Mike Quartieri: And to add on to that. When you look back a year ago, we comped plus 17.5% in Q3. And so that is a huge number to overlap. And so when you go back versus ’22, yes, it’s a tough comp. We look back at ’19 and we see still the growth in the business that we wanted to see, which is that 2% type growth on an annual basis going forward, which is a more normalized environment that you would expect to see in businesses like ours. What has us at this point, we can’t control the macroeconomic factors that are driving traffic into those effect. What we do control is what happens in the four walls of our business. And that’s the type of attitude and the — I’d say — I call it bringing it every day to control those four wall EBITDA margins.
And that’s the value that you’re seeing in that EBITDA margin today, even in this type of environment where we can expand on those EBITDA margins. The actions that we’re taking today around that are permanent in nature and will be able to benefit us even further as traffic and economy returns back to more normalized levels.
Operator: Our next question today comes from Jeff Farmer of Gordon Haskett.
Jeff Farmer: Just wanted to start with following up on Jake’s question. So is there anything you guys can share as it relates to how the Q2 same-store sales sort of finished relative to your internal expectations? Anything that caught you guys off guard either positively or negatively?
Mike Quartieri: No, I think as you look at the back end of Q2 and what we’re seeing today, it’s a relatively consistent level of comp store sales. Unfortunately, it’s a decline, but those levels are pretty consistent across the board. We evaluate each of the different demographics within our business, I’d say demographics of our consumer, but also from a geographic perspective. And at this point we’re not seeing any one particular group that’s underperforming the rest of the demographic area as well as the geography of those types of results.
Jeff Farmer: That is helpful. And then it looks like you guys saw roughly 250 basis points of food and beverage cost favorability year-over-year. The question is — so a lot of things can impact that, so either cost initiatives, menu pricing, commodity inflation. Can you help us understand what drove that level of 250 basis points, which was more than doubled what you saw in Q1? And then as we move forward, how should we be thinking about that? So just understanding the drivers of that cost favorability and how we should be thinking about it moving over the next two quarters?
Mike Quartieri: Yes, so when you look at the improvement in the cost of goods sold line for food and beverage, there’s a couple of aspects. One, we haven’t done anything from a pricing perspective between Q1 and Q2. So pricing there is consistent. The benefit comes from continued work from a synergy perspective, as we’ve gone through kind of the second round of contracts where contracts that were fixed in nature, needed to run their term and then we were able to then consolidate the procurement volumes and go after that from a cost base perspective. As Chris spoke to during his prepared remarks, we’re testing new menu items that yield a cost benefit to us from a cost of goods sold perspective. And then lastly, as we always look for more improvement from prep time and things of that effect, the ability from a commodity perspective, we are seeing relative consistency commodities quarter-to-quarter.
So we’re benefiting on a commodity basis relatively, I’d say straightforward from Q1 at about 3% improvement on a year-over-year basis.
Operator: And our next question today comes from Brian Vaccaro with Raymond James.
