Matt Wampler on Leveraging Predictive Analytics to Revolutionize Food Management

#68. In this episode of The meez Podcast, host Josh Sharkey sits down with Matt Wampler, co-founder and CEO of ClearCOGS, one of the rising stars in the food tech industry. Josh and Matt delve into the fascinating world of predictive analytics, AI, and machine learning in the food sector.

ClearCOGS is revolutionizing the way large-scale organizations forecast sales and manage food prep. By leveraging advanced technologies, ClearCOGS provides daily insights that help businesses like Jimmy John's reduce waste and optimize operations. Josh and Matt explore the practical applications of these technologies and discuss how they make it easy for companies to access vital information.

The conversation also delves into Matt's background in the franchise world, where he managed multiple Jimmy John's locations. Matt shares his experiences of starting from scratch in a franchise, the resources available, and the unique challenges and advantages of having established processes in place.

Listeners will gain insights into Matt's journey from franchise management to co-founding ClearCOGS and learn about the company's mission to minimize food waste. This episode offers valuable perspectives on building a tech-driven company in the food industry and the impact of innovative solutions on sustainability.

Tune in to hear Josh and Matt's engaging discussion and discover how ClearCOGS is paving the way for smarter food management. Enjoy the episode!

Where to find Matt Wampler:

• Instagram
• LinkedIn

Where to find ClearCOGS

• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Facebook

Where to find host Josh Sharkey:

• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• TikTok
• Twitter

In this episode, we cover:

(02:58): Owning a Jimmy John's franchise
(12:39): All about systems
(15:21): In the people business
(20:14): ClearCOGS 101
(35:11): Using AI for ClearCOGS
(39:28): How Matt met Osa
(51:31): What's next for meez? 
(59:18): Matt's two questions for Josh
(1:05:53): What makes Matt really angry?

Transcript

[00:00:00] Josh Sharkey: 

You're listening to season two of The meez Podcast. I'm your host, Josh Sharkey, the founder and CEO of meez, a culinary operating system for food professionals. On the show, we're going to talk to high performers in the food business, everything from chefs to CEOs, technologists, writers, investors, and more about how they innovate and operate and how they consistently execute at a high level day after day.

[00:00:24] 

And I would really love it if you could drop us a five star review anywhere that you listen to your podcast. That could be Apple, that could be Spotify, could be Google. I'm not picky. Anywhere works. But I really appreciate the support. And as always, I hope you enjoy the show.

[00:00:44] 

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, today's guest is one of the most likable guys coming up in the food tech world. We've gotten to know each other a bunch over the last couple of years. His name is Matt Wampler, and he is the co-founder and CEO of a company called Clear Cogs. And what they do is leverage predictive analytics, AI, Machine learning, all those things that you keep hearing about to help you understand and accurately forecast how much you're going to sell.

[00:01:14] 

And with that information, they can then help you understand things like how much you should prep. They're doing this typically for very large scaled organizations. And what I really like about what they do is. It does make it really easy to get this information, just sending it to you directly every single day.

[00:01:28] 

But a lot of what Matt and I talk about today is his background coming up in the franchise world. Actually, he ran a bunch of Jimmy Johns. And I was just really curious to learn what it's like to start from the beginning in a franchise. And, you know, what kind of resources do they give you? about what's difficult, what seems easier because you have the processes in place and things like that.

[00:01:49] 

So it was really fun to learn more about that part of his world and his background. And then of course, we talked a bunch about, you know, how he decided to build this company, Clear Cogs, and he's helping a lot of companies like Jimmy John's to just waste less food. I think that's a big part of what they do at Clear Cogs is just try to help you understand how you can waste less food.

[00:02:06] 

Which is a good thing in this world. Anyways, I really enjoy talking to Matt and hearing how he's building his company. And as always, I hope that you enjoy this conversation as much as I do.

[00:02:23] 

You look, you know, good as always. I think that your shirt says Clear Cogs, and I believe your hat says it as well. You are, you definitely represent. 

[00:02:32] Matt Wampler: 

Wear the same outfit every day. Yeah. It makes life really easy. I mean, I assume you have like five of those cardigans. 

[00:02:36] Josh Sharkey: 

Everybody asks me that, and yes, I do. I have six of them, actually.

[00:02:41] 

And I have a bunch of these. T shirts and it's just the same thing every day. I get cold inside. So even when it's hot outside, I keep a carding with me 

[00:02:50] Matt Wampler: 

Yeah, maybe once we raise our series a I can stop being branded at all times right now in the walking billboard 

[00:02:58] Josh Sharkey: 

All right, well here's where we're gonna start we can talk about your personal background but I Just to wind everybody up, you, at a very young age, at around 21, I think, took over a Jimmy John's franchise.

[00:03:09] 

I don't know a ton about Jimmy John's, and I also don't know a ton about taking over a franchise. We did some franchising. I used to be at this company called Aurify Brands. I mean, We own, you know, Five Guy franchises and a couple other things, but I really wanted to start there with your perspective on what was it like running a Jimmy John franchise?

[00:03:28] Matt Wampler: 

Well let me say this. I didn't know much about running a Jimmy John's franchise when I took over one or what taking over a franchise looked like. By the way, what is Jimmy John's? So it's a sandwich shop. There's about 3,000 of them. Uh, it's right out of Illinois, mainly Midwest based, but they're all over the country. And now we're owned by Inspire Brands along with, 

you know. Quarter of all restaurants or something like that.

[00:03:48] Josh Sharkey: 

Nice. So it's sort of like a different type of Subway. 

[00:03:54] Matt Wampler: 

Oh, don't don't throw us in the Subway bucket You know, I'd say more like Jersey Mike's would be a good comp. No hot sandwiches. It was just straightforward We're baking the bread every day.

[00:04:03] 

We're slicing the meats every day. High quality ingredients, great sandwich. One of the things that we really sold was super fast service. And we dominated first party delivery for sandwiches. So for a long time, it was you're sitting in your office and you wanted to order food. It's like, I'm not going to order a pizza.

[00:04:23] 

There wasn't third party delivery. Jimmy John's was pretty much the only game in town. What's the menu like? Really simple. I mean, we're talking about six meats, maybe seven veggies. I think Total sandwiches. There were like 17 of them. You know, there was no soups, no salads, nothing fancy. They've added a lot to the menu ever since, but uh, yeah, it's 

pretty straightforward.

[00:04:45] Josh Sharkey: 

So, uh, yeah, what was it like, like, taking over a Jimmy John’s franchise? 

[00:04:49] Matt Wampler: 

It was a disaster. So, You know, I got into the restaurant industry because, you know, some guy had run his Jimmy John's franchise into the ground and basically needed a patsy to get out of the lease. And I was the 21 year old kid that probably didn't ask the right questions or know enough to know that it was going to be a total shitshow, and that is exactly what it was.

[00:05:10] 

So, you know, I walked in. Just graduated college, didn't know anything about restaurants, and man, it was, uh, I think they were down to like four employees. It's July. There's no air conditioning. It's in DC, so it's, you know, 110 degrees in the kitchen. They have ice buckets on top of the compressors to keep the cold tables from overheating, like the grease trap was overflowing.

[00:05:32] 

It was a disaster, and yeah, it was, uh, I give Jimmy John's a lot of credit, you know, they provide a playbook, you know, the reason I was successful was because they basically said, follow this list every day and execute and you'll be successful and 21, 22, I could follow the list and I could put in the hours.

[00:05:53] Josh Sharkey: 

So, why did you take on a Jimmy John's franchise? 

[00:05:59] Matt Wampler: 

That's a really, really good question. I asked myself that for a number of years. No, it was really simple. So, I had an option to go out and do investment banking and sit in a cubicle and run numbers and you know, the other option was to go out and run a sandwich joint.

[00:06:12] 

The, uh, person at the investment bank and actually just done a deal with Jimmy John’s said like, Hey, this is really interesting. You should take a look and you know, I'm ADD and dyslexic. It was like, Hey, I don't want to be in a cubicle. Like let me go take a shot. My dad was on the side of it. Like you have nothing to lose right now.

[00:06:31] 

You know, if you're ever going to roll the dice in your life, you don't have a wife right now. You don't have kids go after it. And so that's what I did. And um, it was the best decision I ever made. Did you have to purchase this? Or was it sort of just bequeathed to you? Like, how did it, like, you know? I had to purchase it and there were a lot of, uh, hoops to jump through.

[00:06:50] 

I didn't have a whole lot of savings but I had to clean out all my savings and then I begged my parents to, uh, basically co sign a loan with a bank and, you know, it's one of those, your options are success or bankruptcy. So, uh, you know. You make it work. 

