CAVA Group, Inc. (NYSE:CAVA) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jon Tower from Citi.

Jon Tower: I was curious, I think you had mentioned on the call the loyalty test being pushed out into later ‘24 for a launch. So — and I believe based on some of our earlier conversations that that’s a little bit later than — at least what I was anticipating. Maybe I just had the wrong expectation. But I’m curious to hear your insights as to perhaps why it’s a little bit later in ‘24. And the difference that you’re expecting between the existing program today, which I believe is more transactional. This one is going to move to a more surprise and delight. But any thoughts and color you could provide around that would be welcomed.

Brett Schulman: Yes, Jon, thanks for the question. We had talked earlier about the back half of ‘24 and really looking toward the end of the year. We will be testing and learning starting late this year into next year. I think we’ve had the same program since 2013. As you noted, it’s very transactional. And we see an opportunity to really evolve it and build deeper, more meaningful connections with our guests, leverage all those users within our current loyalty pool and create much greater value for them and for our business, utilizing personalization, utilizing the power of our concept and our customization and driving greater frequency, mix and traffic. So you’ll see some tests beginning at the end of this year. And as I mentioned, we’re building out the customer segmentation data work as a foundational piece to be able to really drive that unique personalization where we’re speaking to each of our guests based on their needs, their preferences, their profile in a very one-to-one way.

Jon Tower: Got it. And then just circling back to the conversation on comp guidance. I know you — Tricia, you had mentioned that you’d had a strong start to the third quarter. Curious if perhaps you can give us a little bit of cadence on the breakdown of comps on a monthly basis during the second quarter, if you exited stronger than you entered, that would be helpful.

Tricia Tolivar: Yes, Jon, we don’t intend to give intra-quarter guidance on how the comps progressed on a quarter — on a month-by-month basis, and certainly did have positive traffic and continue to see that as we go into Q3.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Brian Harbour from Morgan Stanley.

Brian Harbour: Yes. Maybe just within the strong same-store sales in the second quarter and also the first quarter. Did you see kind of some of the similar impacts across your newer stores versus your more mature stores, i.e., kind of the brand awareness halo. Was that observable across the system? And I guess the question is also just how much do you think some of the year 2 stores, all the conversions you’ve recently completed, how much are those driving these same-store sales numbers right now?

Tricia Tolivar: Brian, thanks for the question. So as we look at our performance across vintages, across geographies, across formats, whether it’s suburban or urban, we’re seeing consistent strong trends in all of those environments. So can’t really find any one area that’s driving the overall performance for us. And so we’re very pleased with what we’re seeing and really demonstrates our proven portability, the powerful unit economics that we have and the opportunity to really expand on the white space as we move forward.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Brian Mullan from Piper Sandler.

Brian Mullan: Just a question on development. Just hoping you could talk about the locations with the drive-thru pickup capability. Maybe just remind us how many you have today, how those are doing from an AUV and a margin perspective versus the rest of the base. And then just related to that, as you look out to 2024 and beyond, do you anticipate those formats will become an increasingly bigger part of the pipeline over time? Just trying to hear a bit more about where that format sits in your plans.

Tricia Tolivar: Yes. We have more than 20 pickup lanes, digital pickup lanes in our pipeline today — or excuse me, in our fleet of restaurants today. And the AUVs are typically 10% to 15% higher than other locations in their market as a result of that. Certainly, as we look at our pipeline of new restaurant openings in 2023 — the rest of ‘23 and ‘24 and beyond, we do anticipate that our drive-thru digital pickup lanes will be a larger portion of the portfolio. We just want to make sure that we’re being thoughtful around investing in those and delivering the right returns as we move forward.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Chris O’Cull from Stifel.

Chris O’Cull: Brett, I know there were relatively limited number of organic openings in ‘22. But I was hoping you could just give us an update on how those stores are performing in comparison with kind of your new unit targets. And then Tricia, the company added 16 units this quarter, with about half of them conversions. Going forward, I guess you could be opening a similar number of units but no conversions. How should we think about the impact to profitability of opening new CAVA units versus conversions?