Rodney McMullen: Yeah, great question. Appreciate it. We test a lot of different things, and we’ll move on to the next version of it. We still think food away-from-home is a huge growth opportunity for us and we’ll continue to focus on it. The ghost kitchen, the few customers that used it, loved it, but it just wasn’t enough. So, it’s one of those things where you move on. So thanks, Chuck.
Operator: Thank you. The next question goes to Rupesh Parikh of Oppenheimer. Rupesh, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Rupesh Parikh: Good morning, and thanks for taking my question. Just going back to Kroger’s digital performance, another quarter of double-digit growth. Did anything surprise you on the digital front? And just any more color in terms of what you guys are seeing delivery versus pickup?
Rodney McMullen: Yeah, I’ll start and let Gary finish. I wouldn’t call it a surprise, but it’s great to see that the NPS scores, both in terms of our year-on-year from a pickup standpoint and a delivery standpoint is very strong. If you look at our shed delivery business, the repeat rate continues to be strong. So it really is the customers really appreciate that white-glove experience. So, I don’t want to make it sound like we’re surprised by it, but it’s nice to see what we thought play out. Gary, I’ll let you…
Gary Millerchip: Yeah, I think you said it well, Rodney. I think the only thing I would add, Rupesh, is that we’ve said before, we believe that digital is a growth engine for the company. And I think everything we continue to see gives us that belief it will continue to be an opportunity to drive deeper customer engagement and growth. And I mentioned in a comment earlier, but the thing we didn’t talk about in the script was we are seeing continued improvement in profitability. So, it’s helping profitable growth as well as we’re lowering the cost to fill an order, driving more efficiency through technology and continuing to see media revenue growth. So that’s the only piece I think that I would reinforce.
Rodney McMullen: Thanks, Rupesh.
Operator: Thank you. The next question goes to Kenneth Goldman of JPMorgan. Kenneth, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Kenneth Goldman: Hi, thank you. I’ll take a shot here on next year. I know you’re not in a position to really give numbers and I wouldn’t ask about that now, but you did talk about hopefully having low single-digit sort of normal inflation next year. You highlighted a healthy amount of productivity you expected or expecting. But you also mentioned that maybe your unit growth right now is a little bit disappointing, and you’ll surely be lapping some challenging fuel margins that I imagine you won’t assume will recur. So, I’m just trying to get a sense if you have maybe sluggish units, fuel comps are tough, to get to your earnings growth algo for next year, do you theoretically have to find other drivers that are better than their algo to offset those headwinds? I just want to kind of get a sense of how to think about at least some initial headwinds and tailwinds into next year, if that all makes sense.
Gary Millerchip: Yeah. Thanks, Ken. As you mentioned, we’ll definitely share a lot more color, as you might expect, when we get to March. I think as we think about the model and just taking a bigger picture step back, we certainly believe that we’ve, over the last few years, built a more diverse ecosystem as a company. So, of course, food-at-home is an important part of — the sort of — it drives the flywheel. But as you know, we’ve been continuing to grow our fuel business, continue to grow health and wellness this year even with the impact of Express Groups, and continuing to grow alternative profit streams. So, we look at it more as a journey and we do believe that as we’re building the strength in that ecosystem, it creates the — a new way to generate value for our shareholders over time as we’ve talked about at previous investor meetings.
I mean, I think some of the points you’ve raised would certainly be the areas where we’ll be focusing on. I don’t think it’s a different strategy for Kroger. It’s how do we continue to drive that flywheel as we think about taking cost out of our business so that we can invest more in customers and associates, continuing to drive traffic so we can continue to grow the alternative profit businesses. And we do think there’s opportunity for margin improvement to continue beyond 2023, because of the initiatives we’re driving around sourcing, supply chain, alternative profit streams, et cetera. So, I think from our perspective, certainly, if you were in a period where you weren’t seeing sales growth for a sustained period of time because our model is built on sales growth, we’d have to look at our cost base and we’ll look at our cost base in certain areas to be more productive.
But we still believe that food-at-home is — will normalize in the typical pattern that we see of that sort of 1% to 2% inflation over time and sort of 2% to 3% food-at-home growth. And we think our model is really well set up to be able to drive growth within that framework.
Rodney McMullen: Thanks, Ken. The only other thing I would add to Gary’s comment is if you look at our seamless business, we would expect that to continue to make progress as well, as I mentioned earlier. Thanks, Ken.
Operator: Thank you. The next question goes to Michael Lasser of UBS. Michael, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Michael Lasser: Good morning. Thank you so much for taking my question. As you talk to your processed food and CPG partners, what are they telling you about their desire to further raise prices into next year, given your expectation that there could be typical inflation across the assortments that would necessitate that [indiscernible] prices go up? And this is against the backdrop where volumes continue to go down, you’re providing more support. Why are they not rolling back prices to try and drive volume? And as part of that, given that you used your P&L to fund promotions a bit more in the third quarter, is that a sign that you are running into the limitation of the vendors willing to provide support for you to do these promotions? Thank you very much.
