CJ Dipolino: Okay, got it. Thank you. very helpful.
Jeff Uttz: Thank you.
Hajime Jimmy Uba: Thanks CJ.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of George Kelly with ROTH. Please proceed with your question.
George Kelly: Hey everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. So, first one is about Dragon Ball. Clearly, you guys seem super excited about that partnership. And I understand big brands. But I guess the question is, are you also — you’ve done so many of these now, I’m curious if your strategy around monetizing big partnerships like that, if that’s changed at all? And basically, like are you kind of given the history and what you’ve seen with these big deals before, is there sort of an ability now to be more aggressive in your monetization plan?
Jeff Uttz: Yes. So, our strategy on this is always evolving. As we mentioned, one of the reasons that we’re so pleased with April so far is that we just did our giveaway campaign with SPY x FAMILY where if you cross a certain spending threshold, you got t-shirts. I was actually — I was at lunch today at Kura and I saw lots of people trying to get those t-shirts and so clearly, it’s working. This is — we realized just how meaningful an opportunity is. As you said, this is a very meaningful driver in terms of getting people into the door, and these are brands that people are very passionate about. And so we have a lot of things in the pipeline. I can’t discuss them just yet. Part of them or enabled by the new capabilities of the Rewards program.
Some of them are new ideas that we have that are completely separate from that. But we’re always looking for new ways to engage our guests in new ways. I mean — the brands are one of the most fun things about coming into Kura and so we’re always looking at new ways to leverage that.
George Kelly: Okay, understood. And then second question on unit growth, taking your guidance up again, I guess, at the midpoint for expected openings this year. Is it all about permitting? Or are there any other factors that explain you raising that a couple of times now? And then the second part of that question is, if you look out beyond this year, is it fair to assume that the 20% growth target that you’ve put out in the past, is that still a good number to use? And those are my questions. Thank you.
Hajime Jimmy Uba: In terms of forward growth, what we’ve said in the past and what we’ve achieved would be 20% is a floor, typically coming in closer to 25%. That’s what we’ve been doing. That’s what we expect to do. Our organization has demonstrated that it’s more than capable meeting that challenge year-after-year, and we’re excited to keep delivering on that. Given that we’ve already opened 10 stores and we have five under construction, just looking at historical patterns in terms of permitting, how construction goes, we think that 13 to 14 is a really fair bet. Obviously, there’s opportunity potential to go beyond that. But at this point, with six months less than a year, that’s the — 13 to 14 is where we feel good about.
Jeff Uttz: And also, to your point, George, you had a question about the acceleration [indiscernible] really but drove that. Permitting, it did get a little bit easier this year obviously compared to last year and the year before. But I think the other piece that really helped is that while our management pipeline has always been strong, one of the things that I committed to when I came to the company was to reinvest back in the company in areas where we’re going to get a very good return and one of those was recruiting. And we’ve invested heavily into recruiting and making sure that we have internal candidates ready to come in and external candidates out there that we can hire as well. And because of that, our management pipeline couldn’t be better.
And we are still able to get — like I said, if we hit the midpoint this year in G&A, we’ll still get an 80 basis point leverage even with the reinvestment back into things like recruiting and construction and operations. So, the formula in the model is working right now in terms of those things helping us, get restaurants open faster than we imagined.
George Kelly: Excellent. Thank you.
Hajime Jimmy Uba: Thanks George.
Operator: Thank you. We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. And with that, this will conclude today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
