¶ Intro / Opening
You're listening to Heritage Radio Network. I. From kitchen chaos to well-oiled machines. Get ready for newfangled technology and old school Know-how stories and a good bit of fun. I'm Simon, and this is called Area Mechanic You're listening to Heritage Radio Network. I.
With me today. Is Matthew Wampler from Clear Cogs, uh, returning to culinary mechanic. Matt, welcome
Simon. Always a pleasure. Good to see you
and good to be seen, but good to see you too. Um, when last we saw our heroes, uh, you had been rolling along with clear cogs and I was just hoping that we could. And I get a little bit of an update about where things are. 'cause I think that the platform that you have created is pretty, pretty fascinating and, and just, I want our listeners to understand more about it. So take it away, man.
Yeah, man. I mean at this point we're a 3-year-old company and you know, you kind of look back and you start out as two guys in a garage just trying to figure things out. You know, there's a year of that. There's a year of just grinding it out, trying to sell and figure out exactly what the product's gonna be. And you know, 2024 was a great year for us and.
All of a sudden you wake up and we're in four countries, a hundred brands ranging from, you know, regional chains to multi-billion dollar publicly traded companies. Uh, it's, it's been a, a rollercoaster. We just closed our, our seed funding round, so we got a, you know, uh, uh, we now have a couple million dollars of, you know, capital to really go take this thing to the next level. So I, it is 2025 is an exciting time.
That's amazing. So give us the, I don't know, 5,000 foot view of what?
¶ Matt's journey growing Clear Cogs from startup to serving 100+ brands
Of how you're helping restaurants.
Yeah, I mean, running a restaurant is incredibly hard as my buddy Jason Berkowitz loves to say. It's a thankless job a lot of days where you just walk in the door and wait to get, you know, sucker punched in the gut. Uh, you know, we're a predictive analytics company. Our goal is to help restaurants have more days go, right? Um, so the way it works is look.
We tell you, here's the right amount of food to prep the right number of people to be in the store and you know what to order so that you know you're not playing catch up and reacting.
Amen. To not playing catch up.
You know, it's funny, I was just, just having this conversation and you know. I remember turning around my first restaurant, like it was a total nightmare. You know, I, I walk in the front door, all you can smell is the grease trap hitting you, the HVA Cs out. There's like four employees. Like we had ice buckets on top of the cold table compressors to keep the, the from overheating.
It was, it was one of those, you know, classic restaurant turnaround experiences and like slowly, I, I got the hang of it and, you know. Once you get dialed in, there's this magic feeling in a restaurant. And like, whenever I think of dialed in, it always takes me back there. I remember, um, homecoming 2012, we just got crushed like Maryland was playing. Uh, I think it was NC State.
And for whatever reason I. Everybody was in town, like line out the door for eight hours, you know, two cold tables fully stacked, just nonstop. But like on that day, like we were dialed in, we got everything right. You know, how can we use technology to help our people be more dialed in and get more of these days? Right? Ugh.
I mean, uh, I, that really makes me think about, like, I, I met this chef a couple years back and she was in Indianapolis and her restaurant was like two miles from the Indy 500. Yeah. And during that time, she would run 24 hour prep and, and she
¶ The magic of having a "dialed in" restaurant operation
would have like refrigerated trucks outside the back door and. And I and I, I remember looking at her and I said, Lydia, like, how do you do that? And she's like, we planned for six months. She goes, and that part kind of sucks, but when we get close to it, everybody gets excited. Everybody's in. Sometimes we have to get, like, we have to get like Jimmy and Terry to bring their brother-in-law in for a couple of days and they're excited and then it's just go, go, go.
But we've done all this planning and we've got all this information from previous years and we use it. And she goes, the first year was awful. The. The second, third, fourth, those are fun, but now she says, we know what we're doing. So the, the dialed in thing like hits me. I'm like, that's it.
Well, and so like, so my, my first door was on a college campus. We were basically open 24 hours a day. Like, you know, you'd close at like 3:00 AM and you know, clean the place out. You're out at five, prep starts at 6:00 AM Right. And you know, it was funny, that was the first store, so that was what I was used to. High volume lots going on. And by the way, those great days, the Indy 500, those are the wonderful moments, those feelings. That's great.
But my second store opened up really low volume and you find it's so much harder. At low volume. Right? And it's, it's not the Friday night that you get wrong that really hits the bottom line. It's, you know, the Tuesday, Wednesday, it's these little decisions where if you have any little inefficiency in a low volume store. It really hits you.
So like, you know, one of the things that was a motivation for Clear Cox was, you know, we had these decisions, you know, they're really set decisions every day.
