Brian Vaccaro: My question is on Olive Garden. I think you said it was outperforming the industry comp even before the launch of the ring Pasta, which I think is a change versus the last several quarters. And — just curious, what do you attribute that to? Have you seen the lower end consumer trade down in recent months? Anything in your data there? Or maybe it’s execution and guest scores that are starting to kick in and really gain traction on traffic maybe some other dynamic you might offer up.
Ricardo Cardenas: Yes, Brian. Oliver outperformed in Q1 as well. Just the outperformance got a little bit better. When you think about where we were last year, I would say that Olive Garden was probably more fully staffed than maybe some of the other brands in the first quarter of last year. And so other brands may have had a little bit of benefit from more team members. We continue to believe that the investments we made in Olive Garden will continue to pay off over time. And their staffing levels are back to where they were pre-COVID. There are improvements that they’ve made since pre-COVID in their food. And then finally, Olive Garden, California last year was a big jump for us, and we have a lot of restaurants in California, maybe there wasn’t as much across the industry. And so — that’s why we believe that our gap to the industry got better from Q1 to Q2, even though it was positive in Q1.
Brian Vaccaro: All right. That’s helpful. And sorry if I missed it, but on pricing, what was menu pricing in the second quarter? And what’s a reasonable expectation moving through Q3, Q4 on menu pricing, just how you’re thinking about that?
Rajesh Vennam: Yes, Brian, it was approximately 6.5% in Q2. And for the full year, we’re saying it’s going to be closer to — so the way to think about it is Q3 is likely going to be low 6s, and Q4 is likely going to be closer to 5%.
Operator: Our next question comes from John Evanko with JPMorgan.
John Evanko : Guys, it’s nice to see you coming back to brilliant with the basics. I mean, I think we probably first used that maybe 20 years ago or so. So it’s definitely like a trade markable quote for you guys. And especially in the context of increased turnover. And I’m just curious in terms of like where you’re seeing that, why you’re seeing it first. Are you seeing some of the very high kind of unexplainable like fast quits like some others are? Or are you seeing — is it a 6-month term over 12-month turnover 24? Is it happening in front of house, back of house? And is there anything that you can do to, I guess — and the answer might be no, but can you make it a better job for them? And when they are leaving Darden, are they going to other restaurants? Or are they just going to other types of employment?
Ricardo Cardenas: John, The —
John Evanko : Yes. I mean what is the — I’m trying to determine what is you guys, what is the industry versus just what is the change in employee.
Ricardo Cardenas: Yes. No problem. Yes, brilliant with the basics. It’s been here since the jelly days. I remember when that was coined a long time ago. So we’ve been talking about reeling with the basics for quite a long time. And we believe that we got a little bit more basic, which is the right thing, right? So simplifying our menu, we went to the basic things and we did that better. That said, if you think about our turnover today versus what it was pre coved a lot of the turnover, at least over the last 6 months was 90-day turnover, right? So you come in to start work and then you leave within 90 days. A big chunk of our turnover was during that time period. So we — all of our general manager conferences happen in August.
And the focus and theme August and September, I guess, the theme of those conferences were making Brand X Y Z an even better place to work. how do we continue to make the team member experience better by giving them the tools that they need to do their job, treating them with respect and listening to their concerns. Our turnover is improving. Now I think about where the turnover happens. It generally happens in more of the entry kind of jobs. Our higher turnover is generally in the host area dish area. And generally, in the kitchen, we have more turnover than in the front of the house. That said, we’ve just completed our engagement survey with Gallup, and we feel really good about the engagement in our team. and we’re going to continue to make our brands better places to work by continuing to invest in our team and continuing to teach them and give them opportunities to grow.
So where they’re going? Don’t know, right? So we don’t necessarily do exit interviews for every hourly team member on where they’re going. But I would guess many of them are leaving the industry. We do have a lot of people that come to work for us that a board for others. So I can’t say that we don’t have people leave us to go work somewhere else.
