Episode 11: From Dishroom to Disruptor: How Bill Lindsey Revolutionized Restaurant Inventory Management

• Guest: Bill Lindsey, Partner and Co-Founder at COGS-Well

• Episode: 86 Reason Ep. 11: Bill Lindsey on Mastering Restaurant Inventory & Purchasing for Multi-Unit Success

• Episode Duration: 53m 35s

• Published: Dec 08, 2025

• Topics: Inventory Management, Food Cost, Food Inventory, Inventory Platforms, Entrepreneurship

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Episode Summary

Managing inventory across multiple restaurant locations shouldn't feel like solving a Rubik's cube blindfolded, yet for many operators, that's exactly what it's like. Purchase orders pile up, food costs spiral out of control, and what should be simple becomes impossibly complex.

In this episode of the 86 Reason Podcast, we sit down with Bill Lindsey, Partner and Co-Founder at COGS-Well, whose five-decade journey through the restaurant industry reads like a masterclass in turning operational chaos into streamlined efficiency. From his first day in a dishroom to pioneering centralized purchasing systems for major casino operations, Bill's story proves that the best solutions come from those who've lived the problems firsthand.

Key Takeaways

The Unlikely Beginning: Lessons from the Dishroom

Bill's restaurant career started in 1974 in the most unglamorous place imaginable, a dishroom. But what others might see as just scraping plates, Bill saw as an education. He calls it the "College of Dishroom Knowledge," and the tuition was paid in observation.

"You learn everything about a restaurant by watching what comes back on the plates," Bill explains. Those leftover portions told stories about portion sizes, menu popularity, and operational efficiency that no management report could capture.

This hands-on foundation gave Bill something invaluable: a ground-level understanding of how restaurants actually work. Combined with early exposure to inventory technology, teletypes and analog modems that seem ancient now but were cutting-edge then, Bill developed a unique perspective that would define his career. He understood both the human side of restaurant operations and the technological potential to improve them.

The Winding Path to Innovation

Behind every great innovation is usually a great partnership. For Bill, that partner was Deb, who owned a gaming software company and was hired to code his centralized purchasing vision. Their collaboration led to marriage and a shared philosophy about software development that still guides Bill's work today.

Bill describes their approach as "iterative, like cooking." You don't build software in isolation and hope it works, you test it with real data, taste it, adjust the seasoning, and test again. Features were refined based on how actual operators used them, not how developers thought they should be used.

This cooking metaphor might sound simple, but it's revolutionary in practice. Too many restaurant technology solutions are built by people who've never worked a dinner rush. Bill and Deb's approach ensured their systems solved real problems for real people.

Building Technology the Right Way: The "Cooking" Method

For Sande, the ultimate differentiator in hospitality is the human element. Her belief—forged from her time at Tria to Di Bruno Bros.—is unwavering:

"The biggest mistake that any type of business can make is not investing in the staff."

She advocates for profound staff investment, providing employees with the tools, knowledge, and tasting experiences necessary to confidently sell products. This reduces turnover and directly boosts the bottom line.

This passion for empowerment is rooted in storytelling:

"I would always be framing everything as a story because the story is how people can take in at least the top level of information, and then you can go get more if you desire that."

By humanizing winemakers and sharing their narratives, Sande makes wine approachable, memorable, and easier to sell, turning complex data into delightful narratives—a key lesson in operational communication.

When Crisis Becomes Opportunity

Sometimes our greatest setbacks lead to our most important breakthroughs. For Bill, a serious spinal problem forced him out of kitchen operations entirely. Unable to continue the physical demands of restaurant work, he channeled his recovery time into learning programming languages like dBase and FoxPro.

What seemed like a career-ending injury became a career-defining pivot. Bill's technical skills opened doors at NCR and Remax, where he developed a highly successful cost control product. Major hospitality operators like the Las Vegas Hilton and Excalibur adopted his systems, proving that restaurant operators desperately needed better tools—and that Bill could build them.

The lesson? Sometimes the industry doesn't need someone with a purely technical background or purely operational experience. It needs people who've lived both worlds and can bridge the gap.

About Bill Lindsey

Bill Lindsey is Partner and Co-Founder at COGS-Well, bringing nearly 50 years of restaurant industry experience to his mission of simplifying inventory and cost management. His career spans from washing dishes in 1974 to developing sophisticated purchasing and cost control systems for major casino operations. Bill has held leadership roles at Compeat Restaurant Management Software, served as Strategic Advisor at Plate IQ, Inc., and currently serves on the Advisory Board at Loop AI. Known throughout the industry for his kindness and expertise, Bill co-founded COGS-Well to finally make inventory management easy for restaurant operators and their teams.

• LinkedIn: in/bill-lindsey775/

• Website: www.cogs-well.com

COGS-Well: Making Inventory Management Actually Easy

After decades of building systems for others, Bill co-founded COGS-Well in 2019 with a deceptively simple mission: make inventory control easy.

Anyone who's managed restaurant inventory knows that "simple" and "inventory management" rarely appear in the same sentence. But COGS-Well's approach tackles the problem at its root. Instead of handing operators a complex tool and wishing them luck, COGS-Well handles inventory setup and maintenance for clients.

The result? Restaurants are up and running in days, not months. The system is faster, less expensive, and more accurate because it's designed by people who understand that restaurant staff need to spend their time serving guests, not wrestling with spreadsheets.

Bill's philosophy is clear: technology should make people's jobs easier, not give them another complicated system to learn. COGS-Well embodies this principle, delivering on the promise that inventory management doesn't have to be painful.

The Wisdom of Experience

Throughout our conversation, what strikes me most about Bill isn't just his technical innovations or business success, it's his reputation for kindness and his deep respect for the people who make restaurants run. From his dishroom days to his current role advising companies like Loop AI, Bill has never forgotten that behind every inventory number is a person trying to do their job well.

His current advisory work and leadership roles reflect a career spent not just building better systems, but building a better industry. Whether he's mentoring the next generation of restaurant tech founders or helping operators finally get control of their costs, Bill remains committed to making restaurant operations more efficient, more profitable, and more humane.

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