¶ How small inefficiencies hit hardest in low-volume stores
It's two hours prior to close. You know, can I shut the ovens off and start cleaning? Or do I need to bake another cycle of bread? You know, because at the end of the day, if you don't have enough bread, you can't serve customers and whatever bread you have left over, you basically are thrown away, right? So like that hits you on the bottom line. You know, our guys were literally looking out the door, you know, is it nice out? You know, is there traffic? And they make a guess.
And none of the technology we had had an answer to this, right? You could go look at historic sales, but like. That still doesn't answer the question, do I need to bake another cycle of bread? And so fundamentally we thought, look. Let's go use the data they have in their POS. Let's go look at every Tuesday, let's look at, you know, that last two hours, how weather affects it, what's on the menu. Go really deep on the data side also, that we can provide a really simple answer.
To an operator in their language. You know, today it's Tuesday, two hours prior to close 18 sticks of bread, and that's fundamentally still what the company does. Take all of your data, synthesize it down to those key decision points each day so that you're just turning down the inefficiencies and you know, it adds percentage points to the bottom line.
Absolutely. You know, I, I love the granularity of that because I, I think about the days, I mean, God, I'm old, so I think about cooking and working in rest, you know, restaurants, whether they be small ones or big ones or being in, in hotels and it's like you're, you're literally like licking your finger walk, walking out and like putting it out to the wind. You know, and going, okay, what's about to happen? You know, or just, and you have no, like, there's just no way to to think about it.
And by the way, hats off to restaurants. They do a good job at it. I know we all like to complain when somebody runs out of this or that, but like for the most part, you know, the men and women that are running restaurants. Are actually doing a great job at guessing, but you know, that's stressful and inefficient. And if we can make their lives a little simpler and you know, a little more profitable, like, let's do it.
Yeah. I mean, uh, I'm helping a, a restaurant company right now, and by the way, this guy, as of December. 23rd, I think had two restaurants. And here we are on, well, we're in early April. By the time this airs, it'll be a little bit later than that. But, uh, early April, and this guy's now got four operating units. He doubled the size of his company in the last four months.
That's so hard, right? Like, dude, how do I get two new general managers? How do I get, you know, it's, yeah.
Well, uh, a, a small plug for culinary mechanic here. I, he, he and I are pretty good friends and he, his right hand man called me one day and said, I need you to come in and do that thing you do. And I was like, what, what thing is it that I do? And he is like, I need you to come in and like, talk to the young managers, the young people that have never been managers and help them understand what they're about to, to go through. And so we did that for a month prior to his newest opening and.
I mean, they're literally now a week into their fourth restaurant. And one of the newest managers came to me and he is like, I had two problems over the weekend.
¶ Using predictive analytics to answer practical operational questions
I said, yeah, tell me about 'em. And he starts telling me about this young lady who was, who just started crying in the middle of service. 'cause it was, the pressure was on. Yeah. And so they got through the rush and he got, well he got her off the line. He took over and this is like the, the manager. So he's actually the cashier of a quick serve joint. Right.
Watching, but he stepped in and he finished the orders, let her kind of go get some water, pulled her off to the side and he said, you know, kind of talked her through the whole thing and said, where are you? What's going on? And she's like, oh, it's just, it's hard. He says, we're on day three of a brand new restaurant. Everybody's struggling. It's okay. And you know, kind of like made sure she was all right. And then he says, I gotta ask though, like. Do you want to be here?
Oh yes, I want to be here. He says, then we'll help you. Everybody here will help you. And Simon,
like by the way, like that's the moment, right? That's the moment where you either lose an employee that could be great, or like you create that great, you know, staff member. Team member, right? That, that's amazing. I love it. People forget, and so it's
the
people
business. Totally. People all day long. And so the best part is he goes, so are you gonna go home now? She says, no, I'm, you know, she kind of brightened up and she said, no, I'm, I'm in it. And I said, okay. So like, what happened from there? And he is like, she dug in and like by the end of the shift she, she had like, she had it. And I said, cool. Now make sure that tomorrow she gets a high five just for showing up and a high five every time she's doing things right. And by the way.
Congratulations. And I gave him a high five and I was like, that's exactly what we've been talking about for the last. He's like, I didn't ever know how to do that before. Thank you so whatever. But that's, it's like we don't get that training. Like as, as people, generally we, we aren't taught to be leaders, so it's fun for me, but it's like those are the things that run those restaurants, those are the things that help turn what you described around, right? As how we get the people moving
in the chaos of the day, running a restaurant, there are all these little things you're doing like. That's the one that really matters, those few moments because it's six months from now when there's a new employee that's in that same situation and you've created the culture where she is going to remember that moment and pull that employee aside and be like, Hey, it's okay. How can I help? That's, that's huge. But Simon, I had a question for you. So yes. Going from two to four.
I mean, I, I remember it vividly. You know, one, you just eat, sleep and breathe at your restaurant. You know, two, you can split yourself in two, spend half your time here and half your time there and, you know, play whack-a-mole with problems.
