It’s difficult to fathom just how much of an emotional roller coaster the past few weeks have been for Julia Wrin Piper.
The CEO of Clover Food Lab spent weeks trying to find a buyer to keep it from closing. It couldn’t find one, and last week told customers that its remaining 11 locations would close.
The last days were immensely busy, with four times the typical number of customers for a lunch rush. And then the restaurants closed and everybody went home.
Then Clover found an investor.
“Well, it’s been an incredibly emotional and taxing couple of weeks, as you can imagine,” she said in an interview. “I think our restaurant staff has done an amazing job serving people through this and keeping a wonderful backbone for the company.”
Now the tough part begins: Reopening the locations. Clover plans to open locations in Cambridge and Boston in time for lunch next Tuesday.
And the challenges that led to the closure remain. Clover Food Lab serves a variety of sandwiches and other items featuring plant-based food. One of its key selling points was its relationship with farmers throughout New England, which supplied many of its ingredients.
The company gained a following for its menu and its mission, and among its investors before the pandemic was former Panera Bread CEO Ron Shaich. Wrin Piper herself became a fan of the concept when it had just one location and she was a PhD student at Harvard University.
Yet the chain struggled coming out of the pandemic. The brand ended up in bankruptcy in 2023, which is when Wrin Piper arrived. Clover had plans to expand, but restaurant operations these days are difficult. The company’s ingredient costs rose 30% to 50% over the past two years. It also had some locations with burdensome leases.
On top of that, economic anxiety has created sales and traffic challenges for a number of restaurant companies and gas prices remain high. None of that has changed over the past two weeks.
“Everyone understands the inflationary pressures that existed last week, the last month, are the same today and likely will remain the same for a while,” Wrin Piper said.
But she said the company will be able to reduce its operating footprint and focus on a “very small set of stores in a tightly bound geographic area” around Boston and Cambridge. The company is also winding down a central commissary that the chain had operated since it was largely a food truck concept. The commissary is too expensive for the company to operate.
Wrin Piper also said that the restaurants themselves were profitable. Sales grew 8% last year, for instance. And the restaurants generated “double digit EBITDA,” or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
“Right now, we’re seeing where the market is, and we’re responding, as many restaurants have to do, to inflationary pressures, focusing on our core loyal audience, and really double down on our most profitable locations,” Wrin Piper said.
Still, the past couple of weeks were tough on Wrin Piper and the chain’s staff. The company was looking for a buyer and then had to serve a massive influx of customers even as it wound down operations.
And then the company found an investor and had to go through the process of bringing people back and reopening.
“It was very emotionally and physically taxing on our restaurant staff,” Wrin Piper said. “You cannot find a more dedicated, mission-driven group of people. It’s really hard to show up every day to do a job in a restaurant. It’s exponentially more difficult when you are grappling with the ending of your job and working with people who love working at a brand you believe in.
“The entire team stuck with us the entire time, and we’re so, so grateful for that. And we’re really excited to get in a position to be able to retain a lot of these jobs and reopen in a sustainable way.”
But if anything, the amount of business that Clover did last week when customers thought the brand was closing confirmed that the chain has a loyal following. That support mattered as investors looked at the brand.
“Clover is an incredibly special and unique brand,” Wrin Piper said. “it stands for a better food future for people, and it’s always sourced from Day One really flavorful, unique, special ingredients from New England. Brands don’t do that.”
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