Jason Monaco: Yes. Hey, Ben. This is Jason. From a volume standpoint, the pricing and inflation has decelerated, we’ve seen unit volumes improve or the impact on unit volumes improve. From a cadence standpoint, we’ve seen inflation step downs throughout the quarter. And we ended, I think I mentioned earlier, we ended around 3% on the wholesale side from an inbound cost standpoint, both to our stores and to our wholesale customers.
BenPham: Great. And then just kind of following up on the EBT conversation. I think you said it accelerated — the headwinds accelerated in the last six months. Wondering why you guys think that is and how should we think about that going forward. And then, this somewhat related, you also mentioned X pharmacy, you’re seeing consistent trends between wholesale and retail comps. Just wondering what your estimated pharmacy impact was?
Jason Monaco: Yes. Great question, Ben. So broadly, the benefits from pharmacy, particularly GLP-1s are offsetting or close to offsetting the headwinds from EBT. That’s actually a slight net negative carry right now. Our core comp in the highest single — high ones is, is a pretty clean number when you strip out EBT and pharmacy between the two of them. So overall, a solid result. From an EBT phasing standpoint, I think you had asked about the timing. The some of it is the jurisdictions we operate in. In Michigan in particular, there was a decline in EBT funding that started about six months ago. And we’re seeing that in the portion of our business that operates in Michigan, there’s less of an impact outside of that geography.
Ben Pham: Great. Thank you. And then just one more, if I may, on kind of the operating expenses. Just wondering how 3Q operating expenses tracked really, to your internal plan, how labor rates and hours looking especially kind of post your realignment?
Jason Monaco: Yes. So maybe I’ll start with the labor and hours. And kind of before we get into the realignment, so the labor and hours, we saw 4% improvement or drove a 4% improvement in throughput on our supply chain. That’s a great result, especially in the context or the backdrop of some of the volume declines we mentioned earlier in our national accounts business. As far as the go-to-market changes, we’ve deployed those changes here in the third quarter and we’re off and running and our expense load is consistent with what we expected.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from Scott Mushkin from R5 Capital. Your line is open.
Scott Mushkin: Thanks. Hey, guys. Sorry about the voice, it’s hoarse right now. [Indiscernible] increases next year, I know you said labor is a little bit easier to get or stabilized, how should we look at labor rates as we move into ’24?
Tom Sarsam: Yes. Great question, Scott. So as we mentioned on the opening here that we’ve seen good stabilization overall on the flow of applicants on turnover, which has been improved for us as well. And so I think some of the course, the larger course, corrections that we had to make, in terms of compensation are behind us. But we are in a normal phase right now we’re looking at data to for this year, kind of in the back half this year, it says in our competitive set, pay increase is still kind of around 4, a little bit north of 4%. So that would be a wee bit higher than would have been sort of pre-pandemic. So we’re seeing something between kind of a normal range of pay and maybe even a slightly elevated pay increases as we move forward from this year into ’24.
Scott Mushkin: Perfect. And then, as we think about ’24, obviously, inflation continues to step down, promotional activity continues to step up. Some of its CPG sponsor, but not all of it. So as we frame this into ’24, there has been talk of flat inflation or maybe outright deflation. How should we think about your guidance business as we potentially move into that environment? And is that something you guys are contemplating?
