Harnessing Restaurant Technology with AI: A Conversation with Matt Walmpler of Clear Cogs

In this enlightening conversation, Matt Wampler, a former Jimmy John's franchisee and a crucial player at Clear Cogs, talks about the role of modern technology in the restaurant industry. He discusses the power of data-driven decisions and the challenges of integrating AI in restaurant operations. The conversation also reveals how Clear Cogs has been partnering with Point of Sale (POS) companies, including freshly announced partnership with Toast, enhancing the accessibility of AI for all restaurant operators. Emphasizes on the importance of having actionable data and how Clear Cogs utilizes AI in food cost management, labor management, and more. The discussion also sheds light on ClearCogs' commitment to help restaurants improve their operations and become more profitable.

00:00 Introduction and Welcome
00:09 Guest Introduction: Matt from Clear Cogs
00:37 The Journey from Restaurant Operator to Tech Innovator
01:10 Understanding ClearCogs: Solving Restaurant Problems with Tech
01:46 The Power of Data in Restaurant Operations
02:28 The Impact of Food Costs and Waste on Restaurant Operations
08:40 The Role of AI in Restaurant Operations
13:57 The Importance of Trust in Implementing Tech Solutions
16:20 The Future of AI in Restaurant Operations
20:02 The Role of ClearCogs in Labor Management
22:53 The Importance of Data Management in Restaurant Operations
28:36 ClearCogs' Partnership with Toast and Future Plans
36:56 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

0:02

This is the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, helping you run your restaurant better.

Jeremy Julian: 0:11

Welcome back to the restaurant technology. Guys. Thank you. Everyone out there for joining us. As I say each and every time I know you guys got lots of choices. So thank you guys for spending time with us today. We are joined by a repeat guest. Matt and I were just talking pre show August of 2022. he was on the show and we're going to get a little bit of a catch up on who Matt is, but for those that haven't been that long time of listeners, Matt, why don't you introduce yourself to everyone and then we can talk about what the, the branding across your chest is and what Clear Cogs gets a chance to do.

Matt Wampler: 0:41

Jeremy, thanks for having me. The restaurant technology guy himself.

Jeremy Julian: 0:46

yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's that. There's that out there.

Matt Wampler: 0:49

look, yeah, I'm an ex operator. I was a Jimmy John's franchisee for the better part of a decade. Lived within my four walls and one of the pain points that I always had was just trying to figure out how much bread to have up two hours prior to close and how many bins of lettuce to knew you needed to have sliced. And so later on life, I finally got into the technology side of things and we're going about solving those problems. How do we use data? Translated into something actionable that your team can use to save money and run smoother.

Jeremy Julian: 1:21

Yep. Yeah. No. And, I think that's really a great, parlay into what is ClearCogs, because as a former operator and my favorite stories, and I know I was telling you this before, are those people that go and solve a problem that was a problem for them. And clearly that's where ClearCogs is at. So talk to me a little bit about what is ClearCogs, because it's tech. That's solving restaurant problems that everybody has. There's not one restaurant out there that doesn't have the problem that you guys are trying to solve. Some of them have solved it different ways than you guys have. Some of them are using your guys's stuff, but why don't you talk about the brand thesis and what it is that you guys are trying to try to fix within the

Matt Wampler: 1:54

Yeah, so it's actually really simple. There are probably 10, 15, 20 decisions that your team makes each day that really impact the bottom line. What Clear Cogs does is this. We tap into all of your data, your POS transaction data, your back of house software data, along with, weather and offense and all of this. And we distill it down into those answers that you need each day. It's effectively like getting the cheat sheet for your restaurant. So you've got the numbers that. allow you to run more profitably and more smoothly every day.

Jeremy Julian: 2:28

Yeah. and I know Matt, when you and I were talking to you, you alluded to it even in your Jimmy John days. and I know we were teasing about, is it harder to run a tech company or harder to run a restaurant, but those 20 decisions that you've got to make one of the biggest ones. And, it's either the number one or number two costs within your restaurant is food costs and labor costs, food costs, and knowing what to make, knowing what to prep, knowing what to have out there is a critical piece. So talk to me a little bit about. How that traditionally has been done prior to clear cogs, give, give our audience an education for those that aren't aware of it. When you go into brands and you hear how they do that versus where your prep sheets come from now.

