I don’t see that being impactful to our 2024 year. I think it will build over a period of time and we have enough experience to know to be careful about how we do that. And so we are excited about the opportunity. We are excited about the opportunity of bringing on this business leader and have had some experience with him in the past and think that he will hit the ground running for us. But I probably would caution not to be overly optimistic about that in 2024.
Connor Rattigan: Okay. Got it. Sounds good to me. Thanks, guys.
Dan Fachner: Thank you, Connor.
Ken Plunk: Thanks.
Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And it looks like our next question is going to come from the line of Todd Brooks with the Benchmark Company. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Todd Brooks: Hey. Thank you. And congrats on a strong quarter to end a strong year.
Dan Fachner: Thank you very much, Tod. It’s a great way to end the year for sure.
Ken Plunk: Yes. Thank you, Todd. Good morning.
Todd Brooks: Good morning. Dan, I wanted to start off, when you started rattling off new opportunities for ’24, and Jon kind of hit on this, it was quite the laundry list. I don’t necessarily remember that much internal momentum at J&J. Could you maybe highlight for us the two or three most impactful opportunities as you see it for ’24 that investors should be most focused on?
Dan Fachner: We really do have a great pipeline. Our Snack Foods side, led by Bjoern Leyser, is doing such a good job identifying opportunities as we are building capabilities to be able to grow within some of our core markets. You’ve heard that talked about in our core strategies. And so some of the great opportunities we have are right within our core. I love what we’re doing. We released our SuperPretzel sticks this past quarter and they sold really well. And not surprised by that either. Todd, I knew that was going to be a good hit, and it was. And I think we have some great opportunities there within the retail environment. Also within the retail environment, we released the Hola! Churros, and early readings on that are strong and I think that will continue to grow alongside the growth of the SuperPretzel hot dogs that we make that I think have a real opportunity.
So some really good things inside retail. On the food service side, you heard me touch on a test that we had over this past quarter with a large sandwich chain that is going to roll out come January of 2024. I think that has a really big impact that can make a difference for us in this coming year. Again, able to do those things because we’ve built that capacity out there. On the bakery side. I love what they’re doing there. We’ve been reshaping that piece of our business, but we’re going to be able to release some of our core products, the sticks and the buns inside the bakery, and think that has some real opportunities for growth in 2024. And ICEE keeps chugging along. ICEE has an opportunity to win a club store to move our machines from a crew serve to a self-serve.
And early tests on that, and we’ve been in the test mode for a while, are really strong, have a great impact on those sales, and they’re in tests with a couple of QSR chains that I think have the opportunity to come true for this coming year. So I love where we are heading. The pipeline looks good. The sales teams on — led by Bjoern on Snack Foods and Aaron Winkelman in the ICEE side and Matt Inderlied on Dippin’ Dots side, are all kind of hitting on all cylinders. We had a sales meeting last week and had the three of them on stage. It was really impressive to see the kind of pipeline they have built. And so it gives us good confidence going into 2024.
Todd Brooks: That’s great. Thanks, Dan. A follow-up, you talked about the six new lines that have been put in place for the core products over the course of this year. I don’t think you’ve ever sized the revenue unlock that those lines could represent for J&J. But can you may be at least talk from a percentage basis, how much of the benefit was realized in fiscal ’23 versus how much of that benefit you could see harvested in ’24 and ’25, just looking at the overall opportunity?
Dan Fachner: Yes. ’23, not so much. I mean, we are kind of building those out during 2023, and it really was — much of it came even in the back half of the year. So not too impactful in the 2023 year. Feel like we have a chance for it to grow in 2024 with the pipeline that I just talked about. Some of those opportunities required those investments that we made in the six new lines. And so happy with where they’re at there. I think what we had said before, Todd, is that the opportunity of those six new lines allows us to grow sales by $150 million or above, right? And so I think that’s where we’re really shooting for. And I think that we can see a piece of that come through in 2024 with those opportunities that I just talked about.
Todd Brooks: Great. And then one for Ken, and I’ll jump back in queue. Jon kind of pointed out the seasonal nature of gross margins, and just wanted to see if we could maybe level set for our modeling purposes. I know last year we saw, basically, a 300 basis point-ish gross margin dip in the first-half of the fiscal year versus second-half of fiscal ’22. We are obviously working off a higher base. Would you expect that magnitude of retrenchment in the first-half of fiscal ’24 for our modeling? So kind of down to that 30% level from the 33% you put up in the back half year?
