22 July, 2014: It’s heading to the grave of good ideas that just don’t scale up. I made this amazing salad with ingredients from the Union Square Farmers Market. I wanted to build the salad around Fiore di Nonno string cheese. They make this unbelievable braided string cheese studded with nigella. It’s nothing like the string cheese from the supermarket. I cut… Read More
11 July, 2014: Yesterday we had the 3rd great bread disaster of Clover’s history. Our baker sent us bread that was undercooked and we didn’t catch it early enough. The bread was doughy on the inside and flat, not fluffy as our bread should be. Chris sent a note to all managers, we sifted through the bread pulling the stuff that… Read More
6 June, 2014: Maybe not that big a mistake in the grand scheme of things, but this one had us running around these past 24 hours. We have a big event with Pretty Things tonight. It’s going to be amazing. We’re selling 4 of their beers, 2 at Kendall, 2 at HUB. Even installed a new tap at the HUB… Read More
29 April, 2014: Yesterday I joined Julian and James to launch the newest addition to the Clover fleet at the Arsenal Mall. We’re going to call this one CloverWTR (Twitter, etc.). These were our first customers. And by the smiles on their faces you’d have no idea I made them wait around for 20 minutes before they could order. We… Read More
26 April, 2014: We had an event at Clover HSQ the other night with the Harvard Innovation Lab and the Silk Road Ensemble. Yo-Yo Ma was there, which was really exciting for all of us who love his music. And they were filming a documentary about the work he does with Silk Road. Azeb is an order taker at Harvard… Read More
17 March, 2014: Everything was in place for our grand opening of CloverAWF. The permits were in place. The food was packed. There was even a line forming in the Vecna parking lot. And then our fryer started producing a fireball. We’ve got our best technicians working on this problem so that the truck is ready to make food for… Read More
10 February, 2014: I’ve done a terrible job posting almost this entire year. We’re super lucky we have Lucia, because I just haven’t been sharing our stories. Sorry. This isn’t the first time in Clover’s history this has happened. We like to think of this website as a complete record of our adventure. The truth is there are swaths… Read More
22 February, 2013: That almost looks real, doesn’t it? Not yet, right now it’s just a scale model we’re using to explore ideas. My architects and I have this plan for wood paneling and ceiling at the Burlington restaurant. The restaurant is really long. And most operators would just draw a line at the 2/3rd park, that’s 1/2 to 2/3rds… Read More
4 September, 2012: I’m thinking every day about what kinds of things we need to be doing to make sure we’re thriving 6 months, 18 months, 2 years from now. One of the biggest puzzles I’m facing right now is cleaning and maintenance. We just don’t have a good way to scale this. Currently it’s me (check the recent post… Read More
23 July, 2012: That’s an iPad perched atop a stack of cookbooks and a speaker. We’re working steadily to develop robust training materials. A few weeks ago you saw the training videos. Today I’m posting our Trainers Guide. Think of this as the Teacher’s Edition of those text books at school, you know, the one with all the answers. But… Read More
31 May, 2012: When I first handed a wrench to Enzo (MIT) you would have thought it was a slug, or something gross. He didn’t even want to hold it in his hand. Vincenzo was a chef at the Four Seasons before Clover, and fixing things, using tools, all of that, just wasn’t how he thought of himself. He came… Read More
7 February, 2012: I’ve been working here at Clover for a little over a year now, and I’ve definitely made my fair share of mistakes. There’s even already a blog post about how I thought the oven was broken because I left the big, red “roast and hold” button on. I’m sure most of you who drive cars have locked their… Read More