BJ's Restaurants, Inc.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to BJ's Restaurant's fiscal 2022 first quarter investor conference call and webcast. I'm Greg Levin, BJ's chief executive officer and president, and joining me on the call today is Tom Hodick, our chief financial officer. We also have Greg Lenz, our chief development officer, on hand for Q&A. After the market closed today, we released our financial results for the fiscal 2022 first quarter and you can view the full text of our earnings release on our website at www.bjsrestaurants.com. Our agenda today will start with Rhonda Shermer, our Director of SEC Reporting, providing our standard cautionary disclosure with respect to forward-looking statements. I will then provide an update on our business and current initiatives, and then Tom Hodick will provide some commentary on the quarter and the current environment. After that, we will open it up to questions. So, Ronna, please go ahead.

Thanks, Greg. Our comments on the conference call today will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of the company to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and that undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. Our forward-looking statements speak only as of today's date, April 21, 2022. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements or to make any other forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, unless required to do so by the securities laws. Investors are referred to the full discussion of risks and uncertainties associated with forward-looking statements contained in the company's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Greg?

Thanks, Rana. I'm highly encouraged by the recent trends in our business. BJ's generated record Q1 revenue, beating our previous high set in 2019, even with the significant industry-wide impact from the Omicron surge in January. With Omicron in retreat, Guest demand and team member staffing levels stabilized in February and then accelerated in March. Our team members shined once again, showing they can provide our guests with the gold standard level of service and gracious hospitality in every operating environment. Our average weekly restaurant sales improved from 96,000 in January to 110,000 in February and 118,000 in March. Compared to 2019, our comparable restaurant sales increased from negative 6.4% in January to negative 0.6% in February and then to a positive 1.2% in March. Our solid performance continues in April with period-to-date weekly restaurant sales averaging 118,000, which equates to positive mid-single-digit comparable restaurant sales growth from the same period in 2019. Our restaurant margin also improved throughout the quarter with full quarter restaurant margin meaningfully better than January levels, which were impacted by Omicron. Our top line performance is being driven by improving underlying fundamentals. Staffing continues to be a key driver of sales and we added hourly team members and further reduced the number of understaffed restaurants throughout the quarter. Due to our improved staffing position and solid guest demand, we began adding back more late night hours starting in March. Our restaurant hours of operation are now approximately a half an hour less per day as compared to pre-COVID hours. Moreover, late night comparable sales are now trending positive in April compared to 2019. Next, our team member turnover trends improved in the first quarter as well compared to the last several quarters. Our training and engagement programs designed to retain team members are working and a key part of increasing our staffing and serving more guests. Finally, our net promoter scores rose in the first quarter, and our guests scored us higher in Q1 than at any point over the past year, and well ahead of our pre-COVID measure in each metric, including overall recommend, value, food, and hospitality. Our unwavering approach to flawless execution continues to be noticed by guests, as also evidenced by our traffic trends. While Tom will go into the cost side of the business in more detail, we continue to experience high inflation in Q1. Certain items such as fresh meats are down from their late 2021 highs, but remain elevated on a historical basis. Our food costs had contracts step up at the beginning of 2022. Related to labor costs, market rates continue to tick up, albeit at a slower quarterly sequential increase than the past couple of years. And given our restaffing initiatives, we incurred extra hours on a short-term basis as we invested in training and experienced higher than typical overtime due to COVID-related exclusions. To mitigate some of the recent inflation impact, we implemented a round of menu pricing of 1.8% in February, and we'll take another additional 1.4% in June. This amount of pricing is still behind current inflationary trends. While sales are improving with guest demand, we still have excess capacity at lunch and other day parts that we can drive guests into our restaurants to leverage the fixed costs in our business to improve margins. That is our number one focus to improve margins, and that is driving guest traffic. Therefore, we are carefully balancing driving traffic with overall pricing to manage margins as sales recover. After seven months as BJ's CEO, I am confident as ever in BJ's ability to deliver industry-leading results. Every BJ's team member, from our restaurants to the Restaurant Support Center, is committed to growing sales since driving incremental sales is the best way for BJ's to deliver profitable growth. Recently, we galvanized our team around five key strategic initiatives that offer the best path forward toward meaningful near and long-term sales growth. They are serve memorable brewhouse experiences, craft the people-first hospitality culture, build a large, profitable, best-in-class off-premise experience, accelerate restaurant growth and new sales channels, and build a better guest and team member experience through the joy of technology. BJ's well-defined strategic priorities set a clear vision that our leaders are now embarking on to drive the next phase of our concept's growth. First, in regards to serving memorable Brewhouse experiences, BJ's offers a social dining experience in what we refer to as the polished casual space. In our guest research, we consistently hear our restaurants described as an uplifting social oasis with a Brewhouse soul. Guests come to us not only for a meal occasion, but for the full BJ's hospitality experience, which is not available anywhere else. To maintain this high standard of hospitality, We are redoubling our emphasis on high-touch procedures that help build relationships with our guests so they feel special and appreciated. Our food delivers the comfort of the familiar with a Brewhouse twist. We will lean in further to expand our Brewhouse food authority by creating more iconic Brewhouse signature food and drink menu items while elevating our high-quality ingredients and presentation. We are also evaluating