[00:07:04] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. My, the, the first restaurant that I opened of my own was in 2008 and I had, I mean, I don't come from money at all, but I did have, uh, like a, it's like a mutual fund or something that my grandfather had set up for me that I had a decent, I think it was like 30 grand in cash or something in it.

[00:07:24] 

Just threw all of that into the restaurant and everything, every dime I had didn't pay myself for like the first year, man, you know, I'm so fascinated with, you taking on like a, a franchise or a place that already has like systems in place and you know, what that can do for you to actually give you the freedom to do other things.

[00:07:42] 

What was that sort of like learning curve like to, like how do they, how do they give you these like systems and pro, I have to imagine that like, it's something like a Jimmy John's. There's like just a ton of systems and processes and here's how this works. How did that happen? Did they just sort of hand you a bunch of documentation or is it like a, you know, orientation or what is it? Do they give you like certain software training on it? Like, what is that like? 

[00:08:01] Matt Wampler: 

No, there's training. They send you off to a three week training, you know, camp and then, uh, you know, you go do an apprenticeship for four weeks. So you at least have some idea what you're doing, but you know, it's the little things like how often do I clean the ice maker so I'm not getting mold build up?

[00:08:18] 

And how often am I going and scrubbing the mop guards in the back of the kitchen? These are things like. You don't necessarily think of. Somebody has, through trial and error over the years, Jimmy John's come up with these, you know, this playbook. So, like, we had our daily list of cleaning items. And, you know, as long as we did those, the store stayed in good shape.

[00:08:38] 

You know, one of them is go check the light bulbs every morning, so the lights are working. Which just makes things a lot easier. Yeah. But I will say, going back to your original comment, I think the proudest moment I had in my life was when I opened the second store. Yeah. And the bank loaned me the money, and there was no co signer, and the lease was signed under my name personally, it was like, oh my gosh, like, I'm a real person.

[00:09:02] 

They let me take a shot. 

[00:09:05] Josh Sharkey: 

That's awesome. So, how many did you end up opening? Uh, five. Gotcha. What is that like? So, you start opening up more of these franchises, obviously they get more dialed in, you have these systems. You become a better operator, you know, obviously, and then over time, there's a point when you decide to sell it, and then who do you sell it to?

[00:09:20] 

Is it going to another group that also does these franchises? Like, what happened there? 

[00:09:25] Matt Wampler: 

You know, I'll start on the last question. You know, one of the things that's really nice about a franchise is that there's a market out there. There's an active market to sell your units. And so, it's, it's nice being able to go list them, talk to the other franchise owners at Jimmy John's and find someone who wants to buy it.

[00:09:43] 

The story leading up to that is, you know, I did my first location and it went well. I think we did it, took it from doing 400, 2 million over the first 18 months and, you know, it was cash flow and all is well. Every unit you open, it's just a new set of skills you have to learn, right? So, it's one thing to be an individual contributor and run it as the general manager, It's another thing to find, train, and motivate a general manager to run that location.

[00:10:14] 

So like, you know, we opened up the second store and it opened up at what, uh, half the national average. So it was like, okay, now you got to learn how to run a low volume store and, you know, get it to profitability while making the bank payments. And, you know, then you, uh, open the third store. Now all of a sudden you're kind of an area manager with three general managers.

[00:10:33] 

Now you gotta, you gotta learn that whole skill set of, you know, how do I systemize it? Then you start purchasing stores and it's like, wow, I gotta learn how to do acquisitions and I gotta learn how to do these changeovers. So it was always changing what skill set you were learning, but You know, I looked at getting a pizza shop that was for sale that I loved and I wanted to, and it was not franchised.

[00:10:56] 

And even if it was, it would be an entire new skill set to learn. You know, there's something empowering about knowing your systems and your operation inside and out and just having to do that You know once you get into multi concept use why I always watch the independent operators with multiple different concepts like man I can't even imagine trying to run that operation.

[00:11:24] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, it's definitely a different a different model altogether I think what I love about sort of multi concept groups, whatever they are, Let Us Entertain You, Star, I mean there's tons of them, is the most important thing is you have to have a very clear vision of what it means to be the business that you are because you have all these disparate concepts and they act differently and they they have different food and different people.

[00:11:46] 

But there's something underlying that has to be the same. I always love, you know, when that works really well. I will say, like, you know, the one thing I learned about, like, you know, I opened up four of the restaurants that I started called Bark. I think the biggest learning lesson from one to two is just how problems scale.

[00:12:01] 

You know, like any little thing that isn't really tight at, you know, at restaurant one. is very glaringly, you know, coming to the surface once you have two of them. I don't know if you found that. 

[00:12:13] Matt Wampler: 

Yeah, oh my gosh, absolutely. I mean, I even remember going back to restaurant one. I used to not be the best at keeping our cutting boards clean.

[00:12:19] 

And like, you woke up six months later and nobody kept the cutting boards clean. It was like, wow. Yeah, problem scale, for sure. I was curious, did you have all four stores or all four restaurants at the same time? How did you manage that? I mean, how do you do systems if they're all different? Well. 

[00:12:39] Josh Sharkey: 

I'm one, I love systems, so we did build a lot of systems. I mean, this was also pre a lot of the tech that exists today in terms of checklist technology and things like that. So we just. You know, like a lot of this I just built, I would build like, here's what the opening checklist is, here's what the closing checklist is, we built like, you know, all the formulas for how to do, you know, prep and things like that, and you know, what is a, what does good look like for each station, and we just did it all, maybe that was just part of what I, it's funny because I'm a chef, that's what most of my life, you know, I've just been a chef in the fine dining world, but.

[00:13:14] 

When I opened up the restaurant, I realized, like, there's this other part of me that I really love, which is just, like, building these systems, and so it was, it was really fun. I think for me, actually, what was not so fun about it is, and this is the flaw that I think that I, the mistake I think I made, was going too far in the direction of creating systems.

[00:13:36] 

as opposed to developing people that can think independently. And that I think is the toughest thing to do as you scale is, you know, systems will help you to do things consistently and make sure that you're, you know, that you're, you know, whatever, upholding compliance, things and things like that. But they also create an environment.

[00:13:58] 

That require people that follow systems, as opposed to people that make autonomous decisions, and I think the really beautiful thing, and I think that happens a lot more, you know, with these multi concept brands, but also can happen with, you know, any type of franchise as well, I'm sure, is when you can create those first principles of how to make decisions, as opposed to how to open up a station, you know, it's one thing to have a checklist of it, here's exactly how to do it, and when to do it, And what it looks like.

[00:14:25] 

Versus, here's how you should think about the station. It's your temple, right? This is your little business, your world. Every piece of it represents, you know, how you will run your business. And instilling that in them, and saying, like, the most important thing is that you're ready for service, and that the customers get served as soon as they order.

[00:14:42] 

And, you know, teaching them, like, the hierarchy of, like, what's of importance. I found that over time, the systems, you have to continually update them. Because things change. You know, you get a new type of dishwasher, you get a new prep fridge that requires a different setup or something, but what doesn't change is how you think about the operation.

[00:15:01] 

And I think that was a, you know, a mistake I made in the beginning that because it was kind of fun to like systematize everything that I kind of went too far down the path of just, this is exactly how it works. Forgetting that like there are people that have to then follow that. And if you want people that all they do is, you know, go box by box by box and, and check a thing, that's the person you'll get.

[00:15:21] Matt Wampler: 

So, you know, it's interesting you bring that up, especially being a classically trained chef. So, people would ask me, like, oh, you're in the sandwich business. And I'd always say, no, I'm in the people business. Like, my whole job is how do I take a 17, 18 year old, 19 year old that, you know, isn't going to college and turn them into their own little CEO of a million dollar business, right?

[00:15:44] 

Like, You know, it's grooming General Managers, you know, it's the people business. Did you view yourself as being in the people business? You know, in more of the, you know, food business? The systems business? Like what, how would you define what you were doing? 

[00:15:59] Josh Sharkey: 

I would love to tell you that I thought of myself as being in the people business and that hospitality was everything and that's what it should have been.

[00:16:09] 

This was my first foray outside of just cooking and fine dining restaurants. And, you know, at heart, man, I'm a product person. Like, that's why I love meez, is because I just love building amazing products and I want everything to be just, you know, like, I love great products. So when I started my first restaurant, my metric of success is the food is the best.

[00:16:31] 

And the systems are tight. And that's what I thought about is like what that means to be successful. Instead of saying, team is happy. My team is motivated. They know what, you know, what the North Star is. You know, the way that the customers feel is Because we do XYZ, right? And, you know, look, we had a successful business.