Matt Wampler: 3:01

So it's all over the board, right? a lot of restaurants still just guess it's a Monday. I usually prep the same amount every Monday, right? And then, even when we were at Jimmy John's, we took a four week moving average of sales and added 20 percent and then guessed what that looked like as far as, product goes, maybe throw a P mix in there. But, largely it's been up to the individual operations or maybe you've got some tool in your back house software that gives you some guidance, but there really lacked a system for how to, get accurate prep amounts. And I think the thing that, we really honed in on is. Very rarely is it, how much prep do I need for the day? It's usually very specific decisions. I need to smoke my brisket today at three p. m. So that I have it for lunch tomorrow. And it's not just that I need to smoke the brisket. It's that I can't run out before two p. m. But I don't want to have any waste past six p. m. And so We really honed in on how do we find those decision points for your operation? And then how do we find, optimize the output so that you achieve your goal. So we really work in that. You tell us what it is that you want to achieve and what decisions you're making. How do we leverage all of the numbers to get you to that result?

Jeremy Julian: 4:18

Yeah. And I think it's critical, I'd love to, double click, Matt on the idea because there's certain products that take a while baking bread. You don't just go into the back. It's not pico de gallo that you just grab some jalapenos and some onions and some tomatoes and chop it up. And 15 minutes later, you've got prep in bread. You've got to rise the bread in brisket. You've got to not only season it, then you've got to, you've got to trim it, you've got to season it, you've got to smoke it, it might be a 24 hour process to get your brisket from out of the walk in and to the customer's plate. Bread is not a whole lot different. I'm, amateur bread baker here. my, my wife and kids, tease me about it because I love to, to bake bread at the house, but it takes time, it takes time and it's not just a walk into the back and you've got it. So talk to me a little bit about how you guys think about that.

Matt Wampler: 5:01

first off, we're going to have to exchange photos of our bread.

Jeremy Julian: 5:03

Okay, I'll send you the pizza that I made this weekend. I got myself an Ooni, that thing is awesome. Wood fire pizza oven, put it in the back. I got Neapolitan dough and I made some pizzas this weekend. Dude, they were bomb. So I'll send them to you.

Matt Wampler: 5:16

That's next level right there. No, we, and here's the deal. We made it even harder. So one of the core tenants for us is how do we make life easier for our operators? And that means not getting manual inputs. They don't want to say I have this amount and have to log and do it. So we have to do everything through the data. So when you look at, problems like. Okay, I cure this product for two days, and then I braise it for 24 hours, and then it's got a three day shelf life. We have to be able to figure out not only, what is likely still in process, right? But optimize so that you don't run out and you don't have waste. These not being actually complicated operations management problems that we're solving.

Jeremy Julian: 5:59

Yeah, and talk to me a little bit about what traditional waste is and, on average in those types of circumstances because it's big dollars when you're having to throw away bread at Jimmy John's. When you're operating on single digit margins and you're throwing away 20 loaves of bread every night, That's a big deal. I remember in high school, I worked at a pizza place and depending upon who the cooks were, on the shift, they made extra pizzas because they knew they'd be thrown out at the end of the night and that was their dinner amazingly. And so they would, Oh, we need some extra because it was a gas versus, and ultimately somebody ended up getting let go over it because they were making pizzas and eating into the, to the owner's profit.

Matt Wampler: 6:38

Jerry, was that you by a

Jeremy Julian: 6:40

It may have been. It may have been. We're not going to talk about that. It's not on my record anymore. I'm an adult now. I was a teenager then, but actually, no, he accused the entire staff of making extra pizzas at eight o'clock at night when they didn't need to be there because it was a pizza sold by the slice. But I think it's critical for people to understand that they don't think anything of it when they're thrown away a little bit here and a little bit there. But over time, over 360 days in a year, it makes a huge difference.

Matt Wampler: 7:06

Yeah. So look, we live in the world of theoretical food costs and actual food costs. And in that world, that gap ranges from one and a half percent to seven, eight, nine percent to people that don't even have any idea. Our goal at the end of the day is to add percentage points to your bottom line. We look to close that gap by at least 50%. Depends on the different type of operation and where their waste comes from and whether it's portioning, but, typically we're seeing one to 2%, added to the bottom line by just getting these decisions, correct. And it's never one thing it's there's no silver bullet, but it's, how do we get those 20 decisions? Correct. really does add up,

Jeremy Julian: 7:48

Mhm. Yeah. And so on the food cost side, Matt, talk to me a little bit about all of the inputs that go into that, because I don't think people truly understand. You've got your theoretical, you've got your actual, you've got your waste, you've got your yields, you've got your point of sale data, you've got your point of sale data of what transactions happen in the store, what transaction may happen outside of the store. Talk to me a little bit about what that planning looks like and the amount of data points that you guys have to pull in to truly analyze this and make a better decision.

