Michael Bailen: Yes, Brian. It’s Michael. I’ll tell you, when I look at the data through the third quarter and in October, it is very consistent whether I look at it by region of the country, day of the week, hours within the day, older stores, newer stores, high volume, average stores. It was very consistent as it had been for a while. So that makes us feel very good about the trends that we’re seeing right now. So, we have continued to do what we do, and the guests continue to reward us for that.
Brian Vaccaro: Okay. And then just a quick follow-up if I could on technology, and I want to ask about roadie pay in particular. I guess how much time is that trimming off the typical transaction, and have you seen any quantifiable impact in table turns or throughput that you might be able to share?
Jerry Morgan: Yes, I will tell you that system-wide, it’s a big win for the consumer. We believe it’s hard to quantify the exact amount, whether it’s a minute or two or that. I think some people, when they’re ready to pay, that option being right there on the table, we believe absolutely that it is a quicker way of going. So I believe that it’s been positive for us. It’s been very good feedback, not only from our restaurants and our servers, but from the consumer. So, yes, that was a really big win for us. I do believe it does make us faster.
Brian Vaccaro: All right, I’ll pass it along. Thank you.
Jerry Morgan: Thank you.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jon Tower with Citi. Your line is now open.
Jon Tower: Hey, just one quick one. Can you clarify or I think I have the price of water fall sorted out, but exactly what the price number in the third quarter was?
Jerry Morgan: Sure. We have 5.1% in the third quarter of 2023.
Jon Tower: And then, thinking about price into 2024, is there a way to kind of put guardrails around the earliest that we might see some additional pricing coming through?
Jerry Morgan: We typically, take pricing in early part of the second quarter and the early part of the fourth quarter. So I would imagine we will stay true to what we have done in the past years and stay with that schedule.
Jon Tower: Great. Thank you. That’s all for me.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Drew North with Baird. Your line is now open.
Drew North: Thanks. I had a follow-up question on one that was asked earlier related to the 2024 margin outlook. Thank you for the perspective on pricing, and I recognize the uncertainty on where you may land in the various inflation ranges. But I guess, is there a break-even level on traffic in the positive macro scenario you mentioned that you’re thinking about to hold or expand margins for next year? I know you’re often focused on growing the margin dollars per week, but how are you thinking about the margin percentage on a year-for-year basis in that positive macro scenario and specifically the potential traffic needed to reach that level?
Michael Bailen: Yes. Hey, Drew. It’s Michael. I mean, that is unfortunately a very tough one, one really you can’t answer because, again, there’s just too many moving parts. The level of traffic versus the level of pricing that you need to grow margins and how much you’re growing margins. So, certainly, traffic always helps, but the pricing flow through whatever additional pricing we take plays out a lot. I don’t think you need– I think along with everything else, modest traffic, along with modest pricing, middle-of-the-road guidance should lead, the mass should play out to show you restaurant margin expansion on a percentage basis into 2024.
Drew North: Okay. That’s helpful. And then one more from me. Just looking out to 2024 and beyond, do you see opportunity to push that 30 gross openings range higher and maintain a kind of storey growth in that 6% level for the next several years? Or how should we be thinking about that? I’m just trying to frame up the opportunity to push the number of openings higher versus the expectation for that growth rate to moderate over time.
Jerry Morgan: Yes. Thank you for the, we are going to stay focused on building the right number for us. I think we target that high 20s, low 30s on the two concepts of roadhouse and Bubba’s that works very well for us. And we can efficiently do that not only for our operators, but just the execution for the – yes, that are coming in at the beginning. But yes, we feel good about the pipeline. We’ll stay very true to that same number for the two concepts and target that as we continue to move forward.
Drew North: Thank you.
Jerry Morgan: Thank you.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jim Sanderson with Northcoast Research. Your line is open.
Jim Sanderson: Hello. Thanks for the question. I wanted to focus a little bit more on the issue of mix. I think you reported a little bit of progress on mix from second to third quarter. It seems to me that your mix could be flat as you’re almost positive in October. Is that the right way to look at it based on the pricing and comp you reported in October?
Jerry Morgan: With the comp, so our pricing, we’re going to have 5.5% pricing for the fourth quarter. Our pricing action this year occurred three weeks earlier than it did last year. So we had 6.9% pricing in the first three weeks of the quarter and we’ll have 4.9% pricing in the last 10 weeks of the quarter. So while mix probably still is moving in the right direction, it wasn’t that different than what you were seeing the last several months.
Jim Sanderson: Very good. And just a follow-up question on the price you took. Any feedback on how your competitors either reacted or was this you’re reacting to potentially peers in the steakhouse category already having taken their prices up. Just a little bit of texture on the competitive context?
Jerry Morgan: Jim, I can’t tell you necessarily what our competitors have done in reaction to it. I mean, we have our pricing conversation several months before we actually take the pricing. It’s a process you have to go through. We certainly evaluate the health of our business, how our stores are doing and where we’re priced relative to some of our peers. So we take those things into account when we’re doing it. But as far as others reaction to that, that I don’t know.
