# A $1 monthly routine can save a restaurant thousands Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/a-1-monthly-routine-can-save-a-restaurant-thousands/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy. - Speaker: [Jean-Denis Greze](https://realalpha.app/builders/jean-denis-greze/) · Jean-Denis Greze is founder and CEO of Town. · Led Plaid’s EPD from $10M to $300M+ in ARR, then co-founded Town, an AI assistant for everyday work. - Host: [Erik Torenberg](https://realalpha.app/people/erik-torenberg/) · General partner, Andreessen Horowitz · Helped build Product Hunt; founded On Deck, Village Global and Turpentine. - Show: a16z Podcast - Episode: [Why a $1M Startup Wasn’t Worth Building in the Age of AI](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/), Oct 19, 2026 - Moment: 24:35 to 27:22 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/a-1-monthly-routine-can-save-a-restaurant-thousands/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=1475 ## Quote > “it's going to cost you like **a dollar a month** to run that thing.” > — [Jean-Denis Greze](https://realalpha.app/builders/jean-denis-greze/) at [25:54](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=1554) · a16z Podcast ## Takeaways 1. Wholesalers send price lists with thousands of changing items. 2. AI can check for better prices without a finance hire. 3. One useful finding can repay months of routine costs. ## About this segment Jean-Denis Greze describes using AI to compare restaurant wholesalers’ changing prices. A cheap, infrequent check can catch savings that a small business might otherwise miss. From “Why a $1M Startup Wasn’t Worth Building in the Age of AI”, Oct 19, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/) ## Transcript Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there. [24:42](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=1482) hey do you want us to do that for you so I give you like another example that I'm recently pretty infatuated with. It's like if you are a small business owner and you run a restaurant in America, your wholesalers, that is the people that you buy, the produce and other things that go into making food at your restaurant, they email you probably once a month, maybe once a quarter, with an Excel spreadsheet or a PDF of the prices for all their inventory. [25:13](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=1513) So like thousands, if not 10,000s of items. And the prices are always changing. And if you're a restaurant owner and you have a finance person part-time, what that person should do for you is once a quarter, look at how the prices have changed to see if you could order some things from different wholesalers, to see if you're maybe getting ripped off or paying too much because the price of something has gone up 20 or 30%. [25:38](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=1538) Mostly you don't do it because it's like a rare thing. and even though it could save you money, it's a pain in the ass, it's not part of your operations, you don't have a full-time person to do it. With a town, having a thing run once a month and do that analysis, like literally you can prompt your way to having that exist for you in five minutes. And if it finds nothing, 11 out of 12 months that's worth doing, it's going to cost you like a dollar a month to run that thing. [26:05](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=1565) But the interesting thing is the one month out of a year where it finds something, it's going to find like hundreds if not thousands of dollars for you, right? And so now this thing that may or may not have been worth it, you should do it at least once. You should do it whenever there's a change to the price. Maybe you should do it daily if you have a wholesaler that changed prices daily. It doesn't happen. [26:23](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=1583) But our job, though, is to show that opportunity to the restaurant owner because they won't, it's not that they aren't very smart or don't understand their business very well. They do. They're not going to think that that's valuable. So what you kind of want to tell them, like, hey, listen, do you want me to always make sure that your wholesalers aren't changing prices in a way that's negative for your business, sure, do that. [26:43](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=1603) You don't really care actually after how often it runs. What you care about is once in a while you get an email that tells you like, hey, you should probably move all these things to this other wholesaler. They have a discount. Or like this one is really raising prices on these things and it's getting a little too expensive. Maybe you should remove those menu items. Like it's not rocket science to do this, right? [27:04](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=1624) But you have to have a product that tells you that this thing is possible that makes it, Well, the interesting point around that example is if you went to a restaurant owner and said, do you want an executive assistant? No, they would have no idea.