Brian Niccol: Yes. So we’re still in 10 restaurants. And this is why I use the stage gate process, because we’ve definitely — one of the things we’ve learned is the energy needed to run these dual sided grills is going to require some electrical upgrades that we originally had planned on. So we got to understand exactly what is the cost of the equipment, not only to purchase, but then to actually install? And so we’re still working through how do we make the economics of this makes sense? The crew likes it, the culinary turns out to be great. But we have to do some work on the economics of it.
Brian Mullan: Thank you.
Operator: The next question comes from Brian Harbour with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Brian Harbour: Yes. Thank you. Could you maybe just comment on the delivery channel, and then also just kind of mobile order and pickup and some of the things you’re doing with timing or orders per 15 minutes, if that’s kind of affected volumes at all?
Brian Niccol: So it’s kind of a general question. I’ll see if this may be answers your question. But what we see is the delivery business pretty stable. The order ahead and pickup business continues to be something that we are very much focused on being on-time and accurate. And that’s why we’ve implemented this smarter pickup times where we are moving, how many orders we allow in per 10 minutes as well as the buffer, so that our crew can execute those digital orders with excellence without having to impact giving the frontline a great experience. And we’re seeing nice progress on both fronts, which I mentioned earlier. We’re more on time, more accurate and we’re seeing gains on the throughput side of things on the frontline. And we’re not seeing a step back in any conversion rates in that digital business as well. So it’s full steam ahead and we got to execute the operating platform.
Brian Harbour: Okay. To just Chipotlanes, are you still seeing kind of the same unit volume uplift that you’ve previously talked about for those kind of the same impact on returns? Is it in fact going up? Any comments on how we think about the Chipotlane impact, especially as we kind of think about next year?
Jack Hartung: Yes. The Chipotlane volume has gotten closer to the non-Chipotlane volumes. And keep in mind, a lot of these were open during the pandemic when the Chipotlane was really a premium, a preferred access channel during that time. But keep in mind we’re comparing a little bit of apples and oranges too because in the early days of Chipotlane, we had a lot of trade areas that could accommodate Chipotlane and yet we weren’t putting a Chipotlane at every single restaurant. Now the only restaurants that don’t have a Chipotlane tend to be a downtown area and inline location where you can’t have a Chipotlane. So we’re comparing a little bit of apples and oranges. Having said that, the margin is much better because you’ve got a lot more — you got more of your business that’s going through the digital channel, which is a more efficient channel for us.
And the other thing that happens is you still have about a 10% ship where your delivery is dropping by 8 to 10 points or something like that and your order ahead is increasing by 8, 10 points or so. So our customers are choosing the convenience channel, which also is a value channel, which is also a very efficient channel for us to run in that order head and they’re deselecting the delivery channel.
Brian Harbour: Thank you.
Operator: Our next question comes from Sharon Zackfia with William Blair. Please go ahead.
Sharon Zackfia: Hi. Good afternoon. I guess going back to throughput, I know in the past you’ve quantified kind of where you are relative to 2019 on peak throughput. I was hoping perhaps we could get an update on that. And then I guess I’m also wondering is 2019 really the right benchmark anymore just given how the business has shifted? You’re doing double digital versus 2019 and we know that’s causing some tension between the front and back line. So is that the right bogey? Do you have a slice of restaurants that have exceeded 2019 peak throughput or is that not the right answer anymore?
Jack Hartung: Sharon, it’s a great question. When we use 2019 as a benchmark, we actually adjusted it for the fact that today’s volume is at basically 60%, 62% of the business goes through the frontline versus back in 2019, it was about 80% or 81% or 82% or so. So we’ve adjusted for that volume. So for example, the average throughput in 2019 was in that high 20% range, 28% to 29%. When you adjust it for 62% of the volume going through the frontline, that bogey ends up being on an adjusted basis more like a 25 to mid 20s. And so we do have the right targets for our teams because we did volume adjust it. In terms of where we are, we’ve been making incremental improvements. We’re now at right around at 22. But we’re still three transactions — two and a half to three transactions before our goal.
The good news as Brian mentioned, we’re seeing a lot of progress in terms of the right deployment. We’re seeing that a lot of our restaurants are executing core four, core four meaning they’ve got at least four folks, if not more on the frontline. Previous, we saw most restaurants would have three or sometimes even less than that. And now our teams are focusing on what are the habits that drive great throughput, because having four people on the frontline is an enabler, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to deliver great throughput. You have to stay on that frontline and then you have to have all the tricks that we’re not going to go through right now and all the techniques to deliver great throughput. We’re starting to see individual restaurants or patches of restaurants that are executing core four and their throughput numbers are three to four or more transactions grade are in a 15 minute period than restaurants in the same patch that are not executing the core four.
So we’re seeing really encouraging results. And it’s that three or four transactions here that gets you from the 22 up to the mid 20. So we do feel like we’re triangulating around the right target.
Sharon Zackfia: Okay. And then I guess the question on the guidance for the quarter on comps. I know you had kind of some weather and some disappointment around the holidays last year. Jack, are you factoring that in to the guidance for this year or are you just kind of steady stating?
Jack Hartung: What we’ve done, Sharon, is taken our current trends from October and then pushing them forward. We do take into account what we did last year. But rather than taking account last year, is that going to affect our comp either up or down, we really take our current trends which includes Carne Asada and includes the menu price increase and it includes the current underlying transaction trend. We use that trend to trend out for the rest of the year. Compared to last year to the extent that there was some weather, we see individual days or weeks where there’s weather, our comp is going to bounce up during those periods. But we didn’t use last year’s weather to say it’s going to be any better or worse.
Sharon Zackfia: Okay, great. Thank you.
Jack Hartung: Thanks.
Operator: The next question comes from Danilo Gargiulo with Bernstein. Please go ahead.