¶ Leadership moment: how to handle team member breakdowns
But four, you can't. And I always, I actually struggled with that transition. How do you, from a, you know, owner, area manager perspective, how do you get over that hurdle?
I think the biggest thing for this guy and, and I think in general is you gotta surround yourself with people who care, who love it, who are living it, right? Like his second location is his banger. It's across the street from very much like what you said on a campus. He's across the street from Seattle University, which is, you know, it, it is. It is perfect. These are young kids who actually tend to come from a little bit of money like this. This isn't your like average community college.
It's a little bit, a little bit wealthier. And so the kids come in and they, they keep him rocking from eight in the morning for breakfast all the way through to 11 o'clock at night. And at 11 o'clock is when lunch really starts to go. And man, I was in there yesterday and I was like, oh, I gotta get outta here. This is scary. Like this is like a flood of people. I. His manager is just this steely-eyed little lady. Uh, if she's four foot 11, I'm shocked. Like maybe with her big sneakers on.
Yeah. Yeah. And she's just, she's, you know, she's kind of hovering behind people and like checking on 'em and making sure everything's okay. You hear her like walk into the prep kitchen going, no, no, I need that other salsa. Now, right? It's, it's tacos. So it's, it's Mexican food and it's, she's like, I need that now. And then she walks back up on the line and goes, you go over there and, and just, she's just driving it. And so, but go have one those,
you can have one of those, right? Or you can have two of those. But like, if I gotta go from two to four, I need two more people like that. And they don't just magically grow on
trees. So I asked him, when I started working with him, I asked the owner, I said, Hey, can, can I be like, let me help you find a new manager and, and bring them in. He's like, you wanna bring somebody in from outside? I said, yeah, you need like a solid manager for this new place. And he said, no. And I was like, oh, okay. Tell me more about no, like you need, he's like, no. If you come to work with me, then I want you to help me grow my managers from the ground up.
He says, I have people who love it here. I have a couple of people who I think can do the work. They just don't know what the work is, and they just don't know how to approach it. And one of 'em is that guy who kept the young lady from leaving, and his name is Miguel. And Miguel is a stud.
Shout out to Miguel. He's, he's killing, uh,
yes. Every moment of every day, he is on it. I like, I've been so impressed with him, but he's never been taught how to think like a coach. Like a leader. Like a manager. Right. And so I. I've been kind of trying to give him as much of that and really help him through the little things. And I love the fact that he comes to me and tells me what he did and says, did I do that right? I'm like, you slated. Right? But he's this, this owner is committed to his people and his culture because.
He was at a, the, the best story ever of this guy is they were catering a wedding for some good, good friends, right? People that I used to work with, people that he used to work with. And the, the little lady, they make tortilla, when they go onsite for catering, they make all tortillas to order right there. Wow. Every single one. And he was like trying to stock the buffet with tacos and he turns with a tray and he goes, okay, gimme those tortillas.
And she looks up at him and she goes, Nope, they're not ready yet.
¶ Culture building: when staff uphold quality standards with owners
And I thought to myself, when you have trained your people so well that you won't let the owner deviate from the structure and quality and integrity of product, you have done it correctly. And that's when he looked at, at. All of his people and said, I love you. Thank you. Yes. Well wait. Turned around to the buffet and said, hang on a minute. Tortillas are, are not quite ready, but we're making 'em fresh.
And obviously they're outdoors at a wedding and they can see that they're cooking right there. It was all good. But that is the culture. Right? And so the, and though the shortish answer to your question of how do you go from two to four is people and expectations and. Being clear about what it is you want, right? And what, what it is you want from those people. And yeah, it's hard to find one and it's hard to find two. And how do you get four? His answer is, people, people, people.
That first manager, here's another piece that blew me away, that for that manager, that little tiny lady, she was having a one-on-one with him yesterday with the owner.
And she says, I'm gonna cover my, I'm gonna cover my Tuesday, Wednesday shifts and put a, put somebody into cashier and I'm gonna go to the ghost kitchen, which is location number three because I wanna make sure that the food quality is good because I'm, we put a new guy in there and I wanna make sure that that's really going well. 'cause there's not actually a manager on site for that. 'cause it's such a small thing.
She just, so I'm gonna go spend two days and really make sure that everything is the way we want it. And that is, uh, once again, it's, it's the culture of this is, and he said, he looks at me and he says, I didn't tell her to do that. I didn't even ask her to do that. That's what she felt is, was, is needed.
I had this long debate with Josh from me about this exact thing. He's a process guy, right? Which I'm envious of. I am not Type A. He's type A process, right? He had processes for everything and you can manage the process, which is very logical and works really well. I always came about it more on the people side, right? Like you get the right people, you get 'em aligned, you set 'em free.
