Eric Langan: Yes. I think we got a little surprised at some of the weakness in late October — I mean late November and December. The margins I think will return to a more normal mean of 18% to 22% as we move forward. The Houston market was extremely weak. The Houston, Texas did not contribute anything at all this year, which hurts a little bit in that marketplace. Overall I think that Bombshells has gone through a little bit of some growing pains in that — in the previous years we’ve had less competition in the marketplace, because so many places were closed. We were some of the only places open after COVID. We were first to open after COVID, and there was a lot of vacant buildings. And I think over the last year and especially in the Houston and Dallas market, those vacant buildings have been reopened new businesses, new restaurants have moved in and come into the marketplace.
And they’re going through their honeymoon periods, because they’re new. And so everybody rushes to the new place for a while. But I think over the next few months we’re going to start seeing some of that return back to normal where the customers kind of float around a little more than they were as those places are no longer than their honeymoon periods. I would also like to remind everybody that same-store sales were still up 3.6% from our pre-COVID 2019 numbers. So overall Bombshells is still on course. We do have some cost — the Grange Food Hall is in the Bombshells segment because it’s a restaurants, we put that in the restaurant segment. So, were some cost there in the first — last 10 days of December that didn’t really contribute revenue.
And I think as the Grange, we’re doing the remodel the new TVs are in, the games are in, the actual Bombshells kitchen construction starts next Tuesday, should be finished by Friday or Saturday and we hope to have that open by the first of March. And so we’ll have a lot more contribution from the Grange this year — in this quarter as well as for March and then of course going forward. But we also have the — on February 1st we took over operations from our franchisee as they lost their operating partner and the investment partners decided they wanted to sell the location and rather than trying to go through the whole franchising process and finding somebody we just discussed them selling us the location. We financed that location with $1.2 million cash down and a $2 million a five-year seller note.
So, a very manageable note for us with that location averaging sales of about $120,000 a week. That’s about a $6 million year a unit. So, I don’t think we could have even built the unit for that cost. So, it’s an upgrade for us. It’s sad that we lose a franchisee. We’re really hopeful on the franchising model at some point in the future. Maybe Huntsville will be the guy who’s successful. But at the same time we pick up a fantastic location for ourselves.
Anthony Lebiedzinski: Okay. That’s good to hear. And then given the choppiness in traffic in both of the blue collar locations and Bombshells, are you guys maybe perhaps rethinking your promotional strategy to do maybe more specials as far as for food or drinks, or like how are you thinking about that?
