Darin Harris: Yeah. So, let me start with the last question on closures. We’re not providing guidance there. What I would do if I’m in your shoes, is look back over history, and I think Jack has been pretty consistent over time at the number of closures. We limited some of those in 2023. But overall, I think that’s a fair estimate as we try to anticipate future closers, as you look somewhere in that, 14 to 20 range, as you think about historical closures, it’s always ranged somewhere in that neighborhood. And so that’s not a guide. That’s just to tell you that’s just history. And then as we look at our guide into next year, we’re guiding to 25 to 35 Jack openings and 10 to 15 Del openings. And we now have a pipeline, you know, 90 development agreements with 389 commitments at Jack, 77 of those in design and permitting.
And they’re actually — we can actually see the pipeline now on what’s in design and permitting versus three years ago. So, we’re actually able to manage a pipeline. And now at Del, with the number of re-franchising transactions, we added 109 commitments just from that alone. And now we have 138 commitments at Del for future development. That also helps us build a pipeline and get visibility into it for 47 locations now in design or permitting and construction phases. So, we feel good that we have a pipeline now that we can actually manage, and we will continue to build that over the next year. I think you — the last thing I would add is, I think the entire industry has been pretty consistent in the statement that we have seen cost rise, so we have a value engineering program in place to reduce the 20% or 30% that we saw increases, some of that’s from size of the building.
And then also we’ve got to figure out ways to take and make this process more efficient, because we’ve definitely seen through COVID and post-COVID, that some of the delays and some of our miss this quarter on the guide, those stores just got delayed from, you know, supplier labor and pushed into this year. So, we definitely saw that happen, and we’ve opened quite a few at the first month of this year.
Dennis Geiger: Thanks, Darin.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Sara Senatore with the Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Sara Senatore: Thank you. I just wanted to ask about the investments that you’re making in terms of improvement allowances and incentives. So, I was just wondering if you could quantify I guess in terms of the amount, the total $110 million to $120 million, if the difference between 2024 guide and the CapEx from 2023 is those incentives? And then maybe talk about the impact on franchisee returns, are you targeting like a specific payback period or you have thoughts on maybe like what growth would look like if you didn’t offer the incentives? Just trying to sort of understand the philosophy behind that. Thanks.
Brian Scott: Yeah. Hi, this is Brian. On the increase in our guide for kind of overall CapEx and investments, it’s across a few different areas. As we looked at that new store opening guidance for ’24, part of it is driven by our investment in new stores. And so as that’s ramping up, both with our, you know, our own operators internally and as well with our franchisees, that’s an increase. As we also mentioned that we’re investing more in technology with our new POS expected to start rolling out in ’24, continued investments in digital, rolling out our ERP. So, there is a variety of different really important technology investments that we think will generate mature returns over time. That’s stepping up. And then there is some increase in the TI allowance incentives, but it’s not the bulk of that increase.
But we do think those are important to be able to keep our franchisees not only investing in remodels, but also keeping them focused on development as quickly as possible.
Darin Harris: To add to your question about payback, I mean, what we’re seeing right now in our build cost, we want to get our build cost to around $1.8 million to $1.9 million. And with some of the value engineering, we anticipate that occurring in 2024. And so from a payback standpoint, our target is always to try to stay under five years. And it’s really going to be dependent, as you know, on sales and what it costs to build. And we’ve seen some of that escalate cost-wise, and we’ve brought that down into 2024. So, we think that’ll help our returns. And then with what we’ve performed in, say, Salt Lake and Louisville and the sales outperforming, we’ve seen outperformance in all of our openings, not just in Salt Lake and Louisville, we’ve seen it north of $2 million in the stores that we’ve opened.
So, we’ve had successful openings as well. So, we think we’re in a place to have continue to attract franchisees to grow even in this environment as we navigate last ’22’s inflationary environment that we’re still working through.
Sara Senatore: Thank you.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Alton Stump with Loop Capital. Please go ahead.
Alton Stump: Great. Thanks for taking my question. I was pretty encouraged by your guidance for low to mid-single-digit, Jack in the Box comparable sales for this year, given the fact that obviously, you’re going to be up against some pretty tough compares, how much of that confidence is coming from the fact that you obviously are going to have to take higher pricing, mainly in California with AB1228 versus underlying transactional improvements in your business?