¶ The balance between processes and people in restaurant management
Yeah. You give 'em encouragement, they'll figure out the problems. Like you put processes in place when you can't get the right people to make the right decisions. I don't know about you, but I did not get into the restaurant business to spend all my time in a cramp little office. I love being in the kitchen, out on the floor. And if you're nodding your head right now, I want to introduce you to an amazing company called Starfish.
Look, I've gotten to know their CEO Jordan recently and what they're building really impresses me. They're using AI to read your P and L and they're going to email you actionable insights every week. So you can lower your costs and increase revenue. Best part is you don't have to spend time digging through your P and L's pouring over reports in that cramped little office. Starfish is going to do that for you so you can get back to the part of the business that you love.
If you're interested, go to their website, use starfish. com that's U S E starfish. com and tell them Simon sent you.
Okay. I'm right in the middle. Yeah, no, I, I I, there, there's a healthy in between. So check this out. I was born, I, I am the child. Well, first of all, I'm the child of hippies, right? But I am the child of. Uh, somebody who did social work for years, some very like, so empathy is strong in my blood. Okay. But the other side is Dad was a research guy.
Oh. So he, he's the guy that you went to when you were a graduate student in environmental sciences at the University of Massachusetts, and you have a thesis that you want to prove. You, you, he says, oh, you want to get this result. This is the process that you go through. You do this, you measure that, you study this, you measure that. Do, do, do. This is, this is the equipment that you need to do that. This is the, these are the number of tests, these are the number of processes.
So. I'm the process guy, right? As growing up. But as I got farther into my career, I realized no matter how good my process is, if I don't have people buying in, if I don't have people who believe doesn't matter, I I am just a one person. Yeah. And so what come to believe is that processes are those bumpers you put on the bowling alley. Right. Processes keep you hemmed on from side to side. Right. And it, the ability to go down the, the bowling alley is.
Amazing when you can't get off the rails. 'cause the processes keep you there.
Right? Yeah. And they help you with growing and being systemized, going from two to four, right? Like you need to start having processes in place. Uh, you know, I, I kinda got a kick out of it, you know, I came from the franchised background. Right, right. So. The processes were in place. They gave me the playbook for success. This is what you do every day. This is how often you scrub the mop guards and when you clean the grease trap, and so on and so forth.
So I didn't have to think about the processes, but I. The fact that they were there is why I was successful and why you're able to run, you know, 3000 units, you know, all with same high standards and service. You know, I, I often forget that, you know, as an independent owner operator, right, you have to kind of write your own processes, and if you don't have 'em going from, you know, two to four would be very, very difficult.
Yeah. And so some of what I do with this guy is I'm like, so what's the way that we're going to go? Go? Like, what is the way? Right? Yeah. And, and, and the, the great thing is his, his brand is named after his father. It's Carmelo's tacos. Right. So it's the Carmelo's way. It's great, you know, it's really easy. It's like, what is the carmelo's way for this? And he's like, oh, we do this. And I'm like, where is it written down to? Tell me that? He's like, oh, I don't know.
And so at that point, I open up my computer and I start typing and we, we
¶ Scaling from two to four locations through people development
create like a, a quick little form on it. And then he now has, uh, really advanced himself. He hired a part-time person who used to manage for him. And that person is doing all of his HR stuff. So all the onboarding stuff just all goes to him, all the training goes to him. It's great, you know. But again, by the way, you've mentioned,
you've mentioned tacos enough that I think I'm gonna be getting a taco this afternoon.
Yeah, man. Yeah, man. Uh. This guy, like his stuff is so good.
So you work with all these companies, right? You got carmelo's, like how are they doing forecasting? How do they know how much salsa to have? How do they know how much chicken to marinade today for tomorrow? Like what, what, and maybe not just one company, but in general, what do you see out there?
I see people just, I see some people using their data. Some people are using their data on a very elemental level. Good order guides. They put in the on hand the order column. They, they analyze it day over day. If they're smart, they keep last week's order guide just behind this week's order guide and they can go back and look at a week's history. That's the elemental old school data usage. Yeah. Right. Uh, these guys, they are so busy that it kind of doesn't matter. Just order more.
Yeah. Like they now have four and that fourth location is. In a neighborhood and they took, they had some building issues, so they took almost four months longer than expected because it was the building that kept them from, from finishing. Yeah. So their sign, their neon sign has been lit for four months. The day they opened, people started just walk in. Right. It's, it's not like, oh, we didn't know you were here. No, people have been waiting. So this is gonna be a monster.
It's in, it's in a neighborhood, it's in the center of a neighborhood sandwiched between two, like are they subways, train stations, I guess. And the local community colleges down there. But on the north side of them is like the bar, the bar district of, of Seattle, right. It's called Capitol Hill. And it's, it is the party place. So. I can't even imagine what's gonna happen. I, I am just like, oh, prep more. Just prep more. Because that's what they do.