Matt Wampler: 8:15

and it's funny, two years ago, I could speak to exactly how it works, with all of the advancements in AI, like it's just gotten that much more complicated and that much more accurate. And, but I can tell you this, we look at over 100 million data points every day to make these individual decisions for each day. It is things like, your, it's things like how many customers are coming in, what is the time of the day, what are your short term trends, long term trends, what's on the menu, limited time offerings, but then it gets really more complicated. this is where we really sit. Everyone wants to talk about AI. It's a lot of, buzz out there, but keeping up to date with all the advancements in AI is really difficult. And so I say all that to get to like weather, our customers don't know this, but like DeepMind released a better weather forecasting tool that now gets embedded into our system that now makes your at, your weather pattern, forecasting that much better so that you get better, forecast and predictions. All of this is us being able to work with brands as their predictive vendors so that we can keep up to date with all these advancements and they can just worry about serving their customers.

Jeremy Julian: 9:33

Yeah, and I wouldn't be a show unless we talked about A. I. for those that don't understand what a I actually is, and it's just this buzzword that they hear, but they have no clue what that means. Define it for how you and your co founder. Think about AI because I do think it's critical. It's not, it's not robotics. It's not some, creepy deal that, that, that's out there. It's truly the ability to take complex thoughts and systems and calculate them so much faster. So talk to me about how you guys consider AI and where AI fits into your guys's equation.

Matt Wampler: 10:07

first off, we've been doing a I before a I was a I, back when it was machine learning and, It's funny. Now, when people talk about a I, it's almost all large language models. The chat GPT is the world. And I think that's a fair comparison. So what chat GPT is doing is predicting the next word in a sequence that would make sense. what we're doing, as far as predicting prep, or predicting labor, or predicting pricing, all of that, it's just predicting the next number in the pattern. when we're looking at how much, brisket are you using on a 15 minute increment, we're able to just fill in, based on all of these different trends, this number makes the most sense. And this is the likelihood of it being correct.

Jeremy Julian: 10:50

Yeah, and the one thing that my CTO and I talked about is really this idea that the more data you throw at it, the better the logarithm gets, the more data elements, if designed properly, obviously if you don't design them properly, bigger deal, but if you design it that says, every time it's between 30 and 35 degrees out, Fahrenheit, You're going to get this. Anytime it's above four, 50 degrees, you're going to get these types of behaviors. So training the AI is training the machine learning logarithms with those data points can Make suggestions and then you've got to test your hypothesis against that.

Matt Wampler: 11:25

Yeah, so I'm going to push back on that a little bit. All right. Everyone likes to say they're doing machine learning and all of this stuff, and I'm going to give you an example. but we focus a little bit less on more data and a lot more on the right data. just take catering for instance. we were working with a back of house software and a client was, trying to see how much more accurate we were. And they literally had them throwing out 40 pounds of chicken as a result of the forecast from the machine learning back of house software. all it was there was catering in there, they had a big catering order the week before it looked like their quote unquote AI system was just taking a six week moving average of their usage. And all of a sudden, you're wasting a whole lot of that. So we spent a lot more of our time removing things like catering, going through every single day to figure out the likelihood that they had stocked out a product or run it, 86 something so that we can backfill that data, so that you're actually filling in the right thing. and then, yeah, again, more data is better, but it's about getting to the right data and about finding a partner that's willing to take the time to really go through and get it right for your brand.

Jeremy Julian: 12:36

Yeah, no and I Receive that pushback because I think you're right without the right kind of data that's going to be able to create. we talk about it often on the show tech for tech sake is not valuable at all, but tech that truly can drive behavior, drive, efficiencies, drive ways that you go about things, but we've talked. Oh, sorry. Go for it.

Matt Wampler: 12:56

I was just going to say, and one of the complications of adding even more data to it is while you may be accurate five days more accurate, if on that sixth day, it gets some random flag of, let's call it Google traffic patterns that, make some waste 40 pounds of chicken. You lose all credibility with that team and they stopped using it. So it's about providing reliable systems that are usable and dependable.

