Ian Borden: Maybe one just small build, Dennis, and I’ll be a bit of a broken record on this, but I just — I wouldn’t underestimate some of those things that we’ve done over the last couple of years like the fully modernized estate. I mean imagine — and this is the situation that some of our competitors are in today that you’re trying to do that today in an environment of pressured cash flows and higher interest rates. I mean, we’ve got a fully modernized estate. As Chris talked about, we’ve got a modernized digital platform that continues to grow. And I think that’s fundamentally some of the significant investments that we’ve made have been critically important as we head into this more kind of macro headwind and volatility.
Chris Kempczinski: Yes, just one thing, Ian said that triggered as well, I thought, which is being able to drive the business, we need our franchisees to be in a strong position. And franchisee cash flow in the U.S. is up this year. We’re up in the quarter. So, I think that just goes to sentiment. It’s much more challenging, as you would imagine, to continue to drive the business if the franchisees are not seeing it flow through. And fortunately for us, we’re seeing good flow-through for our franchisees despite having to absorb quite a bit of inflation both on the food and paper side as well as on the labor side. So that’s another thing that gives us confidence as we head into the New Year.
Mike Cieplak: Our next question is from Lauren Silberman with Deutsche Bank.
Lauren Silberman: Thank you. Appreciate it. So, I just want to follow-up on the commentary regarding the competitive environment. Can you talk about what you’re seeing in the promotional environment? Any uptick in discounting across the industry – and how might your approach to value change if the consumer gets weaker? And then I guess related, any color on same-store sales across different dayparts or any competitive – greater competitive activity in certain dayparts? Thank you.
Chris Kempczinski: Yes, I’ll take the overall in terms of the competitive landscape, and I’ll let Ian speak specifically to the daypart question. But overall, I think what you’re seeing there is everybody is looking to make sure that they are competitive from a value standpoint with the consumer. And particularly, I talked about earlier, that low-income consumer, which I would say is, let’s call that in this particular instance $45,000 and under, that part of the business, we’re seeing traffic in the quarter was down. There is a step-up that we’re seeing in some promotional activity by some of our competitors, but nothing alarming on that. Nothing that I’d say is looking to be, what we would say is beyond prudent. So, we’re going to just continue to monitor it.
We are focused on maintaining, our value leadership, and we’re going to do, what we need to do to maintain our value leadership. But I think, we’ve also got lots of things that go into value. It goes beyond just price. It incorporates delivering a better customer experience, which we’re doing through faster service times, improved hospitality. It goes to doing through that through a modernized estate, which we’ve got that is not something true across the rest of the industry. And we’re seeing great execution, which means consumers are getting hotter, faster, better tasting food. So, all those things go into value perception, which is why we’re seeing our value perception, hold up in the industry despite some of these pressures. So, I don’t foresee any big changes there, but certainly, everybody is paying attention to that.
For the specific date parts, I’ll let Ian talk about that a little bit more.
Ian Borden: Good morning, Lauren, I just – maybe on the build on the dayparts, and again, I’m using the U.S. as the specific context is we’ve had pretty strong and consistent performance across all the dayparts in the business. So I don’t think there’s a 1 day part that I would call out where we aren’t seeing strong performance. I do think, as we’ve seen kind of, I’ll call it, a bit of a more return to work and return to office routine, there’s probably a little bit more pressure in the breakfast daypart, just as some of those competitors who’ve been further behind in recovery, are kind of coming to life in that category. But again, we’re continuing to see good performance there. And maybe the only other build, and this was an international lens on value, is you’ve heard us speak to some of the, I would call it, adjustments that some of our international markets have made to value.
Maybe one I would just call out is in Canada, where the team there put a morning offer in place, which was a McMuffin and coffee pairing breakfast in Canada, is a pretty important daypart. Coffee is a pretty important part of that daypart. And so, I think our markets are going to continue to front footed and proactively make sure that we’re adjusting value. So it’s relevant to what our consumers are looking for as the context continues to evolve. And value, as Chris talked about, is a strategic part of our fundamental business model, but we are obviously going to continue to listen to our customers and make sure we’re delivering what they need and what they expect from us.
Mike Cieplak: Our next question is from Brian Bittner with Oppenheimer.