[00:16:52] 

It was, you know, people loved the restaurant primarily because of the product. There was good vibes and things as well, but like, I would love to say that I was, that I thought of it that way. Now, today, I do. Running, you know, my new company. I realize that people are, they're not like just the most important part of your business.

[00:17:08] 

They actually are your business. And once you realize that, things really change, but my dumb brain, you know, like in my 20s and 30s, I just didn't click for some reason, you know. But I wish, I wish I had, because I think things probably would have been a little bit different at the very least for my team. But I think I was more of a This is a product. 

[00:17:29] Matt Wampler:

Yeah, we didn't have an option. If you can't control the product and you can't control the systems, you know, all you have is, you know, investing yourself in the team and the execution. So, you know, it was the thing that I loved about franchising. It's the thing that made me successful in franchising.

[00:17:44] 

It's also the thing that led me to get out of franchising because it was, I always wanted to do the 5 percent that wasn't in the playbook. You know, how do you innovate? Do something new? You know, play with some of those other constraints. 

[00:17:56] Josh Sharkey: 

But you know what, actually, man, that's part of what I love about this premise of franchising is and just generally the premise of like setting up these systems.

[00:18:07] 

It's a very similar premise to meez en Place in that like you can't really innovate and be creative unless you have all your shit together, right? Where like you are totally ready for service. So that when these curveballs come, or you want to sort of, you know, iterate on something that you can. And in the same breath, like, you know, I love the idea of, uh, of an operation like Jimmy John's, where you like, hand him this playbook, and it's like, here, follow this, and you'll be successful.

[00:18:31] 

Because then, You know those table stakes things are like taken care of and you can start to think about okay How do I actually motivate my people? How do I get them to make better decisions? How do I make them happier? Because you have like the brain space to think about that as opposed to thinking about you know How do I make sure everybody does this thing the right way so I kind of think that's a and by the way I'm speculating because I never run a franchise, but 

[00:18:52] Matt Wampler: 

No, I think you're dead on and I think you can even throw in there the skill set match, you know, what's it take to be a great restaurant owner versus being a great chef are two very different things.

[00:19:03] 

So, you know, if, if you take out all of the culinary and chef side of it, it opens up to a much wider population of people that could ultimately run a successful operation. 

[00:19:15] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, yeah, it's funny how that it just really does sort of ladder up, right? It's like you can be an incredible cook, but that doesn't mean that you're gonna be a great, you know, manager of chefs in the kitchen, and you could be an incredible chef, but that doesn't mean that you're gonna be a great restaurant owner, and you can be a great restaurant owner, and that doesn't mean that you're gonna be a great multi unit operator, and they're all very different to your point, what you started this with.

[00:19:39] 

That's what's fun about this, right? They're very different skill sets. You have to kind of learn, you know, You know, different things along the way. 

[00:19:44] Matt Wampler: 

It's my favorite thing about Chick fil A. You know, uh, there's one other requirement if you're going to go open a franchise. You have to have money. You know, Chick fil A is kind of, you know, broken that out where it's like, Hey, you know, we have a model where we want to bring in the best operators that are going to do the best job, but we're going to remove the constraint of capital.

[00:20:01] 

And you know, I think that's one of the reasons they're so successful. That and the fact that, you know, I'm not going out to own 10 or 20 of these. I'm going to have one, maybe two. And this is going to be my life. Then. You know, it's going to be a community affair. 

[00:20:14] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, yeah. All right. So we talked about franchising for a while, but you, uh, you have a t-shirt on that says Clear Cogs.

[00:20:21] J

You got a hat that says Clear Cogs. You got a little emblem in the back that I'm pretty sure is a representative of the brand Clear Cogs. So why don't we get into that, right? 

[00:20:33] Matt Wampler: 

We're going to get you a Clear Cogs little, uh, cardigan.

[00:20:35] Josh Sharkey: 

There you go. Appreciate that man. Well, pretend I'm a 5-year-old. Explain clear hogs to me.

[00:20:41] 

What? 

[00:20:42] Matt Wampler: 

What is it? As a 5-year-old, we tell the bagel maker how many bagels to bake in the morning so that they don't have waste and they don't run out. You're a barbecue restaurant. How many briskets do I need to smoke tonight so that I have the right amount tomorrow? That simple. 

[00:20:55] Josh Sharkey: 

I love that. So, and if I'm a someone in the tech space, which. By the way, I didn't know that you also learned to code before you started ClearCogs. Did you build some of what ClearCogs is today? 

[00:21:06] Matt Wampler: 

Oh god, no, that wouldn't work. You, you wouldn't want my code anywhere near our system. But I, I know enough to be dangerous. I wrote a couple good algorithms, but you know, there's a difference between Writing an algorithm that, you know, functions and creating enterprise grade software.

[00:21:21] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. Yeah. I'm super interested about this, this space. I remember prior to running these, I was the CEO of this restaurant called Aurify Brands. We had a bunch of different concepts and we're acquiring other brands and our parent, well, our main investor had this data team of, you know, machine learning and AI and, you know, Just running all these models for us to try to understand how to forecast revenue.

[00:21:44] 

This was back, you know, 2015 or something. We had a really hard time getting better than like a trailing 12 week forecast. And so from what I, and it sounds like you guys are, you sort of figured out some of this. And from what I understand from Clear Cogs is like the key here is that you're able to predict sales at a menu item level.

[00:22:02] 

Is that sort of the bedrock of kind of what you're doing? 

[00:22:05] Matt Wampler: 

Yeah, I mean, that, that's the bedrock. I mean, it comes from my experience. Jimmy John's, one of those things that wasn't in the playbook were some, let's call it, game time decisions. It's two hours prior to close, do I have enough bread? Or can I shut off the ovens?

[00:22:21] 

You know, that's not something that we had a clear answer for. So you'd stick your head out the door and look around. What's the weather like? Are there people at the bar? And then you'd come back and guess. And, you know, It's always an emotional guess because you don't want to run out and deal with a bunch of angry customers.

[00:22:36] 

You would almost always overbake just to be safe. Yeah, you know, it's maybe 5 or 10 a day in waste. Like, it's not something that, you know, should keep you up at night. And so we really went in to figure out how do we solve that specific problem. That's the first problem we solved. And the answer was, you know, we're not going to do sales forecasting.

[00:22:58] 

We're not going to look at PMIX. We're going to go look at how many sticks of bread you're using every 15 minutes for the past 10 years, and how the day of the week, and the time of the day, and the weather, and what's on your menu, and, you know, local events, and all of this, limited time offerings, you know, how all this plays into what is the right amount of bread to have.

[00:23:19] 

And we found that that wasn't enough, right? Going and doing the forecasting is great, but it's still not usable for an assistant manager running the night shift. We then needed to figure out how do we optimize all of the output of these machine learning models into a single number. At this store, on this date, the magic number is 18 sticks of bread.

[00:23:42] 

It'll keep you, you know, you're gonna run out four times this year, but it's gonna be the optimal profit to cost benefit ratio. 

[00:23:50] Josh Sharkey: 

So, do you mind if we dig into the nuts and bolts of how that works? So, you are ingesting historical sales data, you're ingesting weather, events. Well, let's start with events, right?

[00:24:02] 

Because this is one of the problems we had, right? It's like we got to a pretty close number, right? And the problem would be the New York City Marathon is next week. Election Day is on Tuesday. The subway station at 23rd Street is closed down for the next four, you know, four weeks. There's a march happening, you know, there's a sale at this place across, at the couture spot across the street and all these things would actually impact, especially in like a very dense, densely populated area like New York City, they would impact business, sometimes pretty significantly, they're doing construction on a road, like, how does all that get fed into the model?

[00:24:40] Matt Wampler: 

It doesn't. So it's really simple. If you have basketball games that happen at that college, and it's a regular schedule, and it's happened every season, these are great events that we can work into the models that'll help forecast it. But we have a, uh, I was talking to somebody earlier this week, barbecue place out in New York, and they were like, we're having the president come speak, you know, or I think it was president speaking or debate that's going to be going on in three months.

[00:25:06] 

And it was eight guys. I can't tell you what that's going to look like. There's no precedent for it. So like, at that point, you're going to have to make a gut feel. I can tell you what other events have been like, but if we don't have data in the past, it's really hard to make that kind of prediction. And I think people tend to latch on to those.

[00:25:27] 

They really probably happen, you know, 6, 12, 18 times a year, you know, it's not something that's happening too frequently. The real money is saved, the $10, $15 a day that happens every day. That you're just marginally wrong on 10 decisions every single day. So we always kind of view those as a shiny object.

