Matt Wampler, CEO and co-founder of ClearCOGS, talks about how their company uses data and machine learning to help restaurants reduce waste and increase profits. He shares the importance of customer research and finding the right balance between innovation and simplicity. They also discuss ClearCOGS's growth and their approach to making businesses more efficient, finding bottlenecks and processes, and investing in co-founder relationships.

Matt Wampler is the CEO and Co-Founder of ClearCOGS, a company that utilizes POS data and proprietary machine-learning models to help restaurants minimize food waste and optimize inventory management. With his expertise in executive management and a passion for leveraging technology, Matt leads ClearCOGS in revolutionizing the way restaurants save money and improve their operations. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Product Launch:

• ClearCOGS helps restaurants operate more profitably with data and machine learning.
• Restaurants make many operational decisions based on feel, which isn't always accurate.
• As their system gathers more data, it becomes more intelligent and predictive.
• Focusing on a singular pain point can be more effective than trying to solve multiple problems with a bloated system
• Investing in maintaining that relationship is essential to business success
• Onboarding for a new customer went from six weeks to one day
• ClearCOGS helps restaurants percentage off their food costs and move big needles

Resources:

• ClearCOGS
• NxtStep
• Podcast Chef

Connecting with Matt Wampler:

• LinkedIn

Connecting with Sean Boyce:

• LinkedIn
• Email

Quotables:

• 02:13 - “So what we do at ClearCOGS synthesize all of that data down, we look at the day of the week, the month of the year, your short-term trends, yearly seasonality, long-term trends, all these external data points just to figure out for this store.”
• 07:44 - “Meeting the customer where they are, in my world, at least the world of restaurants, that couldn't be more true. Like there are better ways to do what we do. There are ways to get more accurate numbers. There is not a better way to operationalize or implement it. And we built out a solution that is very, you know, where the customer is and what they need. And I attribute a lot of our success to that.”
• 08:15 - “Because I see a lot of B2B SaaS products companies, founders trying to almost like invent the future, which I get it right? And there's a time and a place for innovation, and I'm not saying that you shouldn't be focused in that area, but at the end of the day, whatever you're building as a solution, you're going to have to sell it to a problem. And ideally that's a painful problem that your target market is currently experiencing.”
• 15:01 - “It's so easy to over-engineer solutions, and we just assume, you know, add the spinning rims kind of thing, like might as well, like while you're in there, let's automate everything, right? But that singular focus on the top problem is what I've seen be one of the greatest strengths from most B2B SaaS companies that have achieved solid growth, especially earlier on in keeping software simple.”
• 17:21 

Matt: “You have got to shift from product ideas to how do we apply those ideas to sales? How do we apply those ideas to marketing? How do we apply those ideas to relationship management? It's really about where you focus the innovation and, and really try and like constrain yourself on the product side.

Sean: Excellent point. And refining that as well too. I couldn't agree more with this is why, when I'm typically doing discovery, or I'm learning more about companies that have done that.”

Free Email Course

• How to Build a Profitable AI-Powered B2B SaaS Business for Less Than $750 - https://nxtstep.io/b2bsaas

Connect with Sean

• Subscribe to my YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@nxtstepsean
• Connect with me on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-boyce/

Notes generated by Podcast Show Notes  (podcastshownotes.ai)