BJ’s Restaurants, Inc. (NASDAQ:BJRI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Greg Levin: Mike. That is our goal. Our goal would be exactly as you laid it out there, and that is as we move our margins up through the year, through the margin improvement initiatives, one thing that, you know, we didn’t mention, you know, and Alex asked the question about how it plays out to the cadence, and that is starting in July, we will have that. That reduced menu, and continue to play with another set of the menu as well. That will really help on the prep hours and the efficiency as well as we talk about the labor forecasting from the, from our AI artificial intelligence systems that we are working with. So as we work through those and get ourselves in that right into that run rate as we go into 2024, we would expect our margins to be in that mid teen range, and move from there.

And obviously it is going to be seasonally adjusted. Q2 would be higher, you know, Q3 would be a little bit lower. But overall we would see 2024 in the area where our margins are in the mid-teens.

Michael Tamas: Okay, that is perfect. Thanks. If I can just squeeze in a quick modeling one on the remodels, is there anything we need to be thinking about in terms of downtime, in terms of impact on either overall sales or comps and margins just as it relates to some of those remodels? Thanks.

Greg Levin: No. Greg Lynds is in here, our Chief Development Officer who is really, his team is handling the remodels and they have perfected it where they can get in there and do them at nighttime. So our restaurants stay open, so we shouldn’t be losing any restaurant days or restaurant weeks. And there is really no training or any other changes from that perspective. What we have tended to see is, you know, that pop might take a couple weeks just because guests have to, you know, see it and then build from there a little bit. But we definitely like the pops that we are seeing and when you get to the weekend and you get to Valentine’s Day, having that extra capacity really helps us.

Michael Tamas: Perfect. Thanks so much. Thank you.

Greg Levin: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question is from Drew North with Baird. Please proceed.

Drew North: Thanks for taking the question. I was wondering if you would be willing to share an update on how the comps specifically we are tracking quarter to-date, appreciate the color on extrapolating the trend through the balance of the quarter. But just wondering if you could help quantify the quarter to-date metric just to level set us here?

Greg Levin: Sure. It is an interesting question and without getting very specific, the first two weeks of January were really strong sales. They were north of 20% as you went over Omicron. And since that time, it is kind of leveled out where we felt comfortable with kind of mid single-digits, which tend to – high-single-digits, I’m sorry, which would tended to be kind of where we expect the next weeks and the other weeks to be. So I think we saw first couple of weeks of January with some pretty strong sales and we kind of level set it into where we are today, maybe a tad higher per say.

Drew North: Okay. That is helpful and understood. One follow-up on the margin, specifically related to the commodity inflation outlook. Mid single-digits I believe you mentioned. I was hoping you could share some perspective on the cadence of that inflation through the year, based on your existing contracts and what you may be cycling?