ClearCOGS Blog
ClearCOGS Featured Among North America’s FoodTech 500 Companies
ClearCOGS is featured in Forward Fooding’s North American roundup of the 2025 FoodTech 500, recognizing the role of restaurant decision intelligence in better operations and less waste.
A Short History of Restaurant Forecasting: From the Cash Register to the Model
By Matt Wampler, CEO of ClearCOGS Restaurants have been trying to predict tomorrow for as long as they’ve been buying food …
Restaurant Food Cost Quiz: 8 Questions Every GM Should Get Right
By Matt Wampler, CEO of ClearCOGS Eight questions on restaurant food cost and waste. Every answer comes from a government report …
How to Forecast Restaurant Sales for the Holiday Season: 7 Checks
By Matt Wampler, CEO of ClearCOGS To forecast restaurant sales for the holiday season, stop treating November and December as one …
The Order Is Typed Twice: A 90-Minute Teardown of One Manual Order Cycle
By Matt Wampler, CEO of ClearCOGS Here is one Monday order cycle in a full-service kitchen, taken apart minute by minute. …
Menu Prices Are Up 3.5%. Grocery Prices Are Up 1.8%. Five Beliefs, Checked Against the Data
By Matt Wampler, CEO of ClearCOGS Restaurant menu prices rose 3.5% in the 12 months to September 2026. Grocery prices rose …
How to Build a Restaurant Prep Sheet (Free Template)
By Matt Wampler, CEO of ClearCOGS Quick answer: A restaurant prep sheet should list each item, the unit you make it …
When Should a Manager Override the Forecast?
By Matt Wampler, CEO of ClearCOGS Quick answer: A manager should override a recommended prep or order quantity only when they …
2026 Food Costs: What’s Rising, by How Much, and What You Still Control
By Matt Wampler, CEO of ClearCOGS Quick answer: Restaurant ingredient costs are moving unevenly in 2026. USDA’s September outlook forecasts wholesale …
Visibility Is a Brand Standard
By Matt Wampler, CEO of ClearCOGS Every franchise system has a list of things a franchisee cannot change. The recipe. The …
You Cannot Make Half a Batch
By Matt Wampler, CEO of ClearCOGS Quick Answer: A forecast can predict demand to a decimal point. A kitchen produces in …
Prep Hours and Line Hours Are Not the Same
By Matt Wampler, CEO of ClearCOGS Quick Answer: Almost no restaurant knows how long its prep actually takes. Back-of-house hours are …
The Last Batch Decides Your Waste
By Matt Wampler, CEO of ClearCOGS Quick Answer: The final batch of the day should be sized to the demand remaining …
Ordering to Be Safe Is Still a Guess
By Matt Wampler, CEO of ClearCOGS Somewhere in most restaurant groups this month, a leader will open a purchasing report, see …
Setting It Up Was Never the Hard Part
By Matt Wampler, CEO of ClearCOGS Plenty of restaurant groups have set up an inventory and recipe system properly. A surprising …
Three a Day Is Harder to Forecast Than Three Hundred
By Matt Wampler, CEO of ClearCOGS An operator running a growing group in a smaller market described her problem to me …
Your Sales History Isn’t Your Demand History
By Matt Wampler, CEO of ClearCOGS Quick Answer: No, they are not the same thing. Your point of sale records what …
The Guest Count Is Only Half the Answer
By Matt Wampler, CEO of ClearCOGS A server once came to my table after a youth soccer game and whispered, in …
