Jeffrey Bernstein: Understood. And then, Raj, the fiscal 2024 guidance, the openings halfway through the year were actually tweaked higher, which is somewhat unusual. I feel like the past few years, if there was going to be a change in opening plans, it was to tweak lower. So, I’m wondering if you could talk maybe about what the driver of that is? I think some have heard of improvement in maybe speed of permitting and construction, or maybe you’re just seeing lower build costs, so you’re kind of accelerating your plans or better real estate availability. Anything to talk about in terms of that uptick in the unit openings as it pertains to the broader industry? I assume that’s the reason for the CapEx uptick as well. But any color you can provide on that would be great. Thank you.
Raj Vennam: Sure. Jeff. Let me start with the comment around the uptick in the openings for the year. We were able to open some restaurants that we thought would be after the holidays, before the holidays. And, frankly, I think our team was a little burned. We got burned the last two years in terms of having some rosy projections. And so, we probably were a little bit more conservative in terms of how we thought about the timeline. That was built based on the actuals last two years. And so, that timeline is getting a little bit better. So, that’s helping us deliver a little bit more, and that’s really what’s showing up. Look, our focus is continuing to want to grow, but cost effectively. We are going to focus on balancing the two, and so — and our teams understand that and we’re working towards that. And to your point about CapEx, yes, that CapEx is driven by the uptick in the NROs.
Jeffrey Bernstein: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Next question today is coming from Joshua Long from Stephens. Your line is now live.
Joshua Long: Great. Thank you so much. I was curious if we could dig into the segment profitability trends. Impressive to see the consistency there and — particularly on the LongHorn side, but at Olive Garden as well just given a lot of the pushes and pulls. When you think about the second half of this year, are there particular areas? I know the back-to-basics approach really touches on kind of a holistic approach to the business, but any particular areas that you’ve been impressed with and/or are driving the majority of kind of the strengthened segment profit margin trends that you’ve been putting up?
Raj Vennam: Yes. I’d say, look, the biggest growth in the segment profit this year is really coming from COGS, which was a big unfavorability over the last two years. So, we’re starting to — kind of as commodities moderate, that’s really drive — helping drive food costs get better on a year-over-year basis. So, that’s one of the drivers of segment profit growth. We also talked about the difference in pricing versus inflation. We do have a little bit more pricing versus inflation in the first half. That also helped. But, I think, if you look at overall segment profits, as we got to fourth quarter of last year, it was very strong. I think at the Darden level, we were over 20%. And so, we are — we had some — we felt like there was probably more opportunity to get a little bit more in the first half than the back half.
But, in general, all of our segments, all of our teams are focused on the right things. One of the things we talked about at the beginning of the year with our teams is focusing on controlling what we can control and our teams rally around that and focused on managing our costs better. And that’s showing throughout the P&L. And so, there’s no one specific thing I would pick on. In general, we’re very happy with the progress our teams have made, and we’ll continue to be disciplined.
Joshua Long: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Next question today is coming from Peter Saleh from BTIG. Your line is now live.
Peter Saleh: Great. Thanks for taking the question. I did just want to come back to the conversation around development and construction costs. Could you just give us an update on where the individual construction costs are coming in? Are they coming in lower than you guys are expected in line? How’s that trajectory? And then just more broadly, what are you seeing from independence? Are you seeing more of a willingness to build more units? Are you seeing more restaurant formation out there? Or is it kind of more of the same that you’ve been seeing over the past several quarters? Thank you.
Raj Vennam: Yes. Let me start with the costs. Costs in general on the development are in line with where we thought on average. We obviously have some unique deals, one-offs here and there where the costs are coming in more than we thought. But going into this year, we had embedded some higher costs into the openings based on the experience we have had over the last couple of years. And so, what I would say at this point is, we believe that the inflation has peaked. And we are — we may have said this last call, too, we are starting to receive more bids that are kind of in line with our projected — our project budgets. And so, that’s a good thing. From an independent standpoint, I think it’s hard for us, the data that we’re seeing, to say that there’s actually lot of excitement from independence on building new restaurants, given the way the interest rate environment is.
