And then we got to make sure that across the menu there’s areas that they can access. So, for example, continuing to innovate on the margarita of the month at $6, continuing to innovate on 3 for Me. Starting at $10.99, making sure that guests are aware of those offers so that we can continue to win the traffic share game that we’ve been winning. On the flip side, we’ve got to continue to bring more premium items and more premium food and beverage offerings so that we can continue to balance that and continue to grow margin. So for example, this is a great example this month we launched the Spicy, which is a very premium drink with Espolon, Reposado, Grand Marnier, Halapenio, we priced it at $10, right? But we also brought a new $6 margarita to with a Straw-Eddy that has a premium tequila and a premium vodka.
So I think you’re just going to see more of us innovating both on the high end and the low end because we’ve got to protect the guests that’s price sensitive, but we’ve also got to make sure we have things that consumers want if they’re there and they’re not as price sensitive. So, I think we’re going to continue. I mean, it sounds very similar to what I’ve told you the last couple quarters. But at the end of the day, it seems to be working we’re growing traffic share, we’re growing PPA ahead of the industry, right? And we’re expanding margins. And those would be the three metrics you’d look at to say is a barbell strategy working. If there’s some consumers that are little more price sensitive.
Jeffrey Bernstein: And then just my follow-up, Joe, just recognizing the January weather issue. Wondering if you can maybe share the exit rate in December. I know the full fiscal second quarter for Chile’s company operated was in the 5% range, but just trying to get a sense for how trends flowed through the quarter. Again, making, I don’t know whether you want to share January specifics, but obviously that’s an anomaly. And looking forward, I think you guys had previously said you expect mid-single-digit comps for the full year. So is that still reasonable? I think you did fives and sixes the first half January, a little bit of an anomaly, but is that still a reasonable range for the remainder of the year?
Joe Taylor : Yeah, we’re still sticking with our mid-single-digit res for the year. That’s where I want to, again, you would’ve expected a little bit lower level of comp at the end of our quarter because of the big comp we had. And in October, so your comps are always going to follow your marketing windows and 10 poles and that’s the way the quarter played out. We also were lapping a pretty good December last year. So that probably had a little bit of –. So again, everything is staying on track from a revenue growth standpoint. And that mid-single-digit range is clearly what we’re feel we can accomplish as we kind of move through the rest of the year.
Jeffrey Bernstein: Got it. But no quantification on the January ballpark where that comp was settling out?
Joe Taylor: Yes, not at this point. I mean, again, I’m going to avoid period results. I have given you some pretty good data on that, but it’s a drag. It’s going to something we have to try and make up as much, as we can as we kind of move through the rest of the period. But again, I think it’s an anomaly. It’s not something you should be taking into trend consideration.
Operator: Your next question is coming from Christopher Carril with RBC.
Christopher Carril: Maybe holding aside the weather impact, how are you thinking about restaurant-level margins here in the back half of the year? I know there is a bunch of moving pieces here around the lapping of labor and R&M investments and now you’re past the lap of the very elevated commodity inflation that you saw in the first half of ’23. Curious how you are thinking about overall restaurant margins relative to the improvement that you’ve seen in the past couple of quarters?
Joe Taylor: Yes. Again, our thinking continues to be that we can strengthen those margins. Again, taking weather out of consideration, which will have a drag on the margin in the third quarter, and particularly in the Q4, believe we can continue to strengthen margins. You see that a little bit in the back half of the year anyways from a volume standpoint. You get a little bit of seasonality tick up that helps with the sales leverage. But as we can continue to move forward with the strategies that we spend a lot of time talking about today, we think that will have a margin benefit, particularly in the fourth quarter.
Christopher Carril: Okay. Got it. And then, Kevin…
Joe Taylor: And Chris, one thing, just what we have talked about in the past is, we thought we could increase our annual margin, a little over 1% year-over-year. I’m more bullish on what we can do there. I think we can move it up closer into that 1.5-ish range, give or take up in that range.
Christopher Carril: Got it. And that’s specific to the second half here for 2024?
Joe Taylor: That was the full year, that’s what we have talked about in the past.
Christopher Carril: And then, Kevin, you mentioned the guests reporting a problem metric is at its lowest level since you began tracking it. That’s of course encouraging. But maybe can you expand a bit more on some of the other metrics around guest satisfaction, I think you referenced improvement in intent to return. Anything really to help us just think about kind of sustainability of traffic improvement on the back of the investments that you have made?
Kevin Hochman: Yes. These are leading indicators that we lead us to believe that we will continue to see strength. There is no exact beta correlation to this or r-squared correlation to this, right? But the measures that we look at, just so you understand, we collect with our pay at the table devices. We issue a survey to our guests, we get a ton back because a lot of them after they pay, it’s just right there on the table. So we get over 20 million surveys a year where we ask several questions about guest experience. The measures that we look at from that data is server attentiveness, food grade scores, intensive return, and then the one that we look at on a daily basis is Guess What a Problem? Or what we call GWAP. And all of those just continue to make progress, which gives us a lot of confidence that we’ll continue to make progress in the overall experience.
Now I will say that is just about Chili’s beating itself, which is great, but we want to be the best in the industry. And so when you look at external metrics the good news is for us is there’s a lot more upside for us on improving the experience in all of those metrics whether they are food grade scores or consistency. So, that’s really what we’ve talked to our field teams about, which is — hey, we feel really great about the progress that we made. And it’s very tangible. I mean, you can feel it in the restaurants, you can see it in the data, but if we’re candid about where we sit in the industry and where we want to be, which is long-term sustained results at the top echelon of casual dining restaurants, we have a ton more work to do and that’s what we’re focused on.
Operator: Your next question is coming from Jim Sanderson at Northcoast Research.
Jim Sanderson : I wanted to go back to negative mix just to make sure I understood some of the feedback you’ve provided. Can you give us a sense that the shift from quarter-to-quarter, I think it was about a 400 basis point decline in mix was that primarily related to the menu issues that you called out in the sense that you may have been able to hopefully remedy those with the menu changes or is a lot of that really related to just the conservatism of the consumer that just happened in the quarter?
