In this presentation delivered in Kobe, Matt Wampler, CEO and co‑founder of ClearCogs, outlines the severe profitability challenges facing Japanese restaurants—average margins of only 4% and billions of dollars of lost revenue due to sub‑optimal daily decisions. He explains how ClearCogs tackles this problem with an AI‑driven decision engine that ingests POS data, menus, weather, and local events—processing roughly 100 million data points daily—to generate simple, actionable recommendations such as how many bagels to bake or what inventory to order. Wampler shares impact metrics from existing clients: over 50% reduction in food waste, significant cuts in unnecessary labor, and an average increase of more than 2 percentage points to the bottom line. He notes that ClearCogs already serves over 100 brands across five countries, ranging from regional chains to multi‑billion‑dollar public companies, and expresses a strong intent to expand the service into Japan. The talk combines personal experience as a former restaurant operator with data‑driven evidence to make a persuasive case for adopting AI‑powered operational tools in the Japanese food‑service sector.
Chapters
Konnichiwa. My name is Matt Wampler. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Clear Cox. So I'm assuming, I'm guessing out there that everyone here likes restaurants. I know that in my time in Kobe, I've enjoyed many of the restaurants that you have. Restaurants are one of those magical places, one of those places where we get together with friends, family, create memories, experiences. It's where we share our culture with others. But look, let's look at how restaurants run. Running a restaurant is incredibly difficult. It requires starting early. It requires planning, preparation. It requires motivating the staff and, you know, serving our customers. And for restaurant workers, that's incredibly difficult. Because, look, Restaurant operators make mistakes. They get behind. They get caught off guard. Managing a restaurant is managing chaos. That's me. I spent a long time as an owner-operator of restaurants. I can tell you firsthand, running a restaurant is not the easiest thing to do in the world. One of the hardest parts about running a restaurant is that there are low profit margins. The average restaurant, for every ¥100 they bring in, they're only retaining ¥4 of it. But it doesn't need to be that way. There is so much unrealized profitability in restaurants that restaurant operators are not getting today. And it comes down to getting lots of little decisions correct that add up to be a big problem. In the United States, It's these little decisions that add up to something like $160 billion US that is lost each year because restaurants are not making these decisions correctly. And so that's why I started ClearCogs. How do we provide those answers? And it's simple answers. It's answers to questions like, how many bagels do I need to bake this morning? Do I need to grill any more chicken? What do I need to order tomorrow? Simple answers allowing restaurants to make better decisions. So that's all nice, but how's it actually work? So what we do at ClearCogs is we tap into your POS system, your POS. We take in your menu, your limited-time offerings, weather, events. Our system looks at something like 100 million data points every day just to make one of those decisions. We suck all of this information up into the cloud where we use AI and machine learning to distill all of that information down into those simple answers. A simple morning briefing that allows restaurants to know what they need to do each day so that they operate more efficiently, more profitably, and with less food waste. And when you really look at the results, the restaurants we work with reduce the amount of food they waste by over 50% on average. Not only that, but they're reducing the amount of labor that's wasted, unnecessary labor, in a market where many times there are not enough employees for them. And at the end of the day, the average restaurant we work with is adding over 2 percentage points to the bottom line. And in a small, very price-sensitive industry like restaurants, that 2% is the difference between staying in business and thriving or going out of business. We're simple answers allowing restaurants to make better decisions. Today we're in over 100 countries— or I'm sorry, today we're in over 100 brands across 5 countries. Representing brands from small regional chains to multi-billion-dollar publicly traded companies. We look forward to expanding into Japan and hopefully getting the privilege and honor to work with some of you. Arigato gozaimasu.
