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

Todd Brooks: Okay, great. And then just a quick follow-up and I will hop back in the queue as well. Is there a way with the early experience with the remodels and what you are seeing for lifts out of, if you blended out the bar program and the incremental free booth program, what type of structural same store sales do you see as we get into the program. So as we do the first 30, there should be a lift that has a meaningful piece of the overall chain from, from these efforts. How do we start to think about maybe a structural same store sales tailwind from this program?

Greg Levin: You know, I think the, well a couple things are one, we are definitely seeing a lift and we talked about the bar programs giving us sales, you know, somewhere in the 2000 a week level, I’m sorry, the coupon expand capacity is what we have mentioned. We are still working through the bar. The bar we have done, I want to say three restaurants right now. Two are performing really well. One was just going to say, one was just completed last week, so we are watching that one. And it tends to be a sales number above that. We will come back to the investors or the investment community after the first quarter. And we kind of finished up with more of the expand capacity, which is the additional booth and then have more of the bar in front of us and come back and give you kind of where we think they blend out and what type of lift we are seeing.

Right now, as I said, we are targeting at 20% return on that cash. So, you know, we could be spending 200,000 on the additional booths and then we could be spending 500,000 to 700,000 on bar and other areas just depending. So you can kind of back into that a little bit, but we want to see where it kind of plays out the rest of this quarter.

Todd Brooks: Okay, perfect. Thanks Greg.

Operator: Our next question is from Teddy Farley with Citi. Please proceed.

Teddy Farley: Hi. Thanks. Two quick ones from me. First, would you be able to call out any differences maybe you are seeing in, same store sales, in tech heavy areas maybe versus the rest of the system, anything along those lines?

Greg Levin: Yes, so in regards to like looking at the first quarter, and this is not unexpected, I think because of what we have seen over the last couple years. The Bay area right now is outperforming in regards to comp sales. And it is a pretty strong contributor right now, actually all of California’s doing well, but the Bay area is definitely coming back and we are seeing some nice comp sales up in that area. I think across the board, we are seeing good comp sales in many areas, but we have talked at many times about the Bay Area and Northern California being a little bit more of a drag in our business short term. And right now it has turned a little bit and given us a little bit of a tailwind.

Teddy Farley: Awesome, thanks. And then just one last one for me. Good to hear that you are able to get some staffing resolved. Can you talk to how much you are seeing for that as being macro driven versus maybe what you are doing in the restaurant to help to bring people in applications or retaining existing stuff? Thanks.