Todd Wilson: Yeah. Hey, Todd here. Alex, good to talk to you as well. I’ll start with the first part of your question on the investment itself. The $8 million at this point, we view as a wholesome run rate. We may make tweaks here and there. But I think as you think about Q4 and then we have some of that investment baked into the first part of 2023 that will lap next year. But the $8 million, you can think of as effectively fully loaded, so we would expect plainly – we would expect probably another $8 million in Q4. The investment itself, the bulk of it, I would tell you is in labor. There’s a meaningful investment we’ve made in food but we’re also seeing things like the cost saves that I’ll get into next, right? We’re making investments in food, but we’re also able to make some pretty significant upgrades to our food like the chicken that G.J. talked about as well as saving money.
So there is some net investment in the food, but it’s the minority of that $8 million. As it relates to the cost saves, just to ensure clarity, we measure about $4 million on the quarter. We had talked about $7 million year-to-date and $3 million year-to-date through Q2. So on the quarter, it was about $4 million. We do expect that to step up in Q4 to about $5 million that gets you to the $12 million for the year. The big initiative that gets us there, that that incremental step-up is the chicken change that G.J. talked about. That is already partially implemented through the system and just working its way through the supply chain. So obviously, a high degree of confidence that will capture that save. The last part of your question, I think, about the $20 million, I think maybe I’d frame it this way of – of all of the things that we’ll implement this year, a full 12-month run rate would be $20 million.
We think we’ll capture $12 million of that this year, which leaves an $8 million benefit that we would expect to capture in 2024 only from the things that we’ve implemented this year. Obviously, the team is working and will have a pipeline to plus that up further. But that’s the way to dimensionalize the run rate of what we’ve done this year.
Alex Slagle: Perfect. That clarifies it greatly. Also, a question on labor and sort of how we think longer term about getting, back towards historical run rate, labor as a percentage of sales and what would kind of need to happen? I’m sure a lot of that is really just driving traffic, but thoughts there, what that might look like? And then any thoughts on the California minimum wage rules, although not directed at casual dining could have an impact in sort of implications you would see for inflation or pricing next year related to that?
Todd Wilson: Yes. I’ll start and G.J. may chime in as well. The labor side itself, we’ve been 37% to 38% between Q2 and Q3. And I think in the near term, that’s a fair way to think about our near-term run rate. In time, we certainly expect that to get back to the 35% to 36% range in part with traffic growth and leveraging those sales. But quite frankly, there’s near-term opportunities there. One, we’ve brought on a number of new team members as they gain experience and mastery of their jobs. We certainly expect that there would be efficiency there. And two, we’re looking at things like overtime where we want our restaurants to have the right amount of labor. And so it’s not an hour reduction. But saving that halftime of pay is a meaningful number for us. And so there are things that we can do in the near term to manage that number appropriately while still giving a great guest experience on our way back to that 35% or 36%.
