Shlomo Rosenbaum: And then just the labor environment on your own, like for the people that you’re sourcing?
Todd Schneider: Yes. Pardon me. So from a labor standpoint, yes. As I mentioned earlier, it is easier, but not easy. And we are looking for great people. We want to hire not only people that are employed somewhere else, but happily employed, which is very challenging. And — but we think we have a great employee value proposition as well. And so we’re highly focused on that. So — but yes, easier than it was a year ago. But Shlomo, throughout my career, it’s always been challenging. It’s a little bit more challenging than it has been historically, but not what it once was a year ago or so.
Operator: And our next question comes from Kartik Mehta from Northcoast Research.
Kartik Mehta: I know there’s a lot of questions and maybe thoughts on what happens to new sales. And I’m wondering, if you go back to kind of 2008, 2009 and hopefully never have that recession again. But if you look at new sales back then, how did Cintas perform for new sales? And any lessons from that you would take as we move forward?
Todd Schneider: Yes, Kartik. First of all, we’re a really different company today than we were in 2008, 2009. We have a much more diversified customer base. We’re now — today 70% of our customers are service is providing, 30% are goods producing. We have significant verticals that we didn’t have as well, health care, education, government. So we think we’re really well positioned for whenever the next recession is. And I remember ’08, ’09 because I was running the sales organization back then. And our value propositions still resonated with people, and we still sold new business. And we did so at attractive rates. As I mentioned, it’s not always are we asking for new money. Sometimes it’s just a redirection of those from somewhere else to us, not only in a — maybe a direct competitor standpoint, but also they’re purchasing clothing, they’re purchasing items to take care of the facilities.
So we think we’re well positioned. I might also mention, you didn’t ask specifically about it, but we love having a pristine balance sheet. And we think whenever the next recession is that might open up opportunities for us. And just the fact that we’ve — our organization is focused on fighting through whatever the economic environment is, taking great care of our customers, taking great care of our employee partners. And we’ve grown sales in 52 of the last 54 years. And we suspect that whatever the economic environment is, we believe we’re going to be successful in it.
Michael Hansen: Kartik, I might add, Todd might be a little modest. He was running that organization. It was a difficult environment, and he and the sales team exceeded their internal goals and really continued to show that value even in tough times, as Todd mentioned. And as he also talked about, our customer base is quite a bit broader than it was back then, and our sales team is a little bit different. But the really good news is even back then, in the deepest, longest, broadest recession we’d seen in 100 years, we still sold a lot of new business. And it’s a nice reflection of the value proposition that we have.
Kartik Mehta: Yes. And just as a follow-up, if you look at the First Aid and Safety business, you’re doing really well in it. Is there a way you would look at to say a certain percentage is recurring? Do you consider a certain percentage recurring? I know you don’t have long-term contracts in that business. But just from a demand standpoint and what you’ve seen from a historical standpoint?