13:25

Anybody that's ever run a restaurant knows the craziness that happens during a meal period in a rush. One of our partners, Restaurant Technologies, Total Oil Management Solution, is an end to end oil management system that delivers, filters, monitors, and recycles your cooking oil, taking one of the jobs that none of your team wants to do and takes it off your hands, allowing your team members to focus on their guests. Control the kitchen chaos with Uh, restaurant technologies and make your kitchen safer while maximizing your staff's time. The solution can be provided at no upfront costs. If you want to learn more, please check out rti inc. com or call 888 796 4997.

Jeremy Julian: 14:10

Yeah. Matt, you've been in the restaurant business a long time. You've got a lot of old school restaurant people that are going to tell you they're going to understand the systems better than you will. You got that guy that's dude, you don't know my store. My store. I need X, Y, Z. Talk to me a little bit about your guys's strategy on how you guys overcome that, because I think it's a tough thing because you get these guys that say. Dude, I know how many bartenders I need on a Tuesday night. I know how many loaves of bread I need to make. I know how many patties I need to make. or whatever that might be. because we have all run into them. We've run into those 30 year veterans that have been in the same brand and they think they have it figured out because they think that they're going to work just as well as the computer might to do that forecast.

Matt Wampler: 14:48

Jeremy, it's all about trust. it's about building trust with these brands. we've gotten to the point now where when we go work with a brand, before we even go in, we say first off, what is it that you want to achieve? what are those quantifiable results? We've been before we want to put our time and energy in with them, and they want to put their energy in with us. We go in and say we will do two answers. So maybe it's I want to know how much bread to have for the day or how many briskets to smoke today. And for two weeks, we won't operationalize anything. We will just send it to the corporate office and they'll send us what they did. And we compare the results. And once they can see that, wow, this is hundreds of dollars a week in savings. Now, all of a sudden you get buy in and then when we actually go in and develop it with them, we don't just give them, Oh, here's your numbers. It's we start with what is the answer that you want to achieve? and what is the goal you're trying to achieve? And we build it out with them hand in hand so that they have something that when they give to the operators, isn't just something that is, one more thing to do, it's something they want to use and it's something that actually makes their life easier.

Jeremy Julian: 16:00

Yeah. And I, and again, I think especially when people are managed back to food costs and waste costs and those kinds of things, the more you can do to help them get to that number faster and ultimately it affects their bottom line and potentially their bonus and those kinds of things. That's when you truly get the win.

Matt Wampler: 16:16

Look, the huge gap is this. AI, which everyone's talking about, has all this wonderful potential, but there's a huge gap there that needs to be bridged between the potential it brings and really the everyday realities of running a restaurant. And I would say that anybody looking to bring AI into their restaurant, that's the core thing. It all comes down to implementation and working with a partner that is going to take the time and energy to know, not just say, here's your product, go use it, but Understand how you're going to implement it so that you get the results that you ultimately want.

Jeremy Julian: 16:54

yeah, I love that. And part of what, what I told you pre hitting the recording button that I love about you and your team Matt is that you guys genuinely care about helping make the restaurants lives better.

Matt Wampler: 17:03

Yeah, at the end of the day, we're a bunch of restaurant people that care about restaurants that have figured out this AI stuff. We are as far from a shiny AI tech company outside of Osa. Osa is

Jeremy Julian: 17:13

Yeah, he's smarter than all of us. I think that in

Matt Wampler: 17:16

those really smart guys, but like for the most part like That's what we're here for. We're the implementation specialists. We want to work with your brand and, bring this to fruition.

Jeremy Julian: 17:25

yeah, I'm going to pivot here for a second, Matt, and talk a little bit about predictive. So one of the things that, that I know many brands, especially when they've got both long cook times and, or, we worked years ago with a burger brand that it took eight to 12 minutes to cook burgers. And so they would want to drop burgers coming into the lunch rush. Cause they knew that they would attrict customers. Based on not having enough burgers prepared or not having enough fries prepared because the line would get too long or people would be waiting too long. They'd only have 30 or 45 minutes for their lunch rush. Talk to me a little bit about how you guys think of that philosophically, because I think it's important, you talk about these long prep times of bread and brisket, telling me I need to trim and cook six briskets today. Big deal. I was just at a brand yesterday, just yesterday and we're recording this, in early in the year and I was talking to the guy. He goes through 20,000 customers a week at his place. He goes through 230 cows, a week. So he is got five barbecue restaurants in Dallas. some really, he's yeah, we're very successful. He 230 cows a week. So what is that? 460 briskets a week is how many he goes through insane quantities. But he and I talked about a little bit actually about your guys's product just yesterday of how do you know how much to prepare? How do you know? Because his one rule. And his entire brand is never run out of brisket. You can run out of sausage. You can run out of chicken. You can run out of anything else on the rack, but you cannot run out of brisket because we're in Texas and you can't run out of brisket. And at the same time, this other burger brand, they knew in the bottom of a high rise, if they didn't have burgers down, when people were coming in, that they could put them on there. But they were still cooked to order. the internet does it, they stick more patties on than when you order, even though it's cooked to order. Talk to me a little bit about what you guys do to help with that piece, Matt.

