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

Greg Levin: Yes. Teddy, I think it is a combination of both. We are hearing across the industry that, finding people is easier today than it was a year ago. And definitely, we see that. We place an emphasis within BJ’s to make sure we are taking the time to do the things to onboard our people correctly, to make them part of the culture and part of the BJ’s family to grow our business. And that seems to have really helped us from that standpoint and something that we continue to do. One of the things that will also help us going forward and we don’t talk about it as much from a recruiting standpoint is, as we continue to work through some of our margin improvement initiatives, especially around the smaller menu. That helps to bring people on board into an already complex business, where we have 145 plus menu items, learning our menu is going to be more challenging than getting a menu or getting a position in South Casual or QSR or other casual dining restaurants.

So doing some of those things as well as some of the other initiatives that we have done in regards to our value statement and other things that we rolled out this last year. I think it is help to bringing more people on board for us and continuing to improve our staffing at our restaurants. And it is a real emphasis for us and I got to give them my hats off to our General Managers. I have spent a lot of time rebuilding our restaurants and doing a great job. We get people in there, so that we can deliver gold standard level of operational excellence and that we can deliver greater hospitality to our consumers that come in and visit us for our guests.

Teddy Farley: Excellent. Thank you.

Greg Levin: You are welcome.

Operator: Our next question is from Nick Setyan with Wedbush Securities. Please proceed.

Unidentified Analyst: Hi. This is actually (Ph) on for Nick. Just two quick ones from me. Did you provide what wage inflation was in Q4? And then just the opening cadence for next year, it sounds as though you have got one in the first quarter, one in the second. Do you have any ideas for the timing of the relocation, is that going to be Q3, Q4?

Greg Levin: So on the opening, the relocation will tend to be Q3. So we are looking at kind of one is here in Q1, one in Q2. And then we start to finish off the year hopefully with the remaining three. We like it to maintain in Q3, but probably will end up with one to two in Q3 and then one to two or however it falls out in Q4.

Thomas Houdek: And let me answer the question for wage growth inflation in Q4, on the hourly front, we saw about a 7% year-over-year increase in the wages.

Unidentified Analyst: Great. Thanks very much.

Greg Levin: You are welcome.

Operator: And our final question is from Andrew Wolf with C. L. King. Please proceed.

Andrew Wolf: Well thanks. Good afternoon. I might have missed this. I don’t know, if you have mentioned or could quantify what the impact might have been from the terrible monsoon like rains that occurred in California during the quarter.