They, they just like, when, when in doubt they just keep going with more.
I got a great delayed store opening story for you, but let, let's finish this conversation real quick. So, so you've got the old school way, right? Like I, I'm filling out forms. I, I, I can go look through 'em. I can see what I've been ordering in the past. Very analog, you know, uh, uh, looking at the numbers, how else are people doing it?
You know, that's the bulk of it. Other people are just like, I think I need this. And so I do that. I don't see a lot of people yet doing anywhere near what you've got. I. Because they, some, some people don't know that it exists and some people are like, uh, we're in analog, especially small restaurants. We're in an analog group. We live in an analog world. And so even the smallest pieces, like some of the POS systems that still exist, blow me away.
Like toast is this quantum leap spot on is a quantum leap. The amount of information that you can get, and I'm good with data and I'm good with reports and I still struggle to be able to like I. Know all the, the ways that I can use that information.
Yeah. Well, I mean, hey, as an industry, we struggle just to get recipes digitized, you know, and get yields Correct. You know, let alone shout out to mes. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Hey, you know what? There's another quantum leap. You know, it's, it's, it's funny, I mean, you just go back 10 years, you know, chow, like, you know, people had like five tablets, you know, uh, they, they, they couldn't even get it through one POS.
Um, there's been a lot of advancement there, but I will say this more than just getting prep and production, right? Taking something off someone's plate, you know, having to keep all your order forms and go through 'em. Nobody gets into this industry 'cause that's what they want to do.
¶ Creating systems that keep operations "on the rails"
No, no, no, no. In fact, what I tell people is, here, here's the, here's like two, three little ways to make that go easier. Here's two, three little ways to make that go faster, because I wanna have all that information and have all that go well and then get back to the part I like, which is shooting the shit on the line while we're busting out a couple hundred covers or, or getting an hour or two to like. Play with that like shipment of, I don't know, heirloom carrots that came in.
You know, like what, what is the new or work on the next set of specials or whatever. Like the food and the people are the things that make me excited about the business. I learned to be good at that other stuff so that I had the opportunity to, 'cause I tell people, I'm like, if you don't manage the business, you don't get to have the fun. Like, you don't get to do that. It just doesn't work. Right. Um, yeah, it's, we just, we used to have a sign taking things off. Your plate is great.
We used to have a sign in Jimmy John's that said, uh, if you do the things you need to do now, then maybe you'll be able to do the things you want to do tomorrow.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, similarly it's, it's do the things you have to do so the, so you can get to the things you get to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. You know, um, I'm also, I've also been trying to make that own shift with, with some people, it's like they say, oh, I have to go to work. It's not, you get to go to work. You get the opportunity to go to work and provide for your family. 'cause not everybody can, let's be honest. Not everybody's able to right now, right?
Just 'cause of 'cause of life and things. So you get to go do all those things and you get to make people smile 'cause your food is so good and you get to create experiences for people. That's, that for me is like, that's a privilege and not everybody gets it. So, you know, I, I like to be grateful for those little tiny, itty bitty things that are not always little itty bitty.
It's all about perspective.
Yeah, man. Yeah, man. All right. Tell me about, tell me about, there was a story you were gonna tell me and I want to hear that one.
The late opening. Oh, delayed store openings. I'm sorry. You, you brought up the delays door opening. All right. So. I, I had started out in the industry like 21, right? So my first one was a turnaround. I think I'm like 23. When I signed my like second lease, first store. I am like, giddy about this. I got the bank loan. We find the, the, the spot, you know, architecture plans, the whole nine yards. So I'm in the DC suburbs and the permitting takes forever.
So you gotta hire a permit expediter and all that kind of stuff. It takes nine months to get this store open. We come through for the final walkthrough, and by the way, throughout the entire process, I am pestering the permitting people, the, the county, you name it, trying to get this through 'cause it just keeps getting delayed. We go through the final walkthrough at the county and the guy looks at me, he says, you know, you're floating sink. Isn't quite in compliance.
So while they could, I guess, you know, if you were handicapped you could, you know, swing your legs underneath. You couldn't actually swing the back. So technically it's outta compliance. I need you to move your entire wall bathroom wall into the kitchen one inch. I. And I'm like, well, like, no. Like there's, there's no way we can do that, that, you know, we're supposed to open next week. We're already paying rent, right?
¶ How operators normalize chaos without realizing it
Like, I got interest due for the bank. Like this will literally bankrupt me if they actually make us do this thing. I. And so, you know, we fight with the guys the whole nine yards and they leave, and my contractor's like, W what do you want to do? Like, uh, there's not much we can do. And I'm like, we gotta go down to the county, talk with these people. He's like, okay, let's go down to the county. And I, I called my wife and I'm like, honey, here's the deal.
