Rob Lynch: It is not important for us to strategically own it. If there — there are business models that we are exploring that would look very different than the model that we employ today. We have been very happy with our ownership there. Our teams who run the supply chain, do a great job and manage it very effectively and productively. So we’re happy with that. But we’re exploring every strategic option. And if we have opportunities to create more productivity and drive more profitability with less risk, we will definitely explore those opportunities. The closure of these restaurants, I just want to make it clear, the closure of these 50 restaurants will be immediately accretive to our income. I mean the — usually, when you close restaurants, it’s a bad thing.
The royalty revenues go away or the EBITDA from the restaurants go away. These are all negative profit restaurants. And we — to Brian’s question, we don’t see them turning profitable in the foreseeable future. So these restaurants need to close. They’re low volume. Obviously, if they’re unprofitable, they’re low-volume restaurants. So the impact of the supply chain in the short term, we will not be as significant as closing a lot of profitable productive restaurants. The other thing I just want to make clear, we do anticipate sales transfer. So by closing these restaurants, we actually make the other restaurants in the U.K. system, higher volume and more profitable. So there is a benefit to the balance of the system. And some of that volume loss from closing these restaurants will be mitigated by that sales transfer to the restaurants that remain.
Brian Mullan: Thank you.
Rob Lynch: Thank you, Brian.
Operator: Thank you. And our next question coming from the line of Todd Brooks with the Benchmark Company. Your line is open.
Todd Brooks: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Rob, you highlighted at the start of your remarks this morning that product innovation has been at the heart of the success that you’ve driven. And I know there’s a lot of focus on Back to Better 2.0 as we’re looking to ’24. But can you talk to innovation pipeline and if ’24 setting up is more of a product line extension year on existing offerings? Or are these novel platforms or products coming down the line that you think could be needle movers as well? Thanks.
Rob Lynch: Thank you. Yes. So when I think of — I’ll speak to your specific question around product innovation. But when I think of innovation, I think about innovation across all of our demand driving capabilities. So product, loyalty, marketing, we’ve already talked a lot about marketing and the advancements that we’re making through our more efficient media capabilities and targeting capabilities. And the innovation and our brand positioning as we launch our new campaign with the Martin Agency, another one I’ll talk about is loyalty. Our loyalty program has been very effective for us over the last 5 years. We’ve gone from 12 members to over 12 million members to over 32 million members in 5 years. But it’s not just the sheer number, it’s the way we’ve leveraged the platform.
Both to deliver incentives to our most valuable customers, but also to create a sense of hospitality with our brand to make sure that people feel special when they come to our organic channels. I mean we do things like grant early access to our new product innovations and give them access to Papa John’s gear for our favorite fans and different surprise and delight things that we do for those loyalty members. We can get better at that. We are currently working to drive some optimization into our loyalty platform to enhance both the hospitality component that it provides, but — and also the incentive component and how we manage our Papa John [ph] and the incentives. So there’s a lot of innovation on the marketing side, the loyalty side. On the product innovation side, we’ve been very innovative over the last 3 years.
We’ve launched things like Papadias. We launched things like Papa Bites. It’s been a challenge for us to really advertise those great things. Our customers tell us that they love it. But in this business, you have to make sure you’re advertising pizza. Otherwise, you take a lot of check degradation. So we’re going to get innovative even on how we promote our products. We are going to launch in April with a new innovation that we will be sharing here shortly. But that innovation will be across multiple platforms. It will be across pizza. It will be across Papadias and it will be across our Bites. And we will advertise those holistically. So we’re creating awareness of other products that we have that have less household penetration, less attachment than our core pizza.
So it’s not even just the unique ingredients that we’re creating innovation around. It’s how we’re promoting things, how we’re driving our entire holistic menu to drive both drive our pizza business but also drive our attachment. So yes, we do have new platforms coming, and we also have new ways in which we’re going to advertise and create awareness of those platforms.
Operator: Thank you. And our next question coming from the line of Alexander Slagle with Jefferies. Your line is open.
Alexander Slagle: Hey, thanks. Good morning. Just wanted to ask on the international development piece and the slowdown that you see in ’24, and I know a lot of that has to do with specific challenges in the U.K. and Middle East. But trying to think about how quickly things could reaccelerate into ’25? I mean, obviously, a lot of different scenarios for those markets. But are there other regions that you think could sort of an acceleration in growth to help sort of bring that international gross development number back up over 200 like kind of where you had been or — or do you anticipate a longer period of time to get that back up? Just trying to get a sense of how quickly things can pivot back on that front.
Rob Lynch: So great question, Alex. What I would tell you is that – and I’ll get to your specific question, but we are hyper focused in 2024 on our domestic development business.
