Matt Wampler built ClearCogs after buying a struggling Jimmy John's near the University of Maryland. The AI platform ingests restaurant data and external signals like weather to forecast daily needs, bagel bake counts, and staffing. A pilot with Goop Kitchens added 2 percentage points to the bottom line overnight.
Awesome, thank you. All right, take it away. Why in the hell did any of us choose to get into the restaurant industry? Look, for some of us, it's the food. For others, you know, it's the thrill of managing the dinner rush. Others, it's a shot at the American dream. For me, I just got lucky. I remember how excited I was when I got the opportunity to own a Jimmy John's. Some guy had run his into the ground and needed to get out from the personal guarantees. I felt like I'd won the lottery. That is, right up until the point I actually got there. I remember walking in, and first thing, you just get hit with the smell of the grease trap. I mean, this place, literally, the air conditioning had been out for a month. It was so hot in the kitchen, they literally had to put ice buckets on top of the compressors to keep the cold tables from overheating. It was a total disaster. But look, like any operator will tell you, you slowly start to get the hang of it. Day by day I did. And eventually, you know, I got a feel for it. I got dialed in. That was my restaurant right there, the first one. It was right there on the University of Maryland's campus, right there on Baltimore Avenue. Every time I talk about getting dialed in, it always takes me back there. I remember homecoming 2012. For whatever reason, we had NC State in town. and we just got crushed. I mean, line out the door for 8 hours straight. But on that day, on that day, we got everything right. We had the right staff, we had the right food, we had the right prep, and we nailed it. But look, as we got more and more days right, all of a sudden the store started to turn around. And we, you know, in the first 18 months, taking it from doing 400,000 to like 1.2 million. But as good as we were, as dialed in as we were, we still got more days wrong than we got right. And, you know, I think if you just ask any manager today, they'll tell you, you know, most of the time this is a thankless job where you put the key in the door and just wait for things to go wrong. And that's why we started ClearCogs. How can we give simple answers to operators so they can make better decisions and have more days go right? We met the team from Goop Kitchens out here 2 years ago. They were skeptical about integrating AI into their operation, but they decided to give it a try. Sure enough, they were able to add 2 percentage points to the bottom line overnight. No operational changes, no tracking, you know, no hardware. Just by giving the simple answers that their operators needed, they were able to add percentage points to the bottom line. Today we Represent over 100 brands across 4 countries, ranging from regional chains to multi-billion-dollar publicly traded companies. And each one of these brands is seeing increases in their operational efficiency and percentage points added to the bottom line. All right, so what is it that we actually do? So simply put, Clearcogs takes all of the data you already have and turns it into a daily morning briefing with the answers that your operators need. You know, it's simple answers. It's answers to questions like, how many bagels do I need to bake today? You know, it's an hour before close. Do I need to grill any more chicken? You know, what should my staffing be for tomorrow? At ClearCogs, we specialize in a very specific type of machine learning called time series forecasting. We sit on top of your existing tech stack, ingest all of your data, and create a digital twin of your operation. We then take in all of the extra data that, you know, weather events, you know, all of those things that impact your demand to pinpoint exactly what is driving the fluctuations in demand. at the store level. And just like a great general manager, every day it refines itself and gets better so that we can improve accuracy over time. But to your managers, it's— they don't see any of that. It's just simple answers and more days going right. And today, today we need more days to go right more than ever before. We've got rising food costs, rising labor costs, you know, we've got rising prices, rising regulatory. And the only thing that's not rising today, seem to be profit margins. And look, AI's not gonna do everything. There's a very human side of the business that you're never gonna replace with it. You know, it's that leadership, it's the service, the hospitality, it's the magic that they all create. And AI's never gonna replicate it. But what it can do is this, it can solve for the real problem we have with how to make profits in our restaurants. Look, AI doesn't get tired. It doesn't take days off. It doesn't get sick. It can analyze every metric, every trend, every number every day just to ensure that your team is set up for success with the numbers they need. I know there's a lot of promise about AI and what it's gonna do in the future, but the promise I can make you today is what AI can do for you is it can provide your team with the answers they need so that they can make better decisions. And they can have more days go right. Thank you. Thank you.
