Ian Baines: And also from a labor standpoint, still challenging environment when it comes to hiring managers and team members, but significantly better than it was this time last year. And that too helps to stabilize the business because of the stabilization of managers and team members, the restaurants just become that much more productive, which helps in terms of fighting against that wage inflation rate.
Michael Rabinovitch: Now for BurgerFi — turning to BurgerFi, the same 3 elements are at play for BurgerFi, but instead of same-store sales increases, we have been experiencing same-store sales decreases of mid- to high single digits towards the end of the year, really even creeping into the low double digits. Those trends have improved. They’ve improved sequentially in the first quarter from the fourth quarter by 2% to 3% on a comparative basis. So even though it’s improving, it is still negative, and that does compress the leverage available on the BurgerFi fixed costs, whether it be occupancy managers or a certain level of operating expenses. On the commodity side, though, we are seeing an improvement. And as we see BurgerFi sales trends continue to improve throughout the year, when they eclipse and move into positive compares, you would gain back that topline leverage.
So we have the same 3 elements at play but at BurgerFi the topline leverage will wait until the same-store sales turn positive.
Ian Baines: And so all of that inputs and intelligence that Mike talked about went into as we looked at putting our plan together for 2023.
Operator: And the next question comes from with .
Unidentified Analyst: Just one quick question for me. I wanted to ask about your off-premise sales. Obviously, you picked up a lot of volume in that space during COVID and have certainly made efforts to improve your tech stack to kind of hold on to that volume. What are the trends you’re seeing across both BurgerFi and Anthony’s regarding your off-premise sales and how much of that volume that you’ve really been able to hold on to as things kind of normalize for you?
Michael Rabinovitch: Yes. First, I’ll talk about Anthony’s and Ian made supplement, because he’s got some great history with Anthony’s before the acquisition. Anthony has historically had a very strong off-premises business prior to COVID, prior to the institutionalizing of the delivery providers as a service. There was a small delivery component but a large takeout business. What we’ve seen in the fourth quarter and then continuing into the first quarter is a restabilization into takeout and dine-in as a percentage of our business. So we’ve been able to hold on to a very good percentage, call it, 70% to 80% of the delivery penetration that we’ve had. And as that mix shifts back into the takeout and the dine-in, it’s a more profitable equation for us.
On BurgerFi, we had — we — I’d say that the trends are about the same. There’s probably a small decrease in the delivery business and an increase in the takeout business. Overall, though, not as much of a needle mover as Anthony’s that we’ve seen. And we — especially with Anthony’s having a full bar, the in-restaurant really allows the brand to exercise all of its attributes to the customer rather than it be handled through a third-party delivery provider, which we all know at times can be challenging.
