So, is the check management coming from lower income cohorts or the higher income cohort? And it sounds like some of this is just — lower income cohorts may have splurged more in the past and now you’re kind of getting back to normal patterns, but I’m trying to piece everything together. Thank you.
Rick Cardenas: Yes, Sarah. The check management in Fine Dining is coming more from the lower income cohorts than it is from the higher income cohorts. I think, they were splurging, as we’ve talked about before, a little bit of euphoria in the last few years, and we’re getting back to a more normal level. And in regards to pricing, your point on the follow up, recall, Raj said we don’t really have a whole lot of pricing in the back half. Most of what we have is wrap. So, when you think about how much pricing we have versus inflation, most of our pricing is already embedded. And so, that’s really where the delta is. So, the consumer isn’t going to see a whole lot more price than they are seeing today. They might see a little bit in a couple of brands. So, we still feel really good about where we are, and we don’t think it’s going to really make a big change in our traffic patterns.
Operator: Thank you. Next question is coming from Chris O’Cull from Stifel. Your line is now live.
Patrick Johnson: Thanks. Good morning, guys. This is Patrick on for Chris. But, Raj, I was curious on the traffic at LongHorn, if you could just dig into that a little bit more, whether relative to last quarter or relative to the industry? And then also just check management specifically at LongHorn. And are you guys seeing any different trends there than maybe what you mentioned in some of the other segments?
Raj Vennam: Yes, Patrick. When I look at LongHorn, they had a very strong performance for the quarter, right. We talked about significantly outperformed the industry on same-restaurant sales. Their traffic for the quarter was around negative 1%. That’s a — but when you look at their retention to pre-COVID, they’ve held up pretty well. They are up both in dining room and off premise by — combined by double digits in the dining room. So, to have the volumes who are running at LongHorn today, we would have said four years ago it would take 10 years to get there, and we got there in four years. So, we’re really happy with where LongHorn is in terms of their momentum, and we hope to see that continue.
Patrick Johnson: Great. Thanks. That’s helpful. And then, Rick, I was just curious, as you step back from the business, and you think about strategically how you continue to exploit the scale advantages that you have. I mean, what are the biggest opportunities over the next 12 months when you think about potentially competing in a softer environment, what you can leverage? Is it supply chain, is it technology? Or just curious to get your overall thoughts on where some of those opportunities might lie to increase the gap between you and your competitors?
Rick Cardenas: Yes, Patrick. I will say, over the next 12 months, pretty kind of — a little bit short term versus the strategic things that we’ve been doing over the last few years. But we believe that we continue to invest in technology to make it easier for our teams to execute. As I said, we’ve got better AI tools for scheduling and if we schedule better, we execute better. That drives performance. Our supply chain scale advantage is pretty strong, and so we’re able to get better pricing for our food, which we can pass on to our consumers through lower overall check growth versus the industry. So, there’s no one nugget. What I would say is, it’s our back-to-basics operating philosophy that’s going to continue to get us to grow.
And that’s excellent food, excellent service and an inviting atmosphere, executing better than the restaurant next door. That’s not necessarily strategic, that’s not a silver bullet, that’s hard to do, and we do it really well. And that’s what’s really — as Raj mentioned earlier, execution is what’s driving a lot of our performance, and we’ll continue to execute by using our scale to help our brands get better.
Patrick Johnson: Understood. Thanks, guys.
Operator: Thank you. Next question today is coming from Dennis Geiger from UBS. Your line is now live.
Dennis Geiger: Great. Thanks, guys. Just wondering if you could talk a little bit more on off premise, what it was in the quarter, and any thoughts on the go-forward there?
Raj Vennam: Yes. Dennis, off premise for the quarter at Olive Garden was 23%, so pretty similar to the levels we had before. And then LongHorn is at 14%. And, now, we’ll get into — as we get into the holidays, we should see a little bit more at Olive Garden. Typically, we see that, but we’ll see how that goes going forward. But on a year-over-year basis, it’s slightly below, I think, across our system. We’re probably 100 basis points lower or something like that, it’s — but it’s pretty — it’s stabilized in these ranges.
Dennis Geiger: That’s great. Thanks, Raj. Just one quick one then, just on any regional, and I know you talked a little bit earlier for some of the segments about some regional things to be thinking about, anything broadly across brands, cross portfolio regionally that you’ve seen?
Raj Vennam: Nothing of note to talk about. It’s fairly consistent with what we mentioned last quarter, where there’s a little bit of softness in Texas and South, but not — nothing crazy. California, a little bit stronger, but nothing meaningful.
Dennis Geiger: Great. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Raj.
Operator: Thank you. Next question today is coming from Lauren Silberman from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now live.
Lauren Silberman: Thank you. Congrats. I think, you’ve talked about before, you generally see changes in check before traffic in a more challenging environment. Do you see this check management as a precursor to traffic step down, or more of a return to normal behaviors? How are you monitoring that? Thank you.
Rick Cardenas: Yes. Lauren, this is Rick. We see the check management a little bit more of a function of year-over-year euphoria difference. Not necessarily that the consumer is feeling a lot more pinched. Now, we — as we said, we’re getting closer. The higher income households mix is going up, the below $50,000 is going down, and that’s both on the traffic side and a little bit on the check side. So, we’re not hugely concerned or we’re not really that concerned about the check management now, because it was really more driven by last year versus kind of a long-term trend.
