The other thing that I spoke about in my prepared remarks that we’re very heartened by is that, we made additional investments in testing some different marketing strategies throughout the quarter, one of which was college football, Craig talked about NASCAR. Those additional investments have returned quite well for us, both from a traffic and investment perspective. Additionally, we’ve invested in some local television advertising in some key markets. That has also provided a really strong return on investment and return on traffic that we’ve been pleased with. And we’ll be constantly evaluating our marketing mix. The team has done a great job of digging in and looking at that to really drive efficiency as well as effectiveness with that core and core plus segment.
So we remain optimistic about our ability to continue to evaluate and ramp effectiveness in that space as we move through the year.
Katherine Griffin: Okay. Thank you. And then just following up on an earlier question, can you just help us frame sort of what the comps were by month in your fiscal second quarter of last year?
Craig Pommells: Well, actually, I don’t have — we will follow up with you on that one. We’ll provide whatever detail we — any details we can as it relates to what the comp is for last year.
Katherine Griffin: Okay. Understood. Thank you.
Operator: Our next question comes from Alton Stump with Loop Capital. Please go ahead.
Alton Stump: I’d ask first off, on the commodity inflation guidance, obviously, Craig, you mentioned that you were down 2.3% in the first quarter, but you are looking for a low single-digit increase for the full year. I guess, one, what are the key drivers behind that increase as far as inputs? And then any sort of color on kind of what the pace may be over the next few quarters of the year?
Craig Pommells: Hi, Alton. The — so Q1, we had deflation. We’re kind of confident on peak inflation from the prior year. So that was good news. We do expect the commodity environment to be pretty good for the rest of the year. We don’t expect it to be deflationary, though. I believe we’ve got some expectations out there for bacon as an example, to start to move back up. So we expect a much more modest commodity inflation through the rest of the year. You all know about beef. Beef has been high. We are — beef’s in our — relatively high in our mix, but not towards the top. So as a result of that, we do expect mild commodity inflation for the rest of the year, but not deflation, in part because of the changes to bacon.
Alton Stump: Understood. Thanks for that color. And then, I guess just one quick additional question. Just on the retail side of your business, obviously, a disappointing comp performance, I’m sure for you here in the first quarter. You’re heading now into, of course, what’s the huge time of the year for that business. I guess, how are you feeling heading into the holiday season on the retail side of things?
Craig Pommells: It’s Craig again. We feel — so — let’s give a little bit of background on retail. If we think about retail — our retail business over the longer term since 2019, the retail business has outperformed pretty consistently, both in terms of sales and profit. So we’re really proud of that business. We’re proud of the work that the team has done. Now more recently, it’s been softer. Now keep in mind that there is the retail — it’s completely discretionary. We are not selling essentials and the retail environment has kind of shifted from — to the things that are more everyday essentials. And that’s not really an area that’s core to us. I think considering the environment, the retail business is holding up well.
And so the team has made adjustments in terms of inventory. We’ve made those adjustments early. We’ve continued to make them to ensure that we have an appropriate level of profitability in the retail business as we move forward. So we think we’re managing what we can manage there, given that consumers are shifting a bit more to what appears to be essentials. And largely, what we have are the things that people kind of want to have, but you don’t necessarily need them on a day-to-day basis.
Alton Stump: Sure. Thanks for that color. I appreciate it. I’ll hop back in the queue.
Operator: Our next question comes from Jake Bartlett with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.
Jake Bartlett: Great. Thank you so much for taking the question. My first one is also on the kind of near-term trends. And I think Craig and Julie, you both mentioned improving traffic throughout the quarter and into November. Can you share what the traffic was in the first quarter? I know it comes out with the Q, but if you could provide your traffic and mix and just so we can see what the trajectory is there.
Craig Pommells: Absolutely, Jake. I’ll take the numbers and then, we can go from there. Overall, traffic for Q1 was — restaurant traffic negative 7.1%. Check overall, plus 6.6%, including price of 6.8% and mix of negative 0.2%.
Jake Bartlett: Okay. Got it. And just reading into the commentary on improving traffic by month and into November, it feels pretty safe to say that same-store sales moved to decently positive quarter-to-date. And this goes back to — I’m going to ask it one more time about last year’s trends. But at ICR last year, you gave preliminary second quarter revenue growth guidance of 6% and then you reported 8.3%. So I believe that, that implies that January was much stronger than expected, so very difficult compared to this year. So just — we’re trying to kind of judge how much we should read the current trends, which seem to be pretty decently positive on same-store sales for the restaurants for the whole quarter. So any help there would be helpful. And then I had a longer-term question.
Craig Pommells: Yeah. This is Craig again, Jake. The [kind of dig] (ph) — kind of reflecting on Q2 from last year, there are really two parts to that. If I remember correctly, December closed out a little bit softer. I believe there was some weather at the end of December. And then January had two kind of benefit components. One was a robust kind of wrap on Omicron. So some of the January beat is — was Omicron related. It was also, I believe, a warmer than normal January. So there were some weather tailwind. It’s always risky to try to forecast the weather. But I think to the degree that weather was a little bit of a tailwind last year in January, I do recall that December — towards the second part of December was a bit challenged by weather as well.
