Restaurant AI

The company that started with the cash register in 1884 just rebuilt its flagship restaurant POS from the ground up. Benny Tadele, EVP and President of Restaurants at NCR Voyix, joins Matt Wampler to explain why, and to make a case most operators will not expect from the man running the most deployed POS in the industry: stop making POS decisions. The terminal went from the center of the restaurant to one channel among many, and the decision that actually matters is the platform underneath it. Benny came up through the payments world and joined NCR Voyix after the 2023 split that turned an eight billion dollar conglomerate into a focused restaurant and retail company. He led the Aloha Next rebuild: microservices, cloud to edge, offline first, and a UI that brands can design themselves. In this episode, we get into: The three things to evaluate before committing to any restaurant technology foundation Why one sellout currently means three manual updates, and what connected systems change Open vs closed ecosystems, and why the answer differs for SMBs and enterprise brands AI for admin, humans for hospitality, and why the best restaurant AI is invisible to the guest The four stages of restaurant AI: record, understand, recommend, execute The weekend Benny spent trying to get an AI agent to order food, and what it revealed about agentic commerce Whether you're an operator staring down a POS contract, a multi-unit brand planning a tech stack for the next decade, or a builder trying to understand where restaurant technology is actually heading, this conversation reframes the biggest purchasing decision in the industry. Full show notes and every episode: https://www.clearcogs.com/podcast

In this special episode of the Restaurant AI Podcast, host Matt Wampler, Co-Founder and CEO of ClearCOGS, sits down with Deric Rosenbaum, President and CTO of Groucho's Deli, and David Corts, CEO of Fresh Technology, for the show's first three-way roundtable. Groucho's Deli has been making sandwiches since 1941, before the interstate system existed. Deric spent 26 years building its franchise infrastructure, its distribution company, and now its technology platform, turning an 85 year old brand with more than 30 locations across three states into one of the most AI-forward operations in the industry. David spent 30 years in enterprise software before betting on the kitchen, and his Fresh KDS now sits at the center of it. Together with ClearCOGS, they are building a connected back of house operating system, and this is the unfiltered version of how it actually works. Matt, Deric, and David get into why the tech stack is dead and the operating system model is replacing it, the four layers every brand has to get right before AI stops hallucinating, how Groucho's built Frank, an AI agent franchisees can query on demand, why forecasting is just algorithms and math, which SaaS tools survive the coming consolidation, and the question that opened the show: is AI making us smarter or dumber? Whether you're an operator drowning in disconnected tools, a franchise leader dragging a legacy brand into the AI era, or a technology founder deciding whether to play nice with other vendors, this one shows you what the future of the back of house looks like from the people building it. Connect with Deric Rosenbaum on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deric-rosenbaum-grouchos/ Learn more about Groucho's Deli: https://www.grouchos.com Connect with David Corts on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dcorts/ Learn more about Fresh KDS: https://www.freshkds.com Connect with Matt Wampler on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewjwampler Learn more about ClearCOGS: https://www.clearcogs.com

Bennett Maxwell took a single cookie shop to 450 franchises sold, turned a lawsuit from the biggest name in cookies into national headlines on CNBC and Good Morning America, then sold the brand and went all in on building a business that runs itself on AI. In this episode, host Matt Wampler talks with Bennett, founder of Dirty Dough and CEO of Franchise KI, about architecting AI agents he can trust to run the day to day, selling hundreds of franchises without spending a dollar on ads, and his case that intelligence is about to become as free and invisible as flipping on a light. A conversation that is equal parts war story, playbook, and look at the future every operator is heading into. Connect with Bennett Franchise KI: franchiseki.com Instagram: instagram.com/bennettmaxwell35 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bennett-maxwell-703717126 Listen and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and clearcogs.com/podcast ClearCOGS helps restaurants turn the data they already have into practical daily guidance for prep, ordering, and labor, so operators can make better decisions before the day gets away from them. Because when you have a clearer view of what's coming, you can run a more profitable restaurant. Show notes and full episode: https://www.clearcogs.com/podcasts/podcasts-bennett-maxwell-ai-agents-franchise/

In this episode of the Restaurant AI Podcast, host Matt Wampler, Co-Founder and CEO of ClearCOGS, sits down with John Davie, Founder and CEO of Buyers Edge Platform and CEO of CollectivIQ. John started Buyers Edge in 1998 at 21 years old, knocking on restaurant doors with no resume and no credibility, kept afloat by his father's retirement account. Today the company is the leading digital procurement network in foodservice, serving hundreds of thousands of operator locations across four divisions, with more than 40 acquisitions and what John believes is the largest, most diverse data set in the industry: over 110 billion in cleaned, normalized foodservice transactions. The conversation covers the business model that gets vendors to willingly pay for restaurant savings, how Buyers Edge evaluates acquisitions through a data lens, and the state of the restaurant industry through the eyes of someone with a finger on its pulse since the nineties. Then it turns to AI: the shadow AI problem hiding inside every company, the $700,000 enterprise license that started it all, and the moment an AI confessed to John that it had been fabricating facts 25 prompts deep into a major acquisition. That wake-up call became CollectivIQ, a consensus engine that queries the leading AI models at once, makes them argue when they disagree, and routes every prompt to the most honest answer. John also breaks down digital direct reports, AI employees with names, personas, and real delegated work, and shares his advice for CEOs still hesitating on AI. This episode is for restaurant operators drowning in unused data, foodservice executives weighing their AI strategy, and anyone who has ever stared at an AI answer and wondered if it was true. Connect with John Davie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-davie-5788a18 Connect with Matt Wampler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattwampler Learn more about ClearCOGS: https://www.clearcogs.com Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 01:23 What Is Buyers Edge Platform? 03:26 Door to Door: The Five-Year Grind 08:40 Becoming a Data Company 11:57 How Buyers Edge Makes Money 13:31 The Four Divisions of Buyers Edge 17:31 The Acquisition Playbook 27:01 Digitizing the Back of House 41:38 The $700K Bill That Sparked Collective IQ 46:37 When the AI Fabricated Facts 54:46 Digital Direct Reports 01:12:37 Advice for CEOs Waiting on AI Show notes and full episode: https://www.clearcogs.com/podcasts/podcasts-john-davie-buyers-edge-ai-data/

In this episode of the Restaurant AI Podcast, host Matt Wampler, Co-Founder and CEO of ClearCOGS, sits down with Noah Glass, Founder and CEO of Olo. Noah invented restaurant online ordering in 2005, before the iPhone existed, survived eight wilderness years at twelve employees, scaled revenue 50x after product market fit, took Olo public in 2021, and took it private again in 2025 in a two billion dollar deal. Now he's picking a fight with the economics that drain restaurant profits. Matt and Noah get into why marketplace customers are rented transactions, the daily deals lesson the industry keeps forgetting, the second party ordering model launching later this year with zero commission and full guest data for restaurants, what agentic ordering actually looks like, and the one thing Noah says you can never outsource: the human touch. Whether you're an operator wrestling with third party economics, a founder in your own wilderness years, or a technology leader watching AI reshape ordering, this one delivers the long view from the person who started it all. Connect with Noah Glass on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nhglass Learn more about Olo: https://www.olo.com Connect with Matt Wampler on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewjwampler Learn more about ClearCOGS: https://www.clearcogs.com Show notes and full episode: https://www.clearcogs.com/podcasts/podcasts-noah-glass-olo-second-party-ordering-restaurant-profits/