ClearCOGS

What if your managers could get 1 hour back every day — and every taco stayed fresh? 🌮⏱️ Palenque turned prep guesswork into AI-powered precision with ClearCOGS: ✅ 1 hr saved per manager/day ✅ Less waste & over-prepping ✅ Fresher food & happier staff ✅ Scaled operations

Your labor % can look fine on paper while your GM is drowning. Overstaffed at 10am. Understaffed at 12:15. Two restaurants can hit the same 28% and deliver completely different results. The difference isn't the number. It's the shape of the day.

A busy dining room isn’t the same as a profitable one. Strong sales. Stubborn costs. Something leaking. It usually is in food, labor, or overhead. The best operators don’t grind harder. They build better systems. Here are 25 ways to start. hubs.ly/Q04dVGGm0

What if your stockroom is quietly tying up thousands of dollars in capital? @ Groucho's, @ Deric Rosenbaum shares how smarter inventory management changed the way they operate:

Food waste doesn’t start at the dumpster. It starts with the decisions made before the kitchen opens. The brands reducing waste aren’t working harder — they’re planning smarter, earlier, and with better data. Swipe to see the numbers.

Everyone talks about AI that predicts. The real shift is AI that decides. In this clip, Deborah Matteliano from AWS describes a fully agentic restaurant: AI negotiating supplier pricing, managing inventory, guiding GMs on what to promote, and telling staff what to do next.

Restaurants waste 4–10% of every food dollar. Most of it is predictable but it hides as a small variance instead of a fixable $60,000 problem. We’ve seen brands cut prep waste by 52% in 30 days and add ~2% to margin without raising prices.

Most AI tools promise better predictions. Very few stay long enough to actually get them right. As Deric Rosenbaum of Groucho’s Deli puts it, accurate forecasting is like “tuning the Ferrari.” It takes time, precision, and a deep understanding of how the operation really runs.

Every growing restaurant has one. The spreadsheet that started as a quick fix and became mission-critical. It worked when things were simple. It breaks when complexity shows up. Spreadsheets don’t fail. They just don’t scale. hubs.ly/Q04bnBLv0

Every morning, your best manager spends 2 hours doing math. Not cooking. Not training. Not leading. We call it the Two-Hour Tax. 700+ hours lost per year. Per location. The best operators don't work harder. They eliminate the tax.👇

Most operators think the problem is waste. It's not. It's the decision before it. Guesswork prep. Instinct orders. Knowledge stuck in one manager's head. Groucho's Deli didn't adopt AI to change who they are. They adopted it to protect what they built.

Forecasting used to mean looking at last Tuesday and hoping for the best — until margins got tighter. Now operators need direction before the rush, not just reports. Here's what that looks like in practice > hubs.ly/Q049z44x0

The kitchens winning on margins are usually the ones reducing waste. Not a coincidence. When you know what to prep and order ahead of time, you stop reacting and start deciding. Costs drop. Waste drops. Performance improves.

Everyone says, “We’ll just build our own AI.” What they underestimate isn’t the model. It’s the data, maintenance, and constant tuning required to make it work in real operations. We broke down what operators need to know before they try > hubs.ly/Q048T_PF0

You didn't build a bad spreadsheet. You built a system that depends entirely on you to run it. One busy lunch rush and it all falls apart. The fix isn't a better spreadsheet. It's removing yourself as the bottleneck.

Profitability, not revenue, fuels real restaurant growth. On The Restaurant AI Podcast, Toby Malbec explains why top line without bottom line stalls expansion and why brands that win balance AI with real human moments. Full episode out now.

Bagel operator shared what changed after ClearCOGS: $4K/month saved. No menu changes. No cost cutting. Just better forecasting. The key takeaway? Fix the leaks before cutting corners or raising prices. You have the data. You need a system that turns it into daily decisions.

Food waste isn’t a kitchen problem. It’s a data problem. No new POS. Just ingredient-level AI telling teams what to prep before the shift.

"We already have experienced people. AI isn't going to move the needle for us." That's almost exactly what the Goop Kitchen team said. They added 2 margin points in month one. Real operators. Real numbers. No sales deck math. Swipe to see what changed →

"We already have experienced people. AI isn't going to move the needle for us." That's almost exactly what the Goop Kitchen team said. They added 2 margin points in month one. Real operators. Real numbers. No sales deck math. Swipe to see what changed →

Most restaurants are stuck in performative marketing. On the Restaurant AI Podcast, Matt Wampler talks with Michelin-starred restaurateur Josh Kopel about what actually drives growth, from AI in ops to fixing 10% website conversions. Watch on YouTube, Apple, or Spotify.