Matt Wampler: 19:09

Yeah. again, we fill that gap, but it's really about understanding the numbers that they need, to, and the goals that they want to achieve. So you're a guy that wants to never run out of brisket. I can tell you a lot of the barbecue restaurants we work with. want to run out of brisket every day, right? They want to run out by a certain time. So again, it's about getting the right goals in place. But one of the things we do is we actually provide predictive parts. So par being product amount required. So I can, I don't need to actually tell you, you need to throw on three burgers at this given time that gets really complex. It's confusing, but I can tell the guy at the grill, Hey, at noon, this is how many burgers you need to have on in total. right? Or this is what you need to have built up. And that way he can look at the number a half hour before and just know this is the benchmark of where to get to. And we found that if you can provide those, whether it's half hour, 15 minutes hourly, you almost provide the, I'm thinking of bumper bowling, right? The guardrails so that,

Jeremy Julian: 20:07

sight into where things are going.

Matt Wampler: 20:09

yeah, it's just guidance. So I know I'm heading in the right direction.

Jeremy Julian: 20:13

Yep. Talk to me a little bit about labor. Cause I think labor is something newer that you guys haven't really, hadn't really played with last time you and I talked when we were on the show. I think it was really all about food costs and food waste was where you were at. how have you guys evaluated labor? Cause it's either number one or number two, depending upon what state you're in and whether you got tip credit and anything like that, but food costs and labor costs are your two number one prime costs that you have within the business. Talk to me about how you guys are thinking about labor and predictive labor and all of that, because it's also hard. It's also hard, man.

Matt Wampler: 20:41

I'm really excited about it. we once we started out, we were just purely on the prep side. But, customers have all asked for it. And, more importantly, we basically realized that by building these crystal balls that can tell you your future in a number of different ways. There's so many different ways that you can use this. And labor just happens to be one of them. we take a little bit more of a bespoke approach to solving labor. We're not a sales forecasting company. But instead, I always go back to Jimmy John's because that's my background. However many bags of chips I sell or soft drinks, I don't need labor for that. But I do for making sandwiches. So how do we drive a labor schedule based on how many sandwiches that you're creating or how many deliveries are going out so that I get the optimal amount of drivers? And, more often than not, it's not just solving labor. It's understanding the cost benefit analysis of If I want to get my customer their delivery and under 15 minutes, this is how many I need to staff. But if I want to get it to eight minutes, it's going to cost X dollars more. But, and yeah, it's really getting into the details to understand what it is that you actually want out of those problems.

Jeremy Julian: 21:56

Yeah. and I think it's really cool that you guys have pivoted to labor because it is a critical part of the business. And if you're not providing that crystal ball while the food cost stuff is very valuable, and I think it's awesome. I think in addition to that, it's great that you guys are considering doing those things too.

Matt Wampler: 22:10

We're throwing this, I was Jimmy John's franchisee. When we went to go do pricing, it was like, let's just raise it a quarter or 75 cents. We just made up our pricing and had. No idea whether or not that hurt traffic and like one of the things that, by the nature of being a predictive analytics company is we've forecasted how much you're going to sell over the next 30 days, 60 days, right? So when you go have a limited time offering or a price change, we know what that baseline is. really granularly and can quantify how much it's saving you or what is, what that price increase is doing to your traffic or what that LTO is cannibalizing and other products.

Jeremy Julian: 22:53

Yeah. and again, it comes back to having actionable data. that's not just data for data sake, but it's data to help make better business decisions.

Matt Wampler: 23:00

Yeah, that's what it comes down to at the end of the day, making tech a little bit more digestible

Jeremy Julian: 23:05

Yeah. and you and I talked a little bit about a pre show is and I think we talked about it two years ago when we first got on the podcast, it's this whole idea that. A lot of people have these problems, but they don't think about it from the operator's perspective. So talk to me about how you guys consider that, Matt, because you're a former operator and you're not a technologist. And you're running a tech company or you're help helping run a tech company. So you run it through the mat filter. Would Matt use this as an owner of Jimmy John's before you put it into the field?