[00:25:47] 

Obviously, if you've got sporting events in the area, your, you know, school schedule, all the holidays, that's all taken into consideration, and we can work those in. Limited time offerings is another big one there. But yeah, if a bus shows up, like a bus shows up. 

[00:26:02] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, I guess more of what I was asking was accounting for those historically, so that you know they're anomalies, you know, forward looking, right?

[00:26:10] 

So if you knew that like, In December, there's these four days that just for some reason were really dead or really popped and then again in, you know, August or something. And you can sort of account for those to take that out of the model if they're not perpetual. 

[00:26:23] Matt Wampler: 

Most of what we do is really unsexy, and we don't talk about it too much.

It's data cleaning. So, 

[00:26:28] Josh Sharkey: 

Well, we're talking about it today, Matt, and I find it to be pretty sexy. So, 

[00:26:32] Matt Wampler: 

Your data is really bad. Most likely, you know, manually entered data. You've got catering in there, you know, that obviously you knew about ahead of time and it's gonna throw off your forecasts. You know, you're gonna have days that your power was shut off and, you know, you're only open half a day or a snowstorm.

[00:26:50] 

So, You know, the first thing we go do is we go look at the last three years worth of data and pull out every anomaly there are. We'll probably go back to the customer with 10 or 15 items, like what is happening on these four Thursdays in a row? You know, we couldn't find anything online, like, you know, there was nothing in our models for it.

[00:27:09] 

They're like, oh, you know, the first four Thursdays of the summer, this big thing goes on. It's like, great. Is that going to continue happening? Yes, we're going to add that to the model. So we go through and do that. And then. All of the events that aren't categorized, we're actually kind of, you know, watering those down.

[00:27:27] 

Or if we're seeing that you're closed, we're backfilling the data so that it looks like it was a fully opened day. And that's probably half of what we do, because if you're feeding these models bad data, you're always going to get bad output. 

[00:27:38] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, yeah, I remember, God, I just vividly remember this so much, the data team coming back to us, and what happened on this?

[00:27:45] 

I'm like, I don't know. I don't remember. Maybe it was raining, maybe it was That's another piece that I think is, that I'm sure could be helpful, is, hey, if it's raining, expect this, you know, because if this is your normal Tuesday, if it's raining, maybe expect this, you know. 

[00:28:00] Matt Wampler: 

Yeah, I mean, and it doesn't even have to be specific. Hey, you didn't sell any salmon, you know, two weeks ago on Thursday, you know, what happened? Oh, we probably ran out of salmon. Okay, good. That's that's all we kind of need to know. Yeah, where we see it being really helpful, especially with, you know, franchise concepts is limited time offers. So I now have a tuna salad, you know, offering well, you know, it's probably going to pull away from chicken salad and being able to 

[00:28:26] 

You know, look historically at those limited time offerings that you've done that are similar and flag them for the future. Like those kind of things make a big difference. 

[00:28:35] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, no, that makes sense. And what is like the delta between really good? Accuracy and the typical kind of accuracy of a prediction, like the typical 12 week trailing 12 week forecast of something versus when you layer on these models, like what is like the delta there that people can expect?

[00:28:55] Matt Wampler: 

Yeah, so I tend to look more at outcomes. So what is your spread between your actuals and your theoreticals and how much of an impact can we play there? And typically, and I'm even talking like item by item, typically we're able to close that gap by about 50%. The average is like 52%. When it comes to accuracy, it's always a difficult thing to explain.

[00:29:19] 

We live in the world of statistics. You know, if you want to run out half the time, I'll tell you exactly what we think you should have. You know, if you want to run out one in four days, or you want to run out once a month, there's a different number for that. And depending upon How much variation is in your sales depends on how much of a buffer we have to add in that world.

[00:29:41] 

So we typically sit down with restaurants and one of the things they do know is what they want operationally. Like, hey, is going back to bagels. You talk with the bagel operator, they'd be like, Hey, I can never run out of plain bagels because I do all my sandwiches on them. It would be a nightmare. But man, blueberry, if I would love to be out of blueberry every day, it's like, great.

[00:30:04] 

We can set the parameters to get you the number to achieve that goal. 

[00:30:08] Josh Sharkey: 

That's cool. So who is like the typical, like, what's like the ideal operation that's using this? 

[00:30:14] Matt Wampler: 

Aunty Anne’s pretzels would be, we don't work with them, but I'd like to be working with Antien's. They have a really simple menu. We're making pretzels.

[00:30:21] 

We're making them all day, every day. They're a perishable product. Look, anybody in the fast casual QSR world, typically above 10, 15 units, you know, once you've made that leap of we figured out our systems and procedures, you know, we're not changing Hold times or bringing in new equipment, like we've got our operation on lock and now we're working on opening the next 50 locations or signing on franchisees that need that playbook. That's really where we fit in, filling in that last gap in the playbook, systemizing it. 

[00:30:51] Josh Sharkey: 

What do you think that the future state of this looks like? So you guys are building this model now that obviously just keeps getting better, I'm sure. Fast forward 10 years from now, what do you envision this being?

[00:31:04] Matt Wampler: 

Well, we just got our trademark in for the restaurant copilot. I think that's probably a good synopsis of it. You know, how do we create that fractional CFO, COO that sits on top of your data and answers the question, what do I need to know today? You know, tomato prices are up by X dollars, and if you want to keep your profit and margin in line, you need to raise prices by X, Y, and Z.

[00:31:29] 

We find that when you've got these models, they're not just applicable to, you know, prep and production, but they're also applicable to ordering and labor and, you know, all of these other, you know, pricing, you name it. Having one consolidated, you know, demand planning system that works in sync across food and labor and everything is really where we look to sit.

[00:31:51] 

So opening it up to answering any question and not just the predefined preset questions that you need every day. 

[00:31:59] Josh Sharkey: 

Got it. So it's the idea that you want to connect with all of the disparate systems that a restaurant is using, their labor tool, their recipe or inventory tool, their, their P&L, and just connect to all of those disparate systems and kind of sit over them to pull out.

[00:32:14] Matt Wampler: 

We kind of already are. A little less on the P&L side of things and a little bit more on the operations management side of things. But you know, I, I love a world where, you know, you're asked your smartphone, how much bread should I have up right now? And I get an answer, you know, if I were to offer this limited time offering, how would that affect my revenue?

[00:32:37] 

And what would I be selling less of? And these are things that between the machine learning forecasting models that are available today, and you know, these large language models, you know, I thought we'd be years away. And now I feel like we're a couple quarters away from really being able to answer all of that.

[00:32:56] Josh Sharkey: 

This show is brought to you by, you guessed it, meez. meez helps thousands of restaurants and food service businesses all over the world build profitable menus and scale their business successfully. If you're looking to organize your recipe IP and train your team to put out consistent product every day in less time than ever before, then meez is just for you.

[00:33:15] 

And you can transform all those old Google Docs and Word Docs and PDFs and spreadsheets and Google Sheets into dynamic, actionable recipes in meez in lightning speed. Plus, stop all that manual work of processing invoices, because meez will digitize all your purchases automatically. And there's a built in database of ingredient yields, prep yields, and unit of measure conversions for every ingredient, which means you're going to get laser accurate food costs in a fraction of the time.

[00:33:41] 

Visit www.getmeez.com. That's G E T M E E Z. So learn more and check out the show that's moving forward because we're going to be adding promotions and discount codes so that all of you lovely and brilliant meez podcast listeners get a sweet deal on meez.

[00:34:02] 

That's awesome. And then are you sort of connecting to multiple models? Like, are you like leveraging GPT 4.0 and Meta or any of these models or multiple models? Like, how are you interfacing with them or not at all?

[00:34:14] Matt Wampler: 

Well, so this is where I used to be able to truly understand exactly how everything worked on the modeling side.

[00:34:21] 

Now I have a conceptual idea of it. So, we use a dozen or so different models. And when we go through and look at forecasting, whether it's labor or food costs, we match that to the models. specific demand pattern up with the optimal model for that demand pattern. And then it gets auto, you know, featured engineered to around like, all right, what's the best way to use this model?

[00:34:46] 

And this all happens like automatically. And this is why it's so difficult to do in restaurants. You know, it takes 12 models with a bunch of different features on them and getting all of that right to even get the right output before we even optimize it for your, you know, set goals. Okay. 

[00:35:02] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. And is there, like, have you found that there's, that GPT 4.0 or Lambda or something works better for one versus the other?

