7 February, 2012: In January I gave managers a challenge: write one post on the website. This had been really hard for some in the past, and the result was that nobody was hearing from the folks who are making it happen every day at Clover. So I told them to do something simple: take a picture from their first… Read More
25 January, 2012: New edition of the employee handbook. We fixed some mistakes you all pointed out. Some of you have very sharp eyes, thanks! We also made a pretty major change to the way we’re compensating managers. I’m really excited about the change, it brings us closer to the ideal of having managers feeling that they are “running their… Read More
4 November, 2011: We bake whoopie pies on Friday nights at the Harvard Square restaurant. Did you know whoopie pies are a New England thing? Some say Maine, some say Pennsylvania. Apparently there’s a battle over who claims whoopie pies, Senators are involved, inflammatory newspaper articles, etc. Customers from Maine or PA are welcome to weigh in. Our whoopie pies… Read More
26 October, 2011: I’m siting at our new counter at the HUB on our new seats waiting for a crane. The counter is not screwed in yet, neither is the seat, but it’s so close I can start to pretend we’re open. That big red box in the picture, sorry, BOXES, you might look at those and wonder what they… Read More
2 August, 2011: We’ve been doing some more truck building. I realized I’ve never written about the speakers before. We use marine speakers. They are waterproof, white : ) and not too expensive. But most importantly they are waterproof. When I was first working on truck design I asked Dariusz from Q Audio what I should do to make sound… Read More
17 April, 2011: The other day we had the largest Clover disaster since I had an accident. Well, there was that time Enzo confused gasoline for diesel. Anyway, this one ranks up there, and in some ways is more painful because it’s pure waste and entirely our fault. We made some mistakes in how the bread was managed. The result:… Read More
1 March, 2011: I’ve been working really hard to get the second menu screen up. The first has been working much better than we expected: Customers don’t seem to look at it as a TV – some even asked “how to you write on there” thinking it was a back-lit board The serve times next to the items are SUPER… Read More
12 January, 2011: The snow is giving us some time to work on the website. When you write a post, but don’t assign it to a category like operations, team, or menu, WordPress posts it as “uncategorized.” There were something like 145 uncategorized posts, most of them from Sept-December 2008, right when Clover first opened. I’m going through and assigning… Read More
4 May, 2010: Hi folks. We’re doing our best to keep up these days. Coming out of April we’re leaving behind our busiest month ever. You already know we’re having trouble keeping food stocked. And it’s become common to be standing in a line at breakfast, something that was unheard of in the past. It’s exciting, and energizing, and exhausting,… Read More
23 April, 2010: I expect you will all forget this quickly, we will not. Yesterday I ran the “eastern” sandwich station as we call it (middle-eastern). And I was faced with a really tough decision. Generally we will not serve food we aren’t proud of. In front of me I had the worst excuse for hummus I’d ever seen. And… Read More
6 April, 2010: So we bought an iPad, surprised? I have big plans for the iPad on the truck. We keep all of our recipes, staffing schedules, inventory, etc. online. I thought the iPad would be the perfect way to access that stuff, if we could keep it on. 5 minutes into it’s first lunch shift the iPad shut down… Read More
20 March, 2010: Every so often, someone asks us what is in the oatmeal breakfast sandwich. Guesses have included bread made of oatmeal cookies. It’s our fault – on the whiteboard it looks like oatmeal and breakfast sandwich are one item instead of two. No, we don’t have an oatmeal breakfast sandwich. Yes, we need to fix the board to… Read More