A dream, a bankruptcy, and a fateful email: Inside the collapse of Clover

Ayr Muir founded Clover with one food truck near MIT and spent 15 years turning it into one of Greater Boston’s best-known fast-casual chains. On Tuesday, after two years watching from afar, Muir said he found out the entire chain would close through an email sent to board members.

“I’m devastated,” said Muir, whose only remaining connection to the company is being a minority shareholder and board member.

To Muir, the email represented the end of an experiment he began in 2008 with the single food truck and a dream to disrupt Boston’s food scene by serving millions of sustainable, vegetarian meals as efficiently as a burger joint.