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

Thomas Houdek: Sure. There was a step up as we mentioned in Q1, when the fixed price contracts most reset. We do have a little more loaded in the back half for beef and steak items. There is forecasts out saying, given herd sizes that, we could see some higher price is in beef later in the year, so that is loaded in the forecast as well. But otherwise, I think this first reset was the new pricing and there is going to be some markets somewhat up or somewhat flat. But those are the – I think beef was the only one worth highlighting beyond that.

Drew North: Thank you, I will pass it on.

Greg Levin: Thanks Drew.

Operator: Our next question is from Sharon Zackfia with William Blair. Please proceed.

Sharon Zackfia: Hi. Good afternoon. It was really good to hear about how the new units are performing, and I understand the capital allocation strategy for this year. But as you think beyond kind of 2023, how are you, I guess, by the thought process between further remodels and accelerating growth because it seems like the ROI on new units would be pretty healthy given the productivity that you outlined in the press release or maybe just juxtapose that with what you are seeing with construction costs and if that is been a major factor in kind of the thought process this year?

Greg Levin: Yes, Sharon, great question and sorry to jump in that. We are excited to get one open in your next to woods here shortly in the Chicago area. That is kind of our kind of our next field time.

Sharon Zackfia: I will single handedly boost your incidence rate of alcohol.

Greg Levin: That if you get some (Ph), we will be really happy. But you kind of hit a pond at the end there and that is, the cost to build new restaurants has moved higher than we anticipated coming out of COVID. As we were building restaurants last year, they were kind of in the mid-6s to maybe upper-6s. As we went out and got this year, those bids started come in with the $7 million handle there or starting with the seven handle. And I can let Greg Lynds jump in here for a second. But Tim and his team have gone out and rebid that and we are trying to bring those costs down. And while our sell to investment ratio is actually pretty good at one to one, because our new restaurants have opened up really well and we are really pleased with them.

We kind of felt that, the investment cost for our new restaurant versus having these high ROI remodels this year made more sense to pivot. And knowing that even as we go in next year, we are still going to have restaurants that we want to spend time on remodeling because we can only get 30 dine next year. I think it is going to be a little bit less as well. But taking all that aside, the ultimate cadence back in our business and is to get our new restaurant growth back into 5% plus increase in weeks. So while we are at five new restaurants this year, where we sit here today, we would like to increase that next year and increase that thereafter and get ourselves closer again to five plus percent. I think if we do that, we drive cost sales in the kind of three to 5% range.

We start to look at 8% to 10% revenue growth and then leveraging and building margins allows us to grow earnings at above 10% that I think at that time we will be throwing off some decent free cash flow as well, allows us to start to think about how we want to prioritize our excess cash for our shareholders. So that is the longer term cadence in our business. Even though right now we are doing a little bit of a pivot towards remodels because of that high investment cost and Greg if you want to add anything, hit it.