Matt Wampler: 23:32

and we don't sell to the tech people or the CFOs. It was like, we want to talk to the operations people. And I know everyone's scared to sell into operations and yeah, they can be scary, but that's where you get the gold. Like I got on the phone with a large enterprise customers, their COO. And it's I've been doing this for 30 years. What is it you think you've got that somebody else isn't doing? and you get to really getting nitty gritty to what is it that you need on the operation side? We want when you when the ops team has a bad day, they should be calling clear cogs to say, how can we make sure this doesn't like we're there to support them as a partner.

Jeremy Julian: 24:11

and I think one of the other things that you and I've talked about is as a franchisor, knowing that your franchisees are going to deliver on your brand promise is also really killer because the food is going to be there because they're going to have the LTO in stock. How, I just. Regrettably, I got suckered into the new Jack in the Box cheeseburger that they released and I went to go and they're sold out everywhere because they don't have enough product to make that cheeseburger and that hurts. I left the drive through. I was like, Oh dude, I saw that commercial. I got to go check out that burger. I was craving a cheeseburger. I was on a really stressful day, decided to go get a Jack in the Box cheeseburger. And then I got there and I was super disappointed because I didn't get the burger that I wanted because they didn't have it in stock. Talk to me a little bit about how. Franchise or how critical that is to your brand promise out into the world.

Matt Wampler: 24:57

let me give you one that's even simpler. When you offer that burger, your customers are going to order that burger in lieu of something else. So a lot of times they just throw in these LTOs and the franchisees have to figure out what's that going to do to all of these other different items that I have. it's Not just understanding from, a franchise or perspective, how many burgers you need to have there, which we can do, but also how much less you need to have of other items down to the ingredient, we need to have less tomatoes today. we need to order less tomatoes and prep less tomatoes. So it's about that trade off.

Jeremy Julian: 25:32

Yep. No, that's huge. Matt, another topic that you and I talked a little bit about is how do you guys get the data? And I know you've got super exciting news that you're going to share with the world with, really big brand that everybody knows about in the restaurant tech space, but. Your partnerships with point of sale companies and partnerships with back offices been a key part of your strategy. So talk to me a little bit of how you guys think about that. And then, you can break it to the rest of the world that didn't see it on social already.

Matt Wampler: 25:55

Yeah. So look, a lot of these POS companies are built on legacy software and are not necessarily as modernized and, I look at a lot of these brands and think they're not going to rip out 50 million worth of P. O. S. Equipment. We offer ourselves a bolt on solution so that we can go pull in all of that data and be able to support those P. O. S. Companies customers with the modern day technology that they need without having to rip out all their hardware. we work with a dozen, two dozen P. O. S. Companies at this point, and it's been a very healthy, successful relationship so far.

Jeremy Julian: 26:35

Yeah. And, as we talked about pre show, the data is so normalized and so easy to get to, and it always works so flawlessly again.

Matt Wampler: 26:44

Not everybody's in North, not everybody's in North Star.

Jeremy Julian: 26:47

Exactly. I'm swagged out with the Northstar gear today because we tried to solve that problem from day one with Northstar, but, and I don't pick on it to pick on some of these legacy systems, but they weren't built with products like ClearCogs in mind and being able to get data in and out of the solution

Matt Wampler: 27:00

we just went to go work with a, enterprise brand with a legacy POS, company. And, one of the two decisions they needed were around just two protein products. when we go pull in the mappings and modifiers and everything from the RAC L softwares, 800 and some different SKUs that were attached to those two items because, you might have something different for online ordering and third party delivery and you changed POS companies twice and you need all of that historic data. And the very unsexy thing that we spend a lot of time doing is data management and data standardization so that we can actually get a holistic view of your operations.

Jeremy Julian: 27:39

and be able to deliver results to people in a good way that you need to.

Matt Wampler: 27:43

It's the little things no one likes to talk about that, is why we can add percentage points to the bottom line.

Jeremy Julian: 27:48

Yeah, and it's funny, I allude to the data side of things as the garbage men in the world, like when they're not here and it's not working, you notice it, but when they're here, it's just great. So when the data is flowing, you're in a good spot, but it takes a lot of work. We're plumbing or electricity, all of those things that we take for granted when it's working. It's great. But when it doesn't, it's really painful.