Or are those models you actually use or? 

[00:35:11] Matt Wampler: 

Oh, uh, from the large language side, you know, we, we've done most of it on, you know, chat GPT. Uh, and you know, it's, it's kind of great. I have no complaints on it. I don't know if we've really played around with the Lambda side of things too much. 

[00:35:24] Josh Sharkey: 

Gotcha. 

[00:35:24] Matt Wampler: 

You know, they still really struggle with math. I think that's one of the, one of the you know, the findings we've had is that you feed it a bunch of restaurant data. It's, it may be able to tell you what your sales were yesterday, but it does a really bad job of trying to figure out what's going to happen in the future or what are those key metrics.

[00:35:43] 

It's, it's bad at the math stuff. So we find that for us to effectively use the models, we have to pre process all the data, get it down to those key metrics. key individual, you know, you're going to use this many tomatoes tomorrow. And by the way, this is the price of tomatoes. It could then tell you, you know, the total dollar amount of tomatoes you're going to use.

[00:35:59] 

So we spent a lot of time preprocessing the data before we ever even get it. 

[00:36:05] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, you got to tee it up for them. That's interesting. So we've been talking a lot about like the all the data that you have to sort of pull in. Unsexy stuff. One thing I'm curious about, because, you know, we get asked about this all time, and it's just a thing that everybody in the at least in the restaurant space needs and talks about is POS integrations.

[00:36:21] 

And I'm curious, like, hearing from you, because clearly, like, I think, I'm sure that's a big part of what you have to do is, like, connect with POS systems, like, what's the, what's the work involved for people that don't know in, like, integrating with a POS system? 

[00:36:35] Matt Wampler: 

So we just integrated with Toast, they're on their marketplace.

It took us 18 months to go through the process. What was 18 months? What does that entail? You know, Toast is a special company. Like, they are the 800 pound gorilla in the room. You know, everyone's using Toast. And Toast is very selective on who they want to put on the marketplace. And so a lot of it had less to do with the business side of the technical side and more to do with, are you the right brand to be on our system?

[00:37:06] 

You know, I would say the problem that we face on the integration side with POS is, is more to do with the fact that there are so many of them. It's such a fragmented market and that everyone has a different data structure and everyone has a different way of doing their mappings and modifiers. So it's having to.

[00:37:23] 

Learn all of those systems and standardize the data in your individual system. You know, I think one of the frustrating things, I'm sure this is the case for you, every tech company has come up with their own way of standardizing it, you know, and it's different from the other guy. So, like, our data probably looks a lot different than your data.

[00:37:42] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, yeah. That's, you know what, you were mentioning with Toast, like the brand thing, but like, is that really the case? Because they have, like, every If you look at like, whether it's a labor software or inventory software or predictive analytics, like they kind of have all of them on there. What's the discrepancy of, of like how they decide one versus the other.

[00:38:00] 

It seems like it's just like a time thing. If I knew it wouldn't have taken us 18 months to get on there. Yeah, it's So curious about that. Honestly again for everybody that might not know like before you have that integration. What do you do? I'm, not gonna i'm gonna plead the fifth on that question I mean just being real for a minute like I hear this all the time, right?

[00:38:21] 

Like oh, yeah, it took us six months 12 months 14 months. Generally speaking though once you are ready to do an integration, Toast, Square, you know, whatever they are. Is the Lyft similar for each system for you guys? Or is it really just like, that's a new world every time you go to a new system? 

[00:38:40] Matt Wampler: 

Well, right now we're integrated with like 52 percent of, you know, if you walk into a restaurant, there's a 52 percent chance that we are integrated with their POS already.

[00:38:50] 

So we've built out a fair number of these integrations. It varies integration to integration, how clean the data is, how reliable it is. More than anything else, and this is where you come in, Josh, there are recipes and mappings and all of that stuff. That plays a huge part of it. You can set up your toast system or square system in a lot of different ways.

[00:39:12] 

And that's up to the customer, but it does affect us. 

[00:39:16] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, I imagine your business partner Osa is owning a lot of this, right? Yes, he's stuck with a lot of this. Let's talk about Osa for a minute. Yeah. Because you guys met in college, right?

[00:39:28] Matt Wampler: 

No, actually we met a couple years before Clear Cogs. I was doing some consulting work and, you know, our paths crossed and, you know, it was one of those like I got on a call with the guy and It's like, we just hit it off.

[00:39:41] 

And so I did some advisory work for him, free of charge, while he was running his last startup. He ended up selling it. And, you know, once I got into this whole coding world and, you know, looked at what restaurants were still doing, like, I think there's something here. He was my first call. And, you know, it took me six months to convince Osa

[00:39:58] 

this was a problem. Literally, we talked with hundreds of restaurants. He's like, I just don't believe it. And one day we're sitting there and there's a guy with a pencil in his, you know, ear. And he's like, What is that? He's like, oh, it's, it's my pencil. Like, you know, it's like, why do you have a pencil?

[00:40:14] 

He pulls out his clipboard. He's like, you know, I, I write all my stuff down here for when I need to do, you know, it's like, man, in my world, they're putting computer chips in people's brains. Like, there's just no way that they're wasting hundreds of billions of dollars a year because they're writing things down on paper and pencils and guessing.

[00:40:33] 

And finally, was converted. That really is the case. And, you know, the rest was history. We're off and running. 

[00:40:42] Josh Sharkey: 

Oh, that's cool. Yeah. I mean, I think about it a lot, like the adoption technology in the, in the restaurant space relative to other spaces. And I think one of the biggest challenges, one, of course, is just the cost of software because the, The outcome is, is tough in terms of like margins, right?

[00:40:58] 

Like you put, you know, you go to an Amazon warehouse and there's like, everything is technological and robots and everybody's got everything, you know, like inventory I'm sure is like done for you. But the output of that is much higher revenue, or margins at least, or maybe it's not, maybe margins are smaller, but there's obviously the volume is so high.

[00:41:18] 

It's the tough part for restaurants is like the, you really have to be so good. Because, you know, the, the ROI is always going to be, you know, a question. 

[00:41:27] Matt Wampler: 

So I actually don't think that it's a cost problem. I mean, there are so many inefficiencies in restaurants. You can get an ROI from any of this stuff.

[00:41:36] 

It's an effort problem. How much do I have to put into your system to actually get that output? You know, I don't look at it as a technology bottleneck or a capabilities bottleneck. It is. operationalization and implementation of technology. If you can build something that's easy. And seamless to implement and operationalize.

[00:42:02] 

I think that solves 90 percent of the problems. 

[00:42:06] Josh Sharkey: 

I agree. I think we're saying the same thing. And that's what I mean by you have to be so good. Because, yeah, you feel all of that. You know, and if you, if it takes three, four months until you see any kind of, you know, results or outcome that you're even ready to go on a system, it's not going to work. You know what I mean? 

[00:42:25] Matt Wampler: 

So you've raised venture capital. One of the things that I, you know, they tend to be pattern matching, what we've seen before. And you know, restaurants are kind of a unique market. And one of the things that we have consciously done that I think that it's, it's always hard to explain to venture capitalists, this model, but if I take an extra two to four weeks, To do that last 10 percent to customize the product around your operation and your needs and dial it into that.

[00:42:57] 

I don't just like get a marginal increase in use or effectiveness. It's a massive thing. increase. It's like that last mile problem of logistics. You know, 90 percent of it's all fine, but all the costs are in getting it that last mile to your doorstep. You know, the technology thing is the exact same.

[00:43:15] 

Everyone brings it up to like 90%, but 90 percent is really not useful in a restaurant. You know, and that's why we've really decided consciously, we're going to go in and customize the software around that individual client and view them as a partner and not a user of our software. I don't know. It seems to be something that's coming up more and more from customers that are saying they're fed up with, you know, here's our technology and you can use it, and we're not going to modify it for you.

I'm kind of curious how you view that. 

[00:43:47] Josh Sharkey: 

So I have a little bit of a different perspective, but it's also because we have a different approach, or a different, not approach, but a different, well, somewhat of a different space. I think. To be fair, you can't do that for every single mom and pop. You can't customize a thing for every single one unit, two unit, or even four or five unit.

[00:44:05] 

So one of it is just like, who are you selling to? Right? Because of course, if you have a very large group, yes, of course you should customize that. And that's, and that's for sure. I think for, it just depends on how you kind of getting up the tree for us. And it's more capital intensive. I spent the first few years of, of just focusing on adoption and how quickly can we get all of your disparate You know, in our case, recipe information, in meez, you know, seamlessly without you having to do anything and how can we make sure that it's even better than it was, you know, by an order of magnitude than it was in your static form.

