ClearCOGS @ClearCogs

Most operators think inventory management is about counting everything. In the latest Restaurant AI Podcast, David Cantu, CEO of Craftable, shares a different perspective: focus on the few items that drive the majority of your revenue.

A full restaurant is not always a profitable one. The best operators are not just driving traffic, they are tracking food cost, labor variance, and waste before margin disappears. Swipe through 4 things the smartest multi unit operators understand about cost →

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Hoshizaki sent engineers, not salespeople, to a trade show and told them to listen. The result? Better products, a kitchen innovation award, and a lesson Shawn P. Walchef breaks down on the latest Restaurant AI Podcast. 🎧

91% of operators saw food costs rise. 42% weren't profitable last year. The problem isn't your team — it's finding out 30 days after it happened. What changes when you catch it mid-week instead? 👇

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83% of restaurant operators say labor is a top concern — and most are still managing it with spreadsheets and gut instinct. We talked to QSR veterans. 7 problems kept coming up. Thread on what they are and what actually fixes them ↓

Your best manager spends their first 2 hours doing math, not leading. Here's what their morning looks like when that changes. 👇 The Two-Hour Tax is a leadership problem. ClearCogs eliminates it. What would your managers do with 2 extra hours?

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The best restaurant tech partnerships aren’t transactional, they’re collaborative. Deric Rosenbaum of Groucho’s Deli says operators want partners who move fast, build with them, and actually pick up the phone when it matters. Agility and real collaboration are the standard.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.👇

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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.

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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