So you’re right, it’s not a ’24 or ’25 saying we’re not going to go to 0 unit openings, but we’re not going to reaccelerate until we’ve got confidence in our top line and our margin and in the investment thesis for a new unit prototype.
Jake Bartlett: Great. I appreciate it. I’ll jump back in the queue.
Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our next question is going to come from the line of Andrew Barish with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Andrew Barish: Hey Drew, good to hear from you again. A question on sort of the breadth of the menu under the new contemporary comfort kitchen. Do you anticipate kind of moving beyond the core pasta noodles? Is that something that’s being currently contemplated or maybe down the road, if you could give us just a little more context in the work that’s gone on with this new focus.
Drew Madsen: Sure. And good to talk with you again, Andy. No, we’re going to stay in our lane. We know what our brand position is all about. We know what capabilities we’ve developed. So we’re not going to fundamentally change from a noodle and pasta dish — pasta dish-based concept. We’re going to continue to have salads. We’re going to continue to have soup. But we’re going to be a noodle and pasta-based menu. We just need to make it more compelling by updating some existing recipes and adding some new ones in these states, as I said, that we’re not addressing today. And then make the overall menu easier for our guests to navigate. It’s kind of confusing now in my mind. But we’re not fundamentally trying to change our identity, just update it.
Andrew Barish: Got it. Helpful. And then Mike, I may have missed it, but can you lay out the pricing — menu price assumptions? I know there’s a lot of things that are going to go on over the next 9, 10 months or so, but just kind of what’s embedded in your comp expectations in terms of menu price. And then it sort of relates to it, but the guide is basically for flattish margins with a lot of things going on this year and obviously probably starting out a little bit lower just given the first quarter comps. But is there something in addition to — additional productivity that’s kind of an offset to maybe some of the complexity or at least near-term costs as you guys work through a lot of these changes?
Mike Hynes: Sure. Yes, the margin, I’ll give you a little color there. I’ll start with the pricing. And you’re right, there’s a lot of moving parts, especially as we’re considering new menu and some changes to our menu and just how that will shake out. But our assumption is that especially after the last couple of years, that our overall pricing is going to be pretty conservative this year in the low single digits. So we’re not anticipating aggressive pricing this year, just enough to offset the modest inflation that we’re forecasting on a dollar basis. And you’re right, the margin is pretty flat compared to what we saw in ’23 in addition to pricing and inflation, a couple of moving parts for you. We are going to see some labor productivity benefit in the front part of the year to help offset inflation, because a lot of the measures we put in last year were weighted towards the back half of the productivity we saw in Q3, Q4.
And so we’ll get a full year benefit this year. A bit of a wildcard is marketing. We are considering marketing — incremental marketing spend that will impact margin. Some of that is going to be related to testing and research for the new menu and menu innovation. And some of it’s going to be related to us considering incremental media spend in the back half of the year as we roll out our new menu. We’re going to test that and we’re going to make sure we see what we’re hoping to see out of that media spend before we commit to it, but that’s part of the 14% to 15% margin guide.
Andrew Barish: Okay, appreciate the color on that.
Operator: Thank you. And I’m showing no further questions at this time. And I would like to hand the conference back over to Drew Madsen for any further remarks.
Drew Madsen: Well, once again, thank you, everybody, for joining us today. I’m delighted to be part of the Noodles team, delighted to be part of the future. We see big opportunity ahead. It’s not going to be immediate. It’s going to require some change. We’ve identified 5 priorities that I think are going to make a major difference. And we look forward to keeping you updated on our progress as we move forward. Thank you so much.
Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
