21 November, 2016: I don’t remember when I first took a new manager to NYC for a tour. Like many things at Clover it’s likely it was pretty organic. Rolando, then Chris. I definitely remember the time I first took Enzo. He was food drunk at the end of the trip and literally fell off a stool. But this is one… Read More
16 November, 2016: If we handed you a survey card today at Clover, click here to take the survey. A big thank-you in advance for helping us improve! Read More
14 November, 2016: I’ve been doing some photo work this past weekend. It’s a ton of fun. I’m working to prepare some presentations that need vivid imagery. And at one point I did all or at least most of the documentation for Clover. But as we’ve grown I have less and less of a hand in that. So it’s been… Read More
4 December, 2008: If you came by the truck today you might have seen my little warning. We’re in a transitional week. Starting next week we have some full time folks coming on. In the meantime I found myself today alone on the truck. So I reduced the menu to 2 sandwiches instead of 4. And Tom (my father in… Read More
11 November, 2016: Wow. What a week. One of my employees lost her brother this past weekend. Shot and killed. There’s not really anything I can do to help. It’s a horrible helpless feeling. I’m so sorry. I had a board meeting Wednesday morning. Yes. 7am Wednesday morning. … Arvia (Clover Guide at CloverFIN) told me Wednesday that multiple customers had cried… Read More
30 October, 2016: This was the headline for a note Martina sent out following our most recent food dev. I laughed out loud. It’s sort of poking fun at me. On my notes for food dev I was a little brief on my feedback for 2 of the items. On one (a hot malt beverage Chris came up with) I wrote… Read More
29 October, 2016: Lucia here. I celebrated Clover’s first birthday back in 2009. And the other month, Rob, who runs Clover Westford, reminded me that Clover turns 8 this year. I thought it would be fun to do a scavenger hunt. So here you are, the Clover 8th birthday scavenger hunt. As you can see from the tweet above, some… Read More
28 October, 2016: Lucia just had her 30th birthday the other day. I took this picture and remembered when Lucia had her 24th birthday at Clover. The folks at Down Home Delivery, a small delivery food business that was sharing space with us at Nuestra (aka Crop Circle Kitchen aka Commonwealth Kitchen), bought her a present and a cake. These… 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
28 October, 2016: If you’ve been at the restaurants recently you may have noticed we’ve introduced a new icon on the menu screens. We used to use a “delta” to show items that had been added to the menu recently. But I think nobody understands that. Ethan suggested the other day that we update the way we talk about new… Read More
21 October, 2016: I took this picture of the whiteboard in my office. We were talking about language at our weekly staff meeting. We have 290 employees. And we’re understaffed. When we fix our staffing issues that’s 340 people making Clover a daily reality. Next year this time it’s likely to be over 700. We’re building community. But not just with… Read More
20 October, 2016: As I’ve been building Clover I think about the capabilities we’re building as a business. I think of our company as a complex organism. I imagine myself an observer: what is this organism capable of? We’ve been working really hard on building the ability to respond really rapidly to bumper crops. The idea is simple: when farmers… Read More
18 October, 2016: This post is about something a bit humbling. Clover’s support staff (Finance, HR, Training, Communications, etc.) consists of about a dozen people. Most of whom report directly to me. These are people who in very real ways are dedicating their lives to helping make Clover what it is. I don’t think there is a single member of… Read More
20 October, 2008: Rolando is awesome. We’ve been working with falafel recipes. And while nothing we’re making is particularly traditional (neither of us is bound to the middle eastern tradition), the results are just absolutely delicious. Rolando has pulled together something that is light and crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside. It’s totally gluten free and has no baking soda. Just… Read More
12 October, 2016: I’m preparing some documents for investors and I’ve taken a crack at breaking down our sales mix. This is roughly where it has been for a while, but I’m not sure I’ve shared on the website and I thought you all might be interested. About 93% of our menu items exist on our menu for a limited… Read More