Matt Wampler: 28:07

Huge shout out to Osa and Rob, who spend a whole lot of their time in that data world. Because it's, it's the un, sexy thing that, they put a lot of time and hard work

Jeremy Julian: 28:16

They absolutely do and, but it shows and at the end of the day, part of why you guys have been so successful over the last couple of years is because of that, because you guys are delivering actionable results and truly driving the behavior. I, like I said, I know that, you and I talked about you making the announcement on the show. I know it'll be out before the show goes out, but, for those that aren't aware, you guys have got some big work that the guys have done and, and integrated with a really big platform. So you want to let everybody know what that is.

Matt Wampler: 28:39

Yeah, we're really excited about this. one of our core philosophies is how do we make AI more accessible to everybody? Not everybody can go have an A. I. Operations demand planning system built custom to their brand. the big guys can. But how do we make it accessible to everybody? And so we partnered with toast and we just launched into the toast marketplace. And one of the things we're doing is we've got a free plan that allows any restaurant to start to see, A. I. In their operations. And, one of the things I'm most excited about is and this is You know, coming right off, Sean, building in public and all of that. This is a journey, right? We are at the very beginning of, this AI era, and we want to take restaurants along with us on that journey. And so we've got a couple ports that are going to come out for free, stock out analysis and 86 reports and, some cool things there. But And I'm very excited about the reports that we're sending out. We're also doing some AI image generation stuff that they get to help not only just, not get data, but get a visual representation of that in their operations. but anyhow, The point being is this, we're in the early innings, and we want to be able to bring the latest and greatest tools from AI to our customers and take them along with us, learn from them what they need. So we invite everybody to go, one click, download your free ClearCogs, bolt on for your toast. So very excited.

Jeremy Julian: 30:13

I love it. I love it. And I know, I know we didn't talk about the AI generation, the image generation. Hopefully you're not going to start generating images of me to post on, on LinkedIn like Justin does,

Matt Wampler: 30:23

no. Yeah, I, yes. And, by the way, this will be out before then, but. I asked Justin, I was on his podcast as well and said, has anybody ever shown up and actually giving you your image in the middle of this? And so his image is getting released right after that.

Jeremy Julian: 30:37

Oh, good. Yeah. No, I tried to call him out the other day. He was on the show. his stuff just released a couple of weeks ago. And, and, I was teasing him. I'm like, dude, why is somebody, I'm not very good with Dolly or, mid journey, which I think is what he uses. But I'm like, dude, somebody needs to go create an image of you. His marketing guy sent me a DM. on LinkedIn saying, the guy that works for him, he's dude, here's his Facebook page. So you can go find the pictures of him with his kids and you can go, image generate him as a cartoon or something.

Matt Wampler: 31:00

think about how cool it is for you to be able to go visualize your restaurant's operation, how much Mac and cheese we sold. the number of briskets you sold was enough to be the size of the pyramids last year. and have a visualization of that. Like it's. It's fun. It's quirky. for all of us that we're living within our four walls and not playing around with these, cool a I image generating tools like it's really cool to see what's actually happening in your operation and the scale it has.

Jeremy Julian: 31:30

Yeah, no. And I think it's incredible. And, a lot of people are fearful of this stuff, but at the end of the day, it has made such a difference in my life and I can't wait for my kids, your kids, I can't imagine what they're going to be like, what you used to type something into a keyboard to find data or looking over your shoulder for those that are on video. You used to look it up in an encyclopedia. What is that?

Matt Wampler: 31:52

and if you're a small restaurant operator like you're not doing this and you need content to get a following and get people in your restaurant. So anything we can do to support them and provide shareable content that can help drive that demand. Yeah, it's the least we can do.

Jeremy Julian: 32:07

I love it. And I know, I know one other thing just on the AI front, you and I talked about you guys being a, integrating chat GPT early on in some of its early days to be able to ask some questions. And I know, cause I saw Osa maybe 48 hours after he made that announcement, he's like, Dude, he asked me if we could do it. I said, yes. and he then announced it to the world, but tell me a little bit about why you decided to go that route,

Matt Wampler: 32:28

Yeah. So look, we, we just trademarked the restaurant co pilot. It's, ultimately that's our vision is how can we be the one stop shop answers to all your questions? How can we not only give you the demand planning tools? and those 15, 20, 30 questions you have each day, but how can we proactively tell you in advance, you're going to run out of this product, shoot you a text message. And these large language models are a huge part of that. I think we're still at the days right now where restaurants are like. Hey, so you know the answers to the 20 questions I need and you can send them to me or I can go get on your chat bot and ask it and then it'll tell me like, why don't you just send them to me? So it's something we're building. It's something I'm really excited about. it's, but I think it, the market doesn't seem quite ready for it yet.

