Mike Cieplak: Our next question is from Brian Bittner with Oppenheimer.
Brian Bittner: I wanted to ask about store level margins. Clearly, your same store sales were very impressive in the second quarter, over 10% comps in the United States. But store level margins in the US were still down about 70 bps year-over-year in the quarter. So can you talk more specifically about what is causing the drag on margins despite such strong top line? And as the top line potentially slows moving forward, as you talked about, is there a scenario where store level margins can start to show improvements or is this a situation where you anticipate store level margins to feel more pressure for longer?
Ian Borden: Well, look, I would start with the headline. I mean, our belief is that the best way to drive sustainable margin improvement is for us to focus on driving strong momentum in the business. And I think the US business is the perfect example of that. While certainly as you work through these kind of rapid and accelerated periods of inflation, there’s pressure from a percentage basis and we’ve clearly seen that in the US business. I mean, I think, that the example would be that the strength of our momentum in the US actually means that our owner operator cash flow is up year-over-year obviously in a continued challenging environment. And that’s what we’re focused on is how do we drive sustainable margin dollar cash flow growth for ourselves and for our franchisees.
I think from a percentage basis, you’re right. I mean, I think we continue to see pressure, obviously, from food and paper inflation, labor inflation. I think our — where we talked about earlier in the year remains in place. We said this and I think we are consistent with that in the sense that we thought our McOpCo margin in the US business would be kind of roughly in line in terms of ’23 with where we were at quarter four 2022. But we have a lot of confidence that as we continue to drive that strong top line momentum as we go forward that will continue to be able to drive both margin dollars and over time, margin percentage growth within the business.
Chris Kempczinski: And I would just add, as I mentioned in my opening comments, I’ve been to a number of markets. I’ve had a chance to talk to franchisees in a number of markets. And I’ve been very impressed and pleased with how they’re thinking about working through the current scenario right now, which is they’re playing the long game. And they recognize the importance of us continuing to make sure we have leadership in value and affordability as they also think about how do they rebuild margins back to kind of where we were during this pre-inflationary spike. And so in many cases, the conversations we’re having with franchisees are about more of exiting the year and where do we want to see margins when we exit the year but recognize that there maybe some short-term impacts on this as we continue to balance our need for margin but also our need to maintain our leadership with customers.
So hats off to the franchisees who I think are taking the exact right perspective on this and it’s what shows up in our performance and the reason why we’re taking share in almost all of our major markets.
Mike Cieplak: Our next question is from Dennis Geiger with UBS.
Dennis Geiger: I wanted to just ask a little bit more on how you’re thinking about maintaining some of the underlying momentum and the share gains you’ve seen for quite some time now in the US. As you think about some of the key drivers in place across the three Ds, the operational execution, newer sort of ready on arrival stuff, et cetera. Can you just sort of unpack how you think about the most impactful traffic and sales opportunities in the next year, maybe even over the coming years?
