Darren Rebelez: Yeah, Bonnie, I’d say I was really happy with the inside sales performance, and it was — we had strength across a lot of categories. I’d start with our prepared foods, up 5.9%, and that was cycling over 8.5% from the prior year. So really, really strong performance there. And what we really like about that is that it was led with our core with whole pizza pies. And so, the innovation around thin crust was something that was a gap in our menu and has really resonated well with our guests. And we’ve hit about 15% mix right out of the chute with that product, and that’s about where we expect it to be, actually a little bit higher than what we expected to be compared to the industry overall. So that was strong. We have some other innovation in the hot lunch sandwich category with our barbecue brisket sandwich on the King’s Hawaiian Buns.
We did a nice collaboration from there, and that category was up 30% during the quarter as a result of that innovation. On the grocery and general merchant side, we saw real good strength in non-alcoholic beverages up about 8%. Our grocery category was up 7% and alcoholic beverages were up 6%. So really, really good strength across the board. Really the only area where we have some softness was in tobacco. And I think that’s more of a driven by an industry dynamic more than anything else. With respect to private label, again, we’re up 26% same-store in private label. Units were up close to 16%. So, what that indicates is that we had good velocity on the unit side, but we’re also able to take a little bit of price and still keep that relative value proposition for the guests.
And so that’s been resonating with our guests, and we’re really happy to explore where we’re at on that one.
Bonnie Herzog: Okay. Helpful color. And if I may, just a follow-up on that. Just thinking about your inside margin expansion, which was also quite healthy. You did attribute it — a lot of it, it sounded like to the softening of ingredient costs, specifically cheese. So curious to kind of hear how we should think about your margin performance for the rest of the year? And then, thinking about some of what you just mentioned, Darren, and some of the innovation that’s driving growth, how has that been impacting margins? Is it accretive as you think about as you continue to evolve what you’re offering in your store? Thanks.
Darren Rebelez: Yeah. With respect to the innovation, I’ll start there, and I’ll let Steve talk a little bit more about the margin cadence. But, with the innovation we’ve really leaned heavier on that to drive traffic and to drive sales and less focused on some of the more aggressive value offers. I mean, we did do a little bit of that over the summer with a fountain drink promotion, and that worked out really well to drive traffic. But when we look at innovation on the food side, we’ve not had to discount that innovation, and we’ve been able to drive volume. And so, we think our team is really hitting its stride in terms of understanding what the guest needs are. And our culinary team is really developing those products. They are specifically hitting those needs, and that’s what’s resonating with the guests. And so, it’s allowing us to drive that incremental growth without having to do a lot of discounting to get there.
Steve Bramlage: Yeah. And Bonnie, this is Steve. I think we certainly continue to expect inside margin to improve year-over-year, that’s reflected in the guidance on the grocery side of the business. The private label mix change in conjunction with, generally speaking, tobacco, becoming gradually a smaller part of the mix is going to naturally flatter the grocery margin and the real opportunity, as you know, is on the prepared food side of the business. And so, we’re 80% hedged on our cheese buy for the remainder of this year. And so, less exposed to spot variability here in the out quarters. We were 18% to the good on cheese in the first quarter. We’re kind of mid to high-single digits to the good in Q2, Q3 and Q4 as we sit here right now with spot, but the 80% hedge will won’t give us quite as much upside as we saw in the first quarter, but I feel good about year-over-year deflation generally on the cheese side of the business.