You know, county's doing all this stuff like. I am going to the county office and either I'm going to end up in prison because I'm gonna throw a hissy fit or like they're gonna get this fixed, but one of these two things is going to happen. And we went in and I kid you not like, you know, an hour of talking to people. You finally got to the point where they basically said, no, go fix it. And I threw it, you know, it's like. No, we're not. They're like, they're calling security to escort me out.
And finally the, the head guy's like, what in the hell is going on out here? And I'm like, you know, we'll call him Bob. Bob, you know, I've emailed you 10 times. Like I go out of business if you guys aren't, are gonna make me move this wall, blah, blah, blah. And. Finally, he's like, all right, we'll send out a new person tomorrow. And they, they approved the thing, and so we finally got open. But it's like, it was this close to like just bankrupting me and being, you know, a nightmare.
And this, this is what's going on behind the scenes at every restaurant that's opening across the country. Like it's, it's, there's a whole thing there of, you know, how do you, uh, get the right architect and contractors so much goes into opening a restaurant.
Well, they were ready to go with, with that, with number four. They were ready to go in like. October, November, and somebody, some inspection came in and found out that the f there was something wrong with the floor drains, and it was something the owner had done that like the building hadn't done. And so they stopped everything and tore up the floors. Oh. And I was like, say what now? I'm like. And he wasn't. He like, my guy was not panicking. And I was like, are you sure?
And he goes, sometimes it's just gotta be, but they're not charging me rent. They're not, you know, like while all these things are are doing it. And I said, okay, that's cool. And then we get, so a good relationship
with your landlord goes a long way.
Totally. And so now we're in like early mid-February and I was like, when are we talking? He's like, oh, March 1st. I'm like, okay, uh, maybe he even said like, February 20 something and, and then we get closer and he is like, nah, we had some issues with this. He says, I've now come to peace with the fact that we're gonna open, I. When we're, when we open, like he's like, we're gonna get there. When we get there.
He goes, but when we get there, because we've had all this time, we're gonna be ready. Yeah. And so like we started getting like, he really, like, he had time, he had a really good planned out like training in his other restaurants. He got people like. Almost three weeks of training he paid for. I was gonna say, that was the
one that was killing me, is like, I've got a whole staff we've hired that we're paying right now. Yep. You know, in another restaurant, like every week hits you not only with the rent, but the interest and the extra labor. It's, it's a whole
thing. Yeah. No, totally. But it was so like, I'm super impressed. Like I was in there yesterday, it was day seven, and. The, the tacos that I ate for lunch, I was like, how are you? Like, this is good. This is as good as your other restaurants. He's like, she works in restaurant number one. He works in restaurant number two, but he's like, these are all people that, that are, that are splitting their time right now and may continue to split their time.
You know, it's like we, we added some people, but we added some people to those, to the original restaurants and because. Restaurant number. This is interesting. Restaurant number four is six blocks from restaurant number one. Oh, I love that. But they're different neighborhoods.
Yeah.
One sits at the top of the hill, one sits in the middle of the hill, and so like they're able, they're totally willing. I'll just, I'll just swap a couple shifts. So they were able to backfill in the old restaurants. Right, and then make it so that they can just have some,
¶ Intentional leadership vs. reactive management
some pros in their new one. So it wasn't all new people. So that was amazing. That is nice. That's really nice. So recently you and I were talking and you were telling me about something really cool and the fact that you're actually gonna, you're putting together your own podcast. My podcast. I wanna hear about this sucker.
We just started recording. It's the, the Restaurant AI podcast. Uh, it's, uh, yeah, it should be coming out next month. I, it should probably be coming out about the time that this episode comes out. Uh, awesome. No, I'm, I'm really excited. Well, let's coordinate
that then.
Yeah, exactly. Let's coordinate that. Like let's be on it. I'm really excited about it. So the thing that has been the most fun in this chapter of my life is I have gotten to make great relationships with some incredibly smart and interesting people. And I find myself, you know, on a weekly basis just being mind blown by some of the people that I talk to and the information they share. And it was like. These are the conversations that I want to be a part of and I think people want to hear.
I almost feel like selfish that only I am getting this information. So I we're gonna bring on the best AI machine learning tech people that aren't necessarily from the industry. Right, right. We're going to bring on the capital allocators that are investing in the future of restaurant technology, and we're gonna bring on the brands that are actually bringing these technologies in.
It's not gonna be infomercials for companies, it's just gonna be real conversations led by my honest and genuine curiosity on what is, what is the state of technology today. Where is it going in restaurants? How is this gonna play out so that we can kind of get a sense of what do the next year, five years, 10 years look like?
