read More
13 January, 2020: A customer wrote this review on Yelp the other week. Rob, who manages our Burlington location, passed it along. Wow. Wondering how we can encourage more of this type of experience… I thought the Chickpea Fritter sandwich was the best thing ever. I just had the Pushpir. Wow! I think it’s the tamarind sauce that puts it… Read More
9 January, 2013: We’ve been working hard over the past month or so assessing our organizational structure. The topic of organizational structure may seem a bit abstract to you. It did to me when I first heard about it in business school. And there aren’t too many metrics you can throw at it that stick. But for many companies, especially… Read More
12 January, 2020: It’s winter and we have Sunchokes back on the menu at breakfast and lunch (although the lunch sandwich is going away on Tuesday to make room for the Bridgewater.) Sunchokes have this strange draw. You hear one of our staff members describing it and then you just find yourself ordering it. Maybe it’s something to do with… Read More
9 January, 2020: Food Dev is an internal meeting. People huddle around a prep table with all sorts of hustle and bustle around us. We invite the public. We do this every Tuesday at 3pm, and we taste new ideas. In 2019 we tore up the menu in a few big ways. Some of them were intentional and planned. Some… Read More
27 December, 2019: A certain Area Manager said that, with excitement and joy, when I set these menus out. We have never made printed menus because our menu changes so much, sometimes by the minute, to stay in line with what’s coming out of farms. But it’s definitely been a source of frustration for customers and staff. With so many… Read More
26 December, 2019: When we took over the space occupied by Minigrow, we noticed the top third of the glass was totally blacked out. It had a Pac-Man on it with the words MEAL COMPLETE as you exit. You know we’d never let something cover up glass if we could help it, even a sweet little Pac-Man. So we decided… Read More
29 August, 2008: See that big toe? Last night I dropped the LP gas tank on it. I think it might be broken. Anyway, it kept me from surfing this morning. I guess this is why people wear steel toed boots. I was actually looking at some the other week but couldn’t find any not in leather, so didn’t buy.… Read More
10 December, 2019: We did it. We opened Clover Boylston. There was a line out the door for all of lunch. A really sweet group of (hundreds) of customers. We need to do the final count, but it seems we raised well over 3.5k for Stone Barns Growing Farmers Initiative. Now the real adventure begins. We’ll be popping popovers and… Read More