Robert Verostek: Yeah. That’s a fair question, Jake. So October — to be very transparent, sequentially decline from September. So what would be the — what would get you from down one to plus two? So there is a macroeconomic effect, there’s no doubt about that, that plays into that. But what are we in control of in that? So I mentioned the $5.99 test. So again, there was much, much interest coming out of our franchise convention, so we can really get to that pretty quickly. Kelli just talked very eloquently about our new menu that, that’s coming out next week. We anticipate that to really perform well. It really kind of focuses on breakfast really, again, the heart of what Denny’s is about along with value. So it’s the focus on breakfast there.
So we’ll see how well that plays. We also — she also talked about the new pricing schema within that. So the reality is, is that we do expect it to likely pick up some benefit from the way we have arranged that menu. There are some differences with regard to the geography, right? So you look at the — Florida is down pretty significantly right now and Orlando in and of itself is that, but the Midwest is strong, south Texas is strong. California is at or just slightly below kind of the averages. So a lot of different pieces that still — even though we only have eight to nine weeks left in this quarter, there’s still a lot of pieces that could come together that would push it to one way or another within that range.
Jake Bartlett: Great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Operator: Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Nick Setyan with Wedbush Securities. Please go ahead.
Nick Setyan: Thank you. You guys kind of hinted at seasonality with back-to-school and trends deteriorating since mid-August. But then, the October, sequential decline from September would be life seasonality. Do you think what’s happening, Q3 to date is seasonality versus just a consumer slowdown or the Denny’s consumer slowdown, because the October sequential slowdown versus September that would actually go against — at least somewhat go against some industry trends we’re seeing out there.
Robert Verostek: Yeah. That’s a fair point, Nick. With regard to that, I — we did step down, as I alluded to in August, in that kind of precipitated through September. And it hasn’t returned yet in October. So we’re to looking at things such as trade-downs within that. So we do believe that casual probably is trading-down into us, but we also believe that we’re probably trading-down into QSR a little bit. So the impact of that — we do pay close attention to the benchmarks. BBI and sales track weekly are two that we look at routinely. And again, it’s been fairly volatile. We — weeks we are at par with our family dining competitors and other weeks they’re floating above us. So it is hard to say we are just kind of keeping our head down.
We know that we are providing a really good guest experience. We measure that through our black box intelligence data. So when you look at net sentiment, we are outpacing both the casual dining players, and our family dining players in a pretty material way. So we believe that you kind of put that together, you keep your head down, you give value, you focus on breakfast, you get the right pricing strategies and while this in the very short term it may be working against us, we really see all of these things kind of coming together to look more towards a much brighter future, so.
Nick Setyan: Got it. And then just on pricing, could you just tell us what the actual menu pricing was? I know the eight four commentary is for the whole system, and I think that’s inclusive of mix. Is there a way for us to kind of get to the pricing versus mix in Q3 and then what you expect that to be, at least the pricing portion in Q4? And then just, with FAST Act starting in — on April one in California, how are you thinking about pricing to offset that margin impact?
Robert Verostek: Yeah. There’s a lot in there, Nick. Happy to tease that out for you. So the eight four is made up of basically 8.6% pricing. And let me break that down further for you. It is 5.8% current year pricing, and 2.8% carryover pricing. And then you have mixed discounts and other that are weighing on that by two tenths. So again, basically, two-thirds of that is current year pricing. A third of it is carryover pricing. When you look into Q4, we do roll off another two percentage points of carryover pricing that’ll roll off in Q4. But there is basically another 2% of pricing that will be taken next week with that menu. So when you add — when you do that math, it looks to be — it looks to us like GCA given these pricing decisions will probably continue to move down in that point range.
