Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Cracker Barrel fiscal 2024 third quarter conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal conference specialists by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. And to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Adam Hannon, Senior Manager of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to Cracker Barrel's third quarter fiscal 2024 conference call and webcast. This morning, we issued a press release announcing our third quarter results. In this press release and on this call, we will refer to non-GAAP financial measures such as adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter ended April 26, 2024. Please refer to the footnotes in our press release for further details about these metrics. The company believes that these measures provide investors with an enhanced understanding of the company's financial performance. This information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for net income or earnings per share information prepared in accordance with GAAP. The last pages of the press release include reconciliations from the non-GAAP information to the GAAP financials. On the call with me this morning are Cracker Barrel's President and CEO, Julie Massino, and Senior Vice President and CFO, Craig Pimels. Julie and Craig will provide a review of the business, financials, and outlook. We will then open up the call for questions. On this call, statements may be made by management of their beliefs and expectations regarding the company's future operating results or expected future events. These are known as forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties that in many cases are beyond management's control and may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. We caution our listeners and readers in considering forward-looking statements and information. Any of the factors that could affect results are summarized in the cautionary description of risks and uncertainties found at the end of the press release and are described in detail in our reports that we file with or furnish to the SEC. The information shared on this call is valid as of today's date and the company undertakes no obligation to update it except it may be required under applicable law. I'll now turn the call over to Cracker Barrel's President and CEO, Julie Messina. Julie?

Good morning. Given the substantive update we provided two weeks ago, today's prepared remarks will be shorter than usual. I encourage everyone to review our comments from the May 16th call for additional details on our transformation plan if you haven't already. This morning we reported total revenue of $817.1 million and adjusted EBITDA of $47.9 million or 5.9% of revenue. As we previously noted in our May 16th press release, our results fell below our expectations due to weaker than anticipated traffic. Our third quarter traffic challenges underscore the need for our strategic transformation as we discussed on May 16th. Of course, as we undertake our longer term strategic initiatives, We continued to aggressively manage our day-to-day business, and I was encouraged by our performance despite the financial impact of lower traffic. Although our financial performance in the quarter was challenged, our teams managed the business well. We saw solid improvements across the metrics that are most highly correlated with same-store sales growth. Guest satisfaction, speed, hourly turnover, and average skill level for key job roles. We believe these are key leading indicators and we're pleased with the progress we are making. For example, compared to the prior year quarter, our hourly turnover has improved by 10 percentage points. Our seat-to-eat times, that's a key speed metric, have improved by approximately 8%. Our off-premise missing item scores improved by 18%. The average skill level for the key positions of cook and server increased by 3%. and our Google Star rating has increased from 4.1 to 4.2. We are confident that our sustained focus on these operational metrics will deliver further improvements which will translate to increased visits in time. Additionally, our operators did a good job of managing food waste. I believe this, along with a positive trend in the above metrics, is the result of our organization-wide emphasis on operational discipline and is also indicative of our dual focus of running the day-to-day business while also executing our transformation. And our operators' ability to effectively manage expenses helped mitigate the margin compression from the lower traffic. Next, while retail sales were also challenged as a result of our traffic results and broader retail headwinds, we were encouraged that we saw sequential monthly improvements in retail same-store sales and the performance of our seasonal theme assortments. In closing, our financial performance remains pressured by the challenges we've previously described. But we are confident that our focus on our five strategic pillars, one, refining the brand, two, enhancing the menu, three, evolving the store and guest experience, four, winning in digital and off-premise, and five, elevating the employee experience, will deliver our imperatives of driving relevancy, delivering food and an experienced guest's love, and growing profitability and position the company for significant value creation over time. I'll now turn the call over to Craig for a more detailed look at the quarter from a financial perspective and to discuss our financial outlook for the rest of the year. Craig?