opportunities to take our brewhouse theater experience to the next level. We are testing new ideas and design features that refresh our existing restaurants and expand capacity to drive even higher sales. We have now completed two pilot remodels where we added three new large booths for extra seating capacity and new design elements such as larger TVs to improve the dining room experience. The early results are encouraging with the sales lift from the additional seating providing a very attractive return. Second is crafting a people-first hospitality culture. Great experiences start with fantastic people and consistently great experience require a team driven by a higher purpose. That is why every new BJ's team member across our organization receives a craft card outlining our brand's core values around connection, respect, advancement, fun, and trust. Emphasizing our values shows team members what BJ stands for and helps them make the best decisions that align with our vision and goals. With these core values as our foundation, we consistently evaluate our restaurant operating procedures to ensure we have the best practices in place that showcase our gracious hospitality and gold standard level of service. To help ensure our new hourly team members learn the BJ's way, We are developing new training programs that provide improved tools to deliver on our high standards of service and hospitality from the very first day. We are leveraging new and best-in-class teaching and development practices to provide our team members with a foundation to execute at exceptional levels while continually building skills that are important for the ability to advance their careers at BJ's. Third, building a large, profitable, best-in-class off-premise experience. In 2021, our average weekly off-premise sales approximately doubled from pre-pandemic levels to more than $20,000 per restaurant, which is where it remains today. This growth highlights shifting guest behavior accelerated by the pandemic as more meals prepared by restaurants were enjoyed in guest homes. We expect this trend to continue and are focusing on further innovation around our off-premise guest experience to best position BJ's to earn an outsized share of this exciting growth opportunity. We continue to explore initiatives to make our off-premise experience more differentiated and optimize all channels, including takeout, curbside pickup, and delivery. For example, we will soon introduce an advanced order tracker with real-time progress information to complement the text message alerts our guests receive today. We are also improving our printed order labels to include a complete pack list to ensure orders are accurately filled before leaving our restaurants. We aim to superbly execute the basics and reduce friction throughout the guest experience, and we believe the processes we have and continue to implement will help us achieve this goal. We are also very excited about BEJ's opportunity to meaningfully expand our catering business. We are working aggressively to build this capability, and our early progress on this initiative is encouraging. We plan to continue dedicating appropriate resources to grow our catering business, especially as more workers return to their offices this year. Our vision is to bring the Brewhouse experience to any event, on or off premise, and our catering offerings are aligned with this vision. Fourth, accelerating restaurant growth and new sales channels. Data continues to confirm that BJ's unique concept can leverage in untapped and underdeveloped markets across the country to support at least 425 BJ's restaurants nationwide, or approximately twice the number of locations we have today. Our recent new restaurant openings are performing ahead of other locations in their markets, which is a healthy indicator for continued profitable expansion. During the first quarter, we restarted our new restaurant development program with the March opening in Charlotte, North Carolina. This was followed by our second 2022 restaurant opening in San Antonio, Texas earlier this week. We have five additional restaurants currently under construction and plan to break ground on a sixth location by the end of this month. We remain confident in our ability to open as many as eight new restaurants in 2022 and continue building a terrific pipeline to deliver attractive restaurant growth in 2023 and beyond. Going forward, we expect our cash flow, balance sheet, and financial flexibility will support our goal of increasing our restaurant base by at least 5% each year. In order to successfully develop and open new restaurants at this rate, we will continue to invest in our teams and our capabilities. We are also evaluating other sales growth channels, such as our BJ's Brewhouse Beer Club. The early results of our Brewhouse Beer Club are very encouraging, with members increasing visits and spend in our restaurants once joining the program. We continue to optimize the program and will evaluate a broader launch for additional states. Fifth is building a better guest and team member experience through the joy of technology. As an early adopter of value-add guest and team member technology, such as our mobile app to drive e-commerce orders, and our server handheld devices to improve operations in our restaurants, our reputation as a technology leader in the industry is well earned. We are committed to a technology at the right time approach that enhances and enables the guest and server experience without detracting from our guests' overall dining experience. We are refreshing our e-commerce platform, which will provide guests with a new, more modern user experience and more advanced functionality. We also recently moved our guest data to a new platform, allowing us to offer a more personalized and one-to-one approach to digital marketing. As a result, our targeted messaging now delivers personalized content and dynamic recommendations that have the best potential to drive guest action. We are now able to iteratively enhance each guest interaction based on applied learnings and continue to fine-tune the program to accomplish specific goals with every communication and drive higher returns on marketing investment. In summary, we have a comprehensive set of initiatives aimed at significantly increasing our average weekly sales and doubling our restaurant locations. We also have ambitious long-term sales and profit growth targets, including growing BJ sales to $2 billion and beyond. In the meantime, we are incredibly optimistic that guest affinity for our brand and menu offerings coupled with the trajectory of our business and our current initiatives, will enable us to achieve attractive near- and mid-term growth objectives. In closing, I would like to express our appreciation and gratitude for each and every one of our team members who remain committed to making BJ's the gold standard in the casual dining industry. Now let me turn it over to Tom to provide a more detailed update from the quarter and current trends. Tom?