That's awesome. I, I'm, I for 1:00 AM like, sign me up. Follow. I love it. I got my first
listener.
Yes. I will be listener number one. Um, I, you know, I think that as much as I. Call myself an analog guy, right? Like old school methods have always worked for me.
¶ The Restaurant AI podcast announcement
I love the technology side of things. I gonna there. Push things through to, to make other things easier, as you said earlier, to take things off people's plates. But the way that the machines, like, the way the things that you can do with AI just continue to astound me, so I'm in.
Yeah, I was, I was gonna say, it's a little hard to call you analog as we're sitting on your podcast, you know, recording digitally with your logo that's, you know, flashing in the background. And I, I think we, we met in a digital, uh, uh, one of Sean's like, uh, groups, I believe. Mm-hmm. You know, it's, uh, uh, yeah, you're, you're definitely a, a little tech forward.
I'm the
tech
forward analog guy.
I don't know. Yeah. Hey. I think those are, by the way, the most interesting experiences. Taking somebody that is not natural to a world. And putting 'em in there and watching them learn how you adapt to it. Because the institutional knowledge that you have accumulated over the years is gold. That person the pulling him aside, was it Marcus pulling that girl aside? Just, you know, Hey, how are you? You're doing great. Like. That stuff can't be lost.
But also that mentality on bringing technology in. You know, 'cause tech doesn't just fix everything. You gotta find the right things for the right operation. Like, yeah, you got, you got a good package there.
Ah, I'm trying, man. The the funny thing for me is like, I enjoy, personally enjoy the technology and, and, and what it can do and, and all those things. I, I just am so steeped in the old way that like, I try to find the middle. Right. You know, I, I, it's interesting, I talk, I talk with a lot of folks about.
Like the craft of the craft of cooking, the craft of leading, the craft of management, managing and this, this whole venture like podcasting and, you know, being a virtual consultant, 'cause I'm on, you know, I'm on Zoom talking to people around, around the country about how their restaurants go and. It's like, man, this all in itself, all by itself is its own craft.
And I tell people like, if you, if you wanna learn how to, how to use your knife, you pick up a 50 pound bag, onions, put it on the counter, you open the damn thing up and you start to slice. Right. Well. I'm way early. I'm like the first five pounds in my 50 pound bag. When it comes to like the digital stuff, like learn learning to make automated emails happen. You know, like, oh God, I don't really know what I'm doing. Press that button. Oh shit, that doesn't work. Oh, that's the one.
Okay, got it.
You know, so join the club. Yeah. It's the crap, by the way. I love that word craft. I think that does really capture it. You know, it's part art. It's. Part skillset, it's part personality, you know, and it, you improve upon it, you hone it over time. It really is a craft.
Yeah. Um, uh, one of the concepts that I, I, I spent a lot of 2024 sort of meditating, thinking on was two words, intention and craft. And so it's like the intention of craft, but on the other side, there's the craft of intention, like. Think about it. Ooh, got a little heady there for a second. Just for a second. For me, the craft of intention is figuring out how you spend your time. What is important, right?
Like that is the craft of intention, and it has to be molded because otherwise we float.
¶ Final thoughts on sustainable systems and leadership
Right. And, and I think a lot of, a lot of that for me heads towards the, the things that I'm really passionate about with my restaurants, and that is leadership, right? Because here's the thing, nobody drifts to greatness. Never. It just doesn't happen. You have to lead them to greatness. They have to go, they have to have a direction. There has to be some intention, right? So, um, that'll be a, a hat for me someday. That'll say nobody drifts to greatness. That's a good line, right?
You have to lead them there or, or you have to be led, or there has to be, you need some form of roadmap and the, the roadmap is intention. So. There. That's our deep thought for, for a culinary mechanic.
Yeah. Well, in restaurants, everything's urgent. Everything's immediate. Everything's a panic. Yeah. I, I, I wish I had more of your crafted intentionality because I feel like I just crafted the skillset to handle reacting to like chaos. Right. I, I was really good at that and I got really good at it 'cause I spent a lot of time
doing it. You just brought up a story for me. So once upon a time, I was in a resort in Santa Barbara, California, um, kind of place where it was all cottages. It was like 20 cottages. Some of 'em were duplexes. There's like 30 something rooms, you know. And at that point I considered myself. Like I, I'm the guy who could scramble out of any rush. I could get through, I could get out, and we'd be like, yeah. And I was working for a sous chef, and she was a ballbuster man. She was tough.
She'd worked in some James Beard kitchens, you know, James Beard winning kitchens and, and had really like, went to the Clin Institute of America, like a refined badass. And she one day looks at me and she goes, you know what? You're right, you can scramble outta anything she says, but. Wouldn't you rather not have to scramble? Wouldn't you rather have like the organization in your brain and in your movement that you are so cold and calculated that it looks easy?