[00:44:38] 

And then how do we get you to start using day one, right? And all we do is build tech for that for a very long time. You have to do that so that it can work for everybody. And then, of course, over time you, you iterate on it. One of the things that you have to do, of course, is just be focused on you can't service the entire world.

[00:44:53] 

So if you try to build a tool for everyone, it won't work. You have to do, you know, pick your lanes. So it's just a matter of, I think it's just a matter of cost benefit, right? Like, yes, you know, if you can, if someone can have you customize something, you know, then that's great. And there are brands where that makes a ton of sense and you should do that.

[00:45:11] 

And I agree, like it's, you know, that for them that's going to make a lot more sense. Plus, likely the brands that are much larger are a lot more dialed in, a lot more, you know, standardizing how they do things. And that means that there's less flexibility in terms of like how software can help them and you have to, you know, tailor it to them.

[00:45:29] 

I think that's really important. So I think it's really just like different ways to skin the cat. Yeah, 

[00:45:33] Matt Wampler: 

I think you nailed it. I think it is just a different market. We're, we're a little bit more in that, uh, once you've gotten your systems dialed in, 15, 20 stores, it makes sense to have something built around you.

[00:45:43] 

But I do want to double click into what you were talking about on, you know, the SMB side and getting that figured out. One of the things that we're doing right now is, how do we productize our learnings, you know, with these larger groups to be able to provide some simple, easy to use product for the SMB market, something that they don't have to go through and set up and put time and energy into, but a way for them to get exposure and, you know, some insight into how AI can come in and help their operation.

[00:46:18] 

One of the hardest things is restaurants have such little bandwidth that, you know, they're not sitting in focus groups, you know, they don't always have the time for feedback. How do you learn from your customers? As to what to build and where do you get those signals from? 

[00:46:34] Josh Sharkey: 

There's a number of ways. One, we do, we do surveys, but the majority of what we do is actually look at their actions.

[00:46:40] 

So, we spent a lot of time building infrastructure to understand all the things that are happening with each customer. How many recipes are you creating? How many ingredients have cost? How long did it take you to add those costs? Where did you get stuck? How did you get stuck? Why did you get stuck? What button did you click by mistake?

[00:46:59] 

What words did you, you know, like all the things that it's, you know, it takes a lot of, you know, information and data to, and volume to see like, oh, got it. That workflow right there is really confusing. We need to create, you know, you know, more clarity around how to get to the, to the end result. And it's just a lot of like, analyzing the product.

[00:47:15] 

I think what I'll say is, it's been a long time to learn this and I think we're lucky that like we just, unbeknownst to me because I don't come from tech, we just happen to be going down this route. It's like. The sort of the product led growth is sort of like that self serve motion of building a product that people can just pick up and use is something that is, that has to be fundamental to your business, I believe.

[00:47:37] 

Because it's sort of like deciding, I want to be the number one restaurant in the world or something. But then just kind of, like, you know, kind of going about it the same way that you, just a nice, you know, around the corner type restaurant. You want to be the number one restaurant in the world. Okay. I have to have the greatest ingredients.

[00:47:53] 

I have to know exactly where my pears are coming from and my turnips. And I have to have a very clear vision of this thing. And I have, like, my service needs to be like this. And all these things that, like, are so much time and energy and cost. But that's a different route, right? So like there's that sort of, you know, it takes a lot more product building and a lot less on the customer facing side of like the customizations and things that you're doing.

[00:48:16] 

So for us, like, that's just, it's just such a part of, of like the day to day for us is we're constantly looking at, and we have a lot of tools in place to help to understand, you know, like what are the journeys that people are taking and if they get stuck, what correlations can we find as to why they got stuck?

[00:48:32] 

Is it an onboarding thing? Is it like, you know, in the self onboarding, did this happen or this? Is there a button that got in the wrong place or to be dot word that the right way? Or, you know, when they type, do we need to have more fluidity of the language model to make sure that like this thing doesn't get stuck?

[00:48:45] 

And there's just a, it's honestly, it's, it's fun, but it's just a constant, it's like a daily, you know, iteration. And it's only been three and a half years. And I feel like it's only in the last four or five months where we feel really confident that someone can just kind of like pick this thing up and start using it.

[00:49:03] Matt Wampler: 

Knowing you and listening to you talk about it, I imagine it takes great self restraint for you not to get in there and be like, no, the button should be here. We need to, we need to do it like this. I'm terrible, dude. 

[00:49:13] Josh Sharkey: 

First of all, the first like year and a half, my poor CTO, she was just like, you know, cause I don't even know.

[00:49:18]

And I'm like telling all the, we have to build this. We need this. And this Now I've learned, you know, how to step back, but I was, uh, I was a madman. And I still, again, like, I love, I just love product, man. I love, like, ideating and coming up with, like, what is that, what is, like, the perfect state of what this thing could be, and how do we, like, you know, just, like, shift the paradigm of how people think about doing a thing.

[00:49:41] 

I love that. But it is a different way of going about things, and I think it does service more people, but I think it's also, it's just different, right? Because I think what you're doing, first of all, I think it's really smart the way you guys at Clear Cogs went about just solving the problem, like, as clearly and simply as possible.

[00:50:01] 

Like, literally, like, here, here's the numbers for the thing today, do you know what I mean? You don't even have to worry about software, you know? Just like, here's the number. Hey, nobody wants another SaaS subscription. Yeah, and I think that they're just different, you know, to get that number means you need to know that business really well and you have to understand the dynamics of it and all these things and, and you have to be really personal to that business, they're just different approaches, you know, and I think there's a really deep dive that obviously has to happen in that regard, you need to be able to do that well.

[00:50:28] Matt Wampler: 

I give Osa all the, all the credit on that. He literally would just say no to everything. You bring me customers that are gonna pay, put them on the phone with me and, you know, he would sit there and be like, why, why? And eventually they get to like, no, I really need that. Okay, we'll build it. Like, otherwise I'd have built just, you know, every bell and whistle that I always wanted.

[00:50:44] Josh Sharkey: 

I remember vividly a dinner. I was having dinner with Osa. I invited him to the Smith in Chicago, or the Loyalist, I think. And he came to dinner with us. And I was talking to him about, I was the first time I ever met him, and this was like a year and a half ago or something, and it was, it was During NRA last year, I think, and I was talking about product, and I just, I vividly remember that about Osa.

[00:51:06] 

Like, telling him, like, the most obvious thing that, like, you know, yeah, you should do this, and he's like, nah, not yet. It's like, yeah, I love that, man. 

[00:51:14] Matt Wampler: 

I was, you know, ashamed early on that we sent out email reports, and it turned out to be one of best things ever because people didn't want to log in and it was accessible on every device.

[00:51:24] 

But, you know, you were talking a lot about, you know, hyper focusing on, you know, what feeds shouldn't build and what's next. What's next for meez? 

[00:51:31] Josh Sharkey: 

For us? Yeah. So, you know, I think we've spent a long time and we'll continue to spend time building for adoption. Building so that, like, we can be the universal recipe medium and that everyone in the, every food professional in the world can put their recipes in meez and that's all you do.

[00:51:46] 

Awesome. And now, of course, we've layered on. Things for your business, like, you know, menu engineering, profit optimization, like, you know, inventory, and of course, you can get nutrition and allergen analysis. So much that you can do with sort of training and, you know, and making sure that your, your product's consistent.

[00:52:02] 

We're doubling down on that with some more products that we're rolling out. What's cool about where we're at today is when we have so many, we have like over a million recipes and meals from all these, you know, all these restaurants and because of the way that we focused on making sure that day one, like these recipes are structured, even if they look beautiful, like, like the thing that you would use in the kitchen on the back end, they're so structured and all of that data is, is dialed in all the yields and conversions and stuff that like now turning on these additional like features for people is really pretty easy, actually, it's just about creating a really beautiful interface.

[00:52:38] 

So I'm pretty excited about some of the stuff we're going to be doing in terms of production and, and things like that. 

[00:52:43] Matt Wampler: 

You know, we're not far from a world where you could use large language models to pull customer reviews and match them up with recipes and understand that, you know, this is how much salt should be in tikka masala, or otherwise people say it's too salty and have kind of that digital brain of what tastes good.

[00:53:01] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, well, it's funny you say that. I think we actually do pull in customer reviews and insights, and that's going to be layered into something that we're launching to help you understand. how your menu correlates to other similar menus in terms of your profit margin versus theirs, your, your, you know, volume versus theirs, your sentiment versus theirs, so that you can create better recipes.

