BurgerFi International, Inc. (NASDAQ:BFI) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Carl Bachmann: Yes, I think I kind of referred to a little bit in the last question, but I think we have a whole missing segment in the menu. That really kind of narrows the funnel. And I think we need to open that up and that’s why we want to launch. I mean we’re not even in the chicken wars and we need to get into the chicken wars. We — burger brands should run 10%, 12%, 15% of chicken mix. And so we have an opportunity there. It’s really a veto vote item so that you have really a select option of proteins on these great builds that we have. So we think that — I think that that’s a huge opportunity for us to broaden really, again, the guest funnel, and draw new guests in. So I think that’s an opportunity on the BurgerFi side.

We are seeing a little bit of improvement now and I think we’ll continue to see that as we progress. We’ve also shored up our management teams and our leadership teams as well in the last 30 to 40 days. So I think execution wise, we will continue to improve there. So I think those are really good signs of the future for the BurgerFi side.

Michael Albanese: Okay. Great. And then are you seeing any differences kind of regionally previous leadership team talked a little bit about how basically, the impact of COVID, Florida seeing a big boost as Northern has moved down to Florida and then as things kind of normalize, saw some attrition there and then kind of a normalization up in the Northeast, excuse me, I mean just are you seeing that trend? Is that still playing out? Is that behind us?

Chris Jones: I think it is behind us. And I think it’s even reversing a little bit. I think people are getting back to maybe the normal lifestyles normally where they were. I don’t think you’re seeing quite as much traffic in Florida as you did even last year. But a good example of this would be on the Anthony’s side. We see the northern restaurants outperforming the southern restaurants currently. So we see that kind of a resurgence of people coming back into normal patterns and moving back to normal lifestyles, albeit people are still working hybrid or remote more people are traveling and more people are going back to the offices slowly, but surely. So we’re seeing a transition back. So probably transversely from what you saw in the last year or so. So I think they are normalizing and reversing a bit, which I think bodes well for us in the long-term.

Michael Albanese: Got it. All right. Appreciate it. And then just one more for me kind of as all we just talked about as it relates to your guidance basically holding guidance the same, just targeting kind of the low end of the range. I mean can you just tell me a little bit what’s baked in there in terms of, I guess, same-store sales and growth moving forward? Or are you really kind of — is it new store openings that are going to help drive those numbers? Probably a combination of both, but any additional context would be helpful.

Carl Bachmann: I think that’s about right. I think that’s a combination of that. We certainly, as you know, we do have a back — our new store growth is back-end loaded. We also get some benefit of some closing of some underperforming stores in the quarter and last quarters as well. We do expect to see a sequential improvement in comp store sales. We actually get easier comparisons there as well. So we do think we’ll start to see better trends there as well. So Carl actually acknowledged a little earlier that we are seeing better trends from the Anthony’s stores in the North. We expect that trend to sort of pick up in the South, particularly as we start to see sort of the snowbirds coming back, from a seasonality perspective. And as you said, we are seeing mixed performance but growing and directionally improving performance from BurgerFi as well.