Andrew Wolf : Okay. And I just want to ask kind of generalized strategic question on kind of the two things. Well, basically on driving traffic with promotions or advertising and obviously, you brought the selling expense down. I guess that makes sense if you don’t have the kind of offer you want to entice new customers with complete yet. But as we look to next year, is that — should we see a higher selling expense given that the — what you’re ready to present — or later this year, ready to present to newer diners will be more or less complete. And unrelated — related, but a different topic is how does the loyalty program play into that into traffic? Is it a retention tool because you want to use it more as a really a loyalty — true loyalty program versus a discount program. So two different questions, but both at least related to traffic.
G.J. Hart: Yes, Andy, I’ll start with the back question there. Relative to the loyalty, exactly, we want to do exactly that as we’ll recognize our most loyal guests and reward them accordingly and be able to develop a relationship with them. And that revamp of that program, as I said, is ongoing, and I’m very confident that the direction that we’re going is going to reap some real, real, real benefits. In fact, I would tell you that our — we’re finally going to use our loyalty platform in a way to really drive our business. So I’m very excited as we go into ’24, what we’ll be able to achieve. In terms of your question around marketing and the level of marketing spend, I want to — I’m not — I won’t totally answer your question, but I’m going to say this to you, is that the marketing spend that was done here in my opinion, was not done effectively.
It was not spent in a very targeted way. In fact, we have plenty of proof points that demonstrate that candidly, it didn’t work at all, and it wasn’t targeted to our — to the folks that we want to get to. So I believe the working dollars that we’ll have available in ’24, will be spent a little bit more? Possibly. But I think we can do a lot with what we’ve been spending at these kind of levels to be much more efficient and drive our business forward. So yet to be determined. Will we ultimately end up investing back in our business for the right reasons to drive new people into our buildings, to tell them about new news? The answer is yes. Will we continue to do the deep discounting that this company did in last year and particularly in the last half of year?
The answer is no. We don’t believe we need to give our product away. We’ve got something pretty special that we’re bringing back and candidly, our guests are telling that — telling us that as well.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Todd Brooks with the Benchmark Company.
Todd Brooks: First thing, I just want to clarify off of Andy’s last question. You guys did not broaden out your range for same-store sales guidance. It’s still the same 200 basis points, right? It’s up 1% to up 3%, not up 1% to down 3%?
Todd Wilson: That’s exactly right, Todd. Yes. It’s — we shifted it because of the elimination of MrBeast. But to your point, the range, it’s the same spread of 2 points for the year, just shifted due to MrBeast.
Todd Brooks: Okay. Perfect. And then just a couple of additional questions. G.J., you talked about the greatest improvement being seen in the bottom quartile of stores. And I think at the ICR Conference, you talked about that being a 3,800 basis point spread from top to bottom. Would you want to share how much improvement you’ve seen or how much of that spread has closed between the bottom quartile and top quartile store with all your efforts?
Todd Wilson: Todd here. I’ll start that and G.J., obviously will chime in. But as we look at the quartiles, yes, I think I’d frame it this way from two lenses: one, for same-store sales and two from a customer satisfaction, guest satisfaction level. One, fortunately, as we looked at the quartiles, all 4 quartiles posted positive same-store sales but the bottom quartile was clearly the leader, which is what we would expect, right? It’s the greatest opportunity there. It also was the leader, as G.J. said in his prepared remarks in terms of improvement in guest satisfaction. So it’s still an opportunity for us, right? That bottom quartile is still on the bottom, but we’re seeing the greatest improvement there, both in terms of guest satisfaction as well as same-store sales.
I don’t know that we’ve really quantified that publicly. But I think directionally, we’re seeing very much what we would aspire to see there of the top performing restaurants are getting a little bit stronger and the bottom restaurants are showing the greatest improvement, which is very encouraging.
Todd Brooks: Okay. Great. And then the final one for me. You talked about the elimination of MrBeast and some of the other virtual brands. That 100-basis point drag to same-store sales, was that a relatively profitless business? So it eases complexity for your operators and you’re really not taking a hit on the restaurant-level operating margin line or the EBITDA line from exiting those businesses?
G.J. Hart: It was no — Todd, it’s nowhere near as profitable as our regular business at all. And in fact, that whole business over time has become even more complex and the margins continue to deteriorate in terms of what their expectations were. So no, it’s not even close.