She says, wouldn't you rather have that? And I was like, man, I never thought of that. You know, I was like 26 years old and I was like, I've just always focused on the fact that I could do anything. And she's like. But I don't have to scramble. I'm just, I'm here and I'm here and I, I do, I have a process and a way, and it really changed how I started to look at things. It's like, if you don't get yourself into the shit, you don't have to dig out. And so she taught me to be like.
Really like, really intentional about like starting my day, having a really good list, not an EH list. Having things like prioritize, like do this, do that, do this when you're on the line and it's getting busy, like have a way, boom, boom, boom, boom. And it was just, oh my gosh, like my cooking skills just went woo. Still the roof. In probably six months with her.
Let me say this, for every one of those, James Beard, you know, chefs that's, you know, classically trained and is intentional with the process, there are a heck of a lot more people like me that probably weren't great at school, that are A DHD that are. Distractible and spend a whole lot of time just reacting. And they're probably pretty good in the chaos.
And shameless plug, let's get those people clear cogs so that you, you're not having to have them react anymore because they're never going to save themselves. You know, they kinda like reacting. They're never going to be the organized ones that, uh, uh, are reviewing the numbers accurately.
Yeah, I, I, I, I'm, and again, I'm right in the middle 'cause like squirrel. Whoa. There I go. I'm gone. Shiny object syndrome boop. Out the, out the door. However, like when I remember to be intentional, I. Man, things get easier. And so find like, I, if I can tell anybody, like find a tool, like clear cogs, take something off your plate. Ha find the time to like be a little bit more intentional and then allow the squirrel to happen.
And, and I'll say it, it's a little bit like boiling, uh, frogs, right? Where, you know, the, you bring the temperature up slowly, they won't just jump out, right? Right. Like we. As restaurant operators start to have a little chaos and then a little bit more. And then one day you wake up and you manage insanity, but like you don't even notice that you're managing insanity until you know Bill has to fill in for your shift. And he is like, this is insanity.
Or Simon, you show up and it's like, guys, you live in insanity. Let's put some structure around here. And I think most people are unaware that they're living in insanity. Totally.
I know I wasn't for years. I didn't really, I'm like, this is how it is, you know? Um, I mean, I learned, learned some leadership lessons that same way.
My, my goal every morning, like first start, I was like, you know, 22 at this time, like. Was to get a bagel. Like if it was a great day and I got all my prep done before opening, I could have a bagel. And the amount of work that I did between 6:00 AM and 10, 15, 4 hours of work, like I prepped the entire store, constant movement, like everything was just a fine oiled machine. I took off like, you know, building out stores. I had to do general managers, and then I had to fill in.
It. I wasn't even close to getting opened on time. Right. Because I just slowly and surely like built this, you know, incredibly work heavy prep. But I never actually sat down and thought, Hey, is there a better way to do this? Like, maybe I should bring somebody in. Maybe I should do some more the night before. No, I just, you know, found myself, I got better at managing the insanity every morning.
Yeah. I think that's a great way to describe it, right? It's like it just builds and builds and builds until you're in a corner and you can't get out, and that's where Well, and that's where burnout starts to happen for people, right? They can't get out of the corner that they've painted themselves into
burnout in restaurants. No,
I, I have a, I have a, a buddy who works at a Topgolf and he describes burnout as SOP. He's like, that's just normal. I'm like, no, dude. It's not. It might be a norm, but it's not normal. You know it. Or it shouldn't be normal. It shouldn't be normal. How's that?
We always felt like you a burnout. So if I bring in a new employee and they leave in the first like three to four weeks, like that's probably a good thing. But like your person that's there for a year or two, like we want them to stay, right? Because like, not everyone's a fit for the industry, but how you get past that second, third year and make this a livable. Lifestyle career, you know, that's what really matters.
Yeah. Sustainable action. What can you do every day that doesn't kill you? Exactly. Doesn't kill you. Well, on that note, I gotta say, we covered some ground, Mr. Matthew Wampler.
Yes, we do.
Awesome. Um, thanks for coming to play in the sandbox and telling us about what's going on with, with you and clear cogs. The restaurant AI podcast, sign me up. I am in, I cannot wait. Um, and like I say, I think we need to coordinate like this episode with the launch of that. So, 'cause that'll be pretty dope. Um, 'cause uh, I think as you and I said before we started recording, community is, is what it's about. Um, and I love the fact that you are a part of the culinary mechanic community.
Um. So I'll make sure in the show notes that everybody can find you and clear cogs. And once again, thanks for coming and playing. And to all you out there, please go to Apple Podcast, Spotify, and YouTube and or YouTube and drop a follow, a subscribe a like, even a review would be amazing. Um, and I'll catch you on the flip side.
You're the best, Simon. Thank you.
Thanks buddy.