Jeremy Julian: 33:20

but I think they're going to get there, I think they're going to start to trust it. And at the end of the day, once it proves itself out, I can't wait till, I use chat GPT. Every single day. And quite frankly, I use these ideas where I've got an idea where I'm like, okay, if this and this, what happens years ago, I, that would get, that would never get out of my brain and into anything. And now oftentimes I can get it to a place where. I can make a decision and drive some better behavior within our customer base, within our team, whatever that might look like.

Matt Wampler: 33:49

in our alpha testing for the co pilot, it's already answering questions like tomatoes are going up by. 30 cents this week, or, they're going to the case, they're going up by 10 and, it's going to affect the price of all of these different items. You're actually have a negative profit margin on this item. If you want to keep your profit margin in line, you need to raise prices by this many cents on each of the different items, and being proactive and letting you know that I think that it's a little insane how good it is, but you got to know how to wield it and what questions to ask.

Jeremy Julian: 34:19

and I think I was, my last question was really going to be where are things going with that? Matt, do you think that, is it going to be predictive enough that you don't have to ask it? Is it going to be, do we think we're ever going to get the model to a place where it's smart enough to know that you should be asking this question, but you haven't been educated? Or you didn't get the time to do it and tell you these things. Or are you going to need to continue to craft your prompting skills to know what those things look like?

Matt Wampler: 34:43

No, Jeremy, there's two ways that this is, the direction that this is going to go. So the first one on it is it's going to be largely rule based, as far as things you want. So it's going to ask you questions like, oh, you don't want to run out, of this product. Is this the ideal outcome? Great. Would you like me to alert you every day when this product falls below a certain point? And now it's a rule that it's in its, system. And so you're going to actually end up building these rules without even knowing it until it's doing the things that you want it to do. I think I totally forgot what my second point was, but either way, it doesn't matter. There's a bunch of different ways this is going to get implemented. yeah, totally blanking on my last point, which I really liked. But

Jeremy Julian: 35:25

No, you're good. You're good. so Matt, how do people, people that, that didn't hear the show a couple of years ago, people want to learn more about what it is that you guys are doing. How do they get connected? How do they stay connected? How do they get a front row seat? They're not on toast, so they can't go download the free tool, but they may be on a different system. They want to learn more about what it is that you guys do and get to hear the, hear about the exploits of you and your co founder out on the internet.

Matt Wampler: 35:47

if you're on toast, you just go to that marketplace and click that button and you're good to go. If you're on North Star, you go to Jeremy and say, Hey, Jeremy, how am I getting clear cogs into my North Star? And we'll get you all set up. Otherwise, look, we love talking with restaurants. Reach out. We've, follow us on LinkedIn. You go to our website, clearcogs. com. You can book a meeting right there. And we would love nothing more than to talk you through and understand your business. And look, let's just find out if it's a good fit. it's not like a high pressure sales thing. It's Hey, this are our capabilities. Let's talk about your problems and see whether or not we can help solve them.

Jeremy Julian: 36:22

Yep. Yeah, no. And Matt's fantastic about engaging with the audience, too. I would tell you that there's very few people out on the Internet that are willing to help even if you're not exchanging anything else other than he's trying to help you. So he truly wants to see restaurants succeed and ultimately he'd love for you to buy clear cogs from him. But even if he can't and he can just help you. get 1 percent better tomorrow. I know him, since he founded the company, I know that he's going to be one of those guys that's going to do that.

Matt Wampler: 36:46

Yeah. let me say, oh, so would like me to be selling clear cards more than just having wonderful conversations with restaurant operators. I actually prefer just to have the wonderful conversations with the restaurant operators, but

Jeremy Julian: 36:57

and quite frankly, I'm, I've been selfish enough to be on the front row to watch you guys, watch you guys kill it over the last couple of years. So Matt, you're one of those genuine people in the restaurant industry. I'm glad to have you on to our audience guys. We know that you guys have got lots of choices, so thank you guys for spending time with us. If you haven't already subscribed to the newsletter, please do Matt, thank you for your time and to our audience, make it a great day.

Matt Wampler: 37:16

Jeremy, thank you for your time. And thanks for having me.

37:21

Thanks for listening to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Visit www. RestaurantTechnologyGuys. com for tips, industry insights, and more to help you run your restaurant better.