[00:53:24]

At the end of the day, like our, we have this sort of, you know, trifecta of, it's just three things that we want to do, like make sure that have a really accurate operation, that we maintain consistency, then we create profitability for you, and we significantly increase the profitability of your business.

[00:53:40] 

So all the things that we do, we sort of revolve around that. I think what's really fun that we're, I don't want to share too much, but I didn't plan for this to be honest, but what I want, the future of me is for meez is of course, we're going to always double down on making sure that we have the greatest recipe tool on the planet, which, you know, from an I'm biased perspective, I think, I think we do.

[00:54:00] 

Then we're going to continue to always have a piece of the road make this recipe tool better. Make it better. Make it better. But part of this is also that there's, you know, your recipes are your IP. And something that we're working a lot on right now is how do we help you generate, you know, value and or revenue from your IP.

[00:54:17] 

You own it, like it's yours, your data, your recipes that you worked on. And so we're working on some really interesting stuff around that, that we'll share pretty soon. That's really interesting. I did not think of it that way. It's honestly always been a part of What I wanted to build because again, we're kind of sidebar-ing here.

[00:54:36] 

I didn't believe I don't want to go too much into about me. Cause I want to make sure we stay on topic, but I will say that. The cookbook market also in general is just a completely antiquated model, right? I have a shelf behind me with a thousand cookbooks, but if I want to go make a Nuoc Cham recipe, I gotta go find that book within the shelf of all these things.

[00:54:59] 

I gotta open up the page. I gotta, you know, I'm making it for eight people, not for two. And I don't have this, but I have this. And all of that is like time and energy and just not fun, really. Like I want to just be able to just say, I want to Nuoc Cham. Oh, here's three recipes from your, from your books, and I have eight people, and I have, uh, you know, Thai bird chilies, not jalapenos.

[00:55:21] 

Cool, here you go. And so, there's a world where that, like, should exist, and I think that that's, you know, that's certainly in our future. 

[00:55:28] Matt Wampler: 

And do you think that restaurants are going to be, if I'm a, I, so I'm not a chef, cook is a hobby. I will say, 

[00:55:33] Josh Sharkey: 

I think I saw some bread that you made on Instagram. And I'll be honest, man, this is some good lookin bread.

[00:55:40] Matt Wampler:

I can throw it down in the bread world. I'm actually a really 

good cook. 

[00:55:43] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, look, you know what? I saw a couple of things. I think I might have seen some pizza or something. I was like, this guy, this guy's got some skills. He can cook. Oh, yeah, 

[00:55:50] Matt Wampler: 

I can throw it down. But I was never actually, like, a chef. But I can imagine that. I would never, like, me personally, like, I like to experiment and make things with what I have, right? Just like an actual chef at a restaurant, like, oh, I need to come up with this dish. You know, can you give me a recipe for it? Is that how that world works, like, or is that like the absolute, I would never want to do that as a chef?

[00:56:13] Josh Sharkey: 

What I'll say, and I can't speak for all chefs, I could speak for, you know, a lot of them, I think. We always make something our own. Right, so, that said, everything stems from something else, for the most part. Either, you know, someone invented, you know, this new chickpea miso, right? So that, that happens. But it stemmed from miso, right?

[00:56:29] 

And a process of miso. And everything is sort of iterative. So, the idea of taking a recipe and making it word for word, one for one, I don't think anybody, you know, we don't do that very often. I don't do that probably ever, right? But, I very often will take something and iterate on it. Right? And so if there's a, if Gray Kunz has a, a lobster Thermidor sauce that's a rec his recipe, I it's an amazing sauce.

[00:56:54] 

I might make it just as is once, but then I'm going to iterate on it. And say, you know what? I want to use, I want to use Amontillado this time instead of, instead of Brandy. And I think instead of crashing the tomatoes, I'm going to try using cherry tomatoes and burn them a bit. You know, like, we make them our own, and that's every recipe.

[00:57:12] 

What, what I will say is that, it's kind of chaos if you don't have some sort of frame of reference. Like if, I just said Nguoc Cham, one of my favorite sauces. It's a table sauce from Vietnam. It's got garlic, and it's got shallots or red onions, and lime juice, and sometimes rice vinegar, and fish sauce, and 

[00:57:28] Matt Wampler: 

Not a fan of the fish sauce, that's why I'm, I'm subbing that out.

[00:57:31] Josh Sharkey: 

Well, you know, if you like it or not, but it's an amazing sauce. That said, there's a ratio, at least for me, that I've, that I've used for, for years, That I always start with. And I learned that ratio, ironically, from Rick Moonen. And I have iterated on it, over the years. So I've tweaked some things, I took out the rice vinegar.

[00:57:50] 

I added, sometimes I add peanut butter, sometimes I'll add like, you know, coconut milk or some coconut flesh or something. And, you know, different things, right? So I'll always iterate on it. But I have that base, you know, so I always have that base to sort of iterate on. So anyways, it's like I just do everything from, you know, from, from the hip.

[00:58:09] 

There are some things you do. If I'm gonna take a piece of, you know, a ribeye, I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna put it on a, on a rack and I'm gonna season it and make sure I season it well from above and let it sit and I'm gonna sear it and it's gonna be delicious. But you know, the chimichurri that I make with that ribeye, I might, there might be a base for that.

[00:58:24] 

And maybe I already just remembered it, right? So I know I'm gonna have this much garlic, this much zucchini. But there's usually like some sort of foundation, and then when you get into baking, it's like, there's always a foundation, right? 

[00:58:34] Matt Wampler: 

I'm not buying that. I, uh, the bakers love their scientific, everything has to be perfect.

[00:58:39] 

My experience in baking is that's not necessarily the case. 

[00:58:42] Josh Sharkey: 

Depends on what you're baking. Uh, you know, I think with some, something, I mean, there's, first of all, there's wiggle room, right? So like, whether your bread is like a, you know, 70 percent hydration or a 68%, You know, for the average person isn't going to have a lot of impact, but if you try to make it consistently, you're definitely going to, and then there's some things like, you know, if you're making a sponge cake or something, there's a, there's things that you're, you know, that you're following.

[00:59:05] 

And again, there's wiggle room, you know, you might not weigh your egg whites in grams, you might just use eight egg whites, but you're going to have some sort of frame of reference. You're going to say like, I'm going to add some egg whites. I'm gonna add some flour, you know? 

[00:59:18] Matt Wampler: 

So Josh, you're a thoughtful guy. I got, I got two questions for you. One, today, what is the greatest need for restaurants? What's top of mind for them? And two, I'm curious your thoughts on, you know, everything you just said, man. Let me get on meez, get on recipes and like, make something right, like, you guys are best in class, you know, what's the world look like?

[00:59:40] 

Is it more of the meez’s and seven shifts? Or is it all going to be gobbled up? And you can have one of three giant POS back out softwares that have every bell and whistle? That's kind of okay. 

[00:59:51] Josh Sharkey: 

I try not to predict the future. So I have no idea how that's actually going to all play out. in terms of like, is everything going to be consolidated or not?

[01:00:00] 

I mean, look, there's a world where that could happen where Toast keeps getting bigger and they start buying the best in class of things. There's a world where that doesn't happen. And, you know, and things, become like the best of this and the best of this and and there's just maybe there's a middleware that gets created that makes it easier for everybody so that everybody can connect.

[01:00:17] 

I don't actually know where that's going. What I will say is what the restaurants need most, I think, is probably a product of perspective because, you know, depends on what perspective you're looking at. I'm a chef, right? I'm a, I'm a product person. So even if I'm thinking about service and hospitality, whether it's food, for me, like the most important thing, the reason why.

[01:00:38] 

You start a restaurant, typically, it's because you're creative and you want to. You, you want to like give the world something. So, for me, and again, I don't know if this is the thing that all restaurants need, but for me, I want a world where people are creative and profitable. And unfortunately, there are too many times when an incredible restaurant goes out of business.

[01:01:06] 

And there are times when a restaurant that is crushes it. That's okay, by the way, because they might be creative in how they think about operations or, or, or finance, things like that, but like, you know, I would love a place where like, if you work your ass off and you make delicious food and you have unreasonable hospitality, let's say, and you just, you just love that.

[01:01:29] 

That you can also be profitable. And I think that restaurants are really hard and that too often people fail because of all the odds that are against you. For me, like the thing that I want all restaurants to have is the ability to be creative and profitable at the same time. 

[01:01:44] Matt Wampler: 

Man, we talk about it all the time, that the hardest thing to do in a restaurant is create that magic, the magic moment, the service, the food, the ambiance, like, it's really difficult to do, and yet, the people that are creating the magic, are disproportionately the ones that are not doing well financially.

[01:02:05] 

And yet it's the ones that provide a so so product that have mastered the cold analytics of the business that are succeeding today. And, you know, AI is not going to be able to fix everything, right? It's not going to be able to create the magic, but man, it is certainly good at the cold analytics side of things.

[01:02:23] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, look, there's a lot that, that it will fix. There's, uh, I mean, a lot. And there's a lot that it can help everybody. So, you know, I don't think we should discount that at all. And again, I also want, like, I think that, you know, we look at creativity sometimes as the food, right? Or maybe the service.

[01:02:42] 

But, like, there is something to be said about, like, creativity as it relates to the operation. Or as it relates to, you know, just the way that you run your business. I think that Chipotle is a really creative company. The food has been the same for a very long time. I mean, they do, they did bring in some, you know, some, some chefs to help and, but there's other ways to be creative to how to think about like how to run your business. 

[01:03:07] Matt Wampler: 

So sometimes I wish restaurants were a little less creative because, you know, you're so good at like walking in and there's situations like, well, I'll just move this person over here and figure this out. And like, they're so good at that, that it's, you know, when it comes to technology, it's like, well, you know, I'll just, uh, I'll pull in the spreadsheet and we'll do this and we'll do that.

[01:03:22] 

Like they can find ways to hodgepodge things together in MacGyver esque ways, which is admirable. Also, you know, long term, probably a bad decision for them. 

[01:03:34] Josh Sharkey: 

Well, I mean, look, man, all like sort of cliche aside, that's on us, right? That's on you and me to, like, make it so seamless that they don't even have to think about it.

[01:03:43] 

And it's the same as as using that spreadsheet or sort of like hodgepodging things together is, and that's what makes me so excited about this, is like, is doing that, right? Is like, they don't have the time and, uh, and part of it is even when they do have the time, they'd rather spend that time making their food better, making their service better, like making their people happier.

[01:04:05] 

So these are the things that, like, we can sort of, you know, help with and, and, and make it just as easy to, to use ClearCogs as it is to pull that spreadsheet up.

[01:04:12] Matt Wampler: 

And the bar has been set so low, right, from historic technology standpoint, that, like, there are so many opportunities to exceed expectations.

[01:04:21] 

Now we just need to get over the bitterness of technology's not going to be all that it, you know, is talked up to be. 

[01:04:26] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. I mean, look, there's, I love when I find, like, an app or something that just sort of changes the way that I do things. I'm not going to mention this, this calendar app because I've mentioned it too many times and they're coming on the podcast in a couple weeks.

[01:04:38] 

I just talked about it so much that I actually had them on as guests. 

[01:04:41] Matt Wampler: Well, you're going to have to text it to me later because now. 

[01:04:43] Josh Sharkey: 

I'm kidding. It's called Reclaim. I love when I find something and I'm like, man, what was things like before I used this thing? And that's what's cool about technology. And I think it actually becomes fun when you do that.

[01:04:54]

I think that, yeah, there are certainly times when it gets a bad rap, but that's for a reason, right? Because you look at most of the things that we've gotten in the restaurants. These sort of MS DOS style things. 

[01:05:03] Matt Wampler: 

We had an intern or an early employee that had never heard of Calendly. And I'm like, let me just change your life. You know, never going to ask for another time again. 

[01:05:14] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, and that's what's cool about software too, by the way, is Calendly is now pretty ubiquitous. Yeah. But, also the idea of a link that brings you to a calendar is now ubiquitous. Everybody has that, right? And they did that, and before then there wasn't really a thing, and now it's hard to find a software that doesn't have, that's using a calendar, that doesn't have the ability to like have a link created for you, whether it's HubSpot or Reclaim, that does a similar thing and that's because Someone, same thing as a recipe, someone came before and like did, did something cool and then you, and you riff on it.

[01:05:50] Matt Wampler: 

Which means you got to come up with some more stuff, Josh. 

[01:05:53] Josh Sharkey: 

Well, let me ask you this question that I ask some folks. I ask it sometimes all the time. What makes you really angry? Like blood boiling angry? Gosh, I don't get angry that often. It doesn't need to manifest in, in like screaming, but like the thing that like when it happens just really like boils your blood.

[01:06:11] Matt Wampler: 

Okay, so growing up in hospitality. You know, we were very much a team, a unit, right? It's very relational. And I would say that we've always, in every organization I've been a part of, we've always operated under this framework of, we will adamantly disagree with each other. We will state our objections, you know, we will talk it out, but when we decide, we are going to move forward as a team in that direction.

[01:06:40] 

Right? We may change directions, right? But we're not working against each other. The thing that probably aggravates me more than anything else is when I think that somebody is working in bad faith, or if I even have to second guess whether or not they may not be giving their all in a way to sabotage something.

[01:06:58] 

Yeah. And it doesn't happen very often. We've been blessed with great employees, and, you know, we've built an amazing team, and we've built it around people, and not necessarily positions. But yeah, that's probably the thing that gets me the most. 

[01:07:11] Josh Sharkey: 

So you really value effort and integrity.

[01:07:14] Matt Wampler: 

Integrity. Effort, you know, look, I value the guy that gets results.

[01:07:19] 

You know, I don't know exactly how much effort he puts in, or she puts in, but effort to work against you. You know, the organization, or work for political means, you know, that just gets me. How about you? 

[01:07:35] Josh Sharkey: 

So, this came about from an exercise I did at this, like, off site. For me, it's a lack of attention to detail, anytime.

[01:07:43] 

So, to sort of distill it down, like, I really value the pursuit of excellence. So, when someone brings me, uh, a document, or a, a deck, or something like that, that is ready, and it's misaligned, and there's misspellings, and there's things that like, you know, that might, I don't know, that might seem innocuous, and again, this is personal to me, it doesn't mean that this person is not giving their all, or it might just be they just don't think, that they don't consider these things as important, but the attention to detail, to me, is like, it's the first thing I notice, I'm like, what?

[01:08:22] 

Why bring something if it isn't the best thing you could possibly, you know, present? And that always, that's like, always the thing that sticks with me. Probably comes from my days cooking, but that pursuit of excellence in all things that we do is like what I value most and also what I love. makes me, you know, rattles me the most when I see it.

[01:08:42] 

On behalf of all the type B people, we are, we're not happy with that result. You would fire me within 30 minutes if I was working. 

[01:08:50] Josh Sharkey: 

That said, you know, I try to balance that because we have these first principles at meez and the first one is operational empathy. So in everything that you do is you have to be, you know, have operational empathy.

[01:08:59] 

That's a good one. But we are results driven, right? So I don't care if you spend 100 hours on something, Or you spent four hours on something. And by the way, I don't care if it didn't cross the T's and dot the I's. If the result that we asked for what happened, then boom, all good. And that's why it's a personal value for me, because I also understand that.

[01:09:23] 

It doesn't need to be a company value. There, I love it when I see it, but I don't always expect it. And I also know that it can't be contradictory to being results driven, because there are very often times when you need to get something out quickly, and that's okay. And, and that's where I sort of love that distinction between sort of personal values and company values.

They don't always have to be exactly the same. 

[01:09:46] Matt Wampler: 

Yeah, I mean, look, I think that's a good value to have. I'd say we have the exact same value. Just go about it in different ways. You know, first, our hires is how do we get type A people that are perfectionists around Matt, so that, uh, you know, they overcome my weaknesses.

[01:10:02] 

You know, it's, uh, again, going back to team building and hospitality, you know, I'm big on how do you build the right team and get the right people in the right places? And then the rest takes care of itself. 

[01:10:13] Josh Sharkey: 

Well, this was awesome. And I'm really grateful to have the time to chat with you longer. Usually we have quick meetings.

[01:10:18] 

Usually you're like, I gotta go. I got another one. So I'm glad that we found, you know, some more time because you're a busy guy. You know, we're all busy here and we found more time to, to chat today. So. Thank you, Matt. And congrats on all the growth, man. Josh, I appreciate you making the time. 

[01:10:33] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for tuning into The meez Podcast. The music from the show is a remix of the song art mirror by an old friend, hip hop artist, fresh daily for show notes and more visit getmeez.com/podcast. That's G E T M double easy. com forward slash podcast. If you enjoyed the show, I'd love it if you can share it with fellow entrepreneurs and culinary pros.

[01:10:56] 

And give us a five star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts. Keep innovating. Don't settle. Make today a little bit better than yesterday. And remember, it's impossible for us to learn what we think we already know. See you next time.