The Chefs' Warehouse, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Chef's Warehouse 4th Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference has been recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Alex Aldis, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary, and Chief Government Relations Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone. With me on today's call are Chris Pappas, founder, chairman, and CEO, and Jim Letty, our CFO. By now, you should have access to our fourth quarter 2024 earnings press release. It can also be found at www.chefswarehouse.com under the investor relations section. Throughout this conference call, we will be presenting non-GAAP financial measures, including, among others, historical and estimated EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income, adjusted earnings per share, adjusted operating expenses, net debt leverage, and free cash flow. These measures are not calculated in accordance with GAAP and may be calculated differently and similarly titled non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies. Quantitative reconciliations of our non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures appear in today's press release. and fourth quarter 2024 earnings presentation. Before we begin our formal remarks, I need to remind everyone that part of our discussion today will include forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our estimated financial performance. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore, you should not put undue reliance on them. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect. Some of these risks are mentioned in today's release. Others are disclosed in our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, which are available on the SEC website. Today we are going to provide a business update and go over our fourth quarter results in detail. For a portion of our discussion this morning, we will refer to a few slides posted on the Chef's Warehouse website under the investor relations section titled Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Presentation. Please note that these slides are disclosed at this time for illustration purposes only. Then we will open up the call for questions. With that, I will turn the call over to Chris Pappas. Chris?

Thank you, Alex. Thank you all for joining our fourth quarter 2024 earnings call. Business activity and demand remain consistently strong through the fourth quarter amidst a healthy environment for our core upscale casual to higher-end dining customer base. Our teams across domestic and international markets provided excellent product and service amidst a busy holiday season and delivered the first $1 billion-plus revenue quarter in Chef's Warehouse history and strong growth in gross profit dollars in March. During the quarter, we continued growing market share over the year with strong year-over-year growth and unique item placement and new customer acquisition. I'd like to thank the entire CEPPS Warehouse team for their dedication and commitment in delivering a strong 2024 for our team members, our customers and supply partners, and our shareholders. Now, please refer to slide three of the presentation. A few highlights from the fourth quarter include 8.7% growth in net sales, Specialty sales were up 11.5% over the prior year, which was driven by unique customer growth of approximately 4.5%, placement growth of 12.3%, and specialty case growth of 6.1%. Pounds in the center of the plate were approximately 3.6% higher than the prior year fourth quarter. Gross profit margins increased approximately 23 basis points. Gross margin in the specialty category increased approximately 22 basis points as compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, while gross margin in the center of the plate category decreased approximately seven basis points year over year. Jim will provide more detail on gross profit margins in a few moments. Now, please refer to slide four Chart 1 provides a full year 2024 update to gross profit dollars per route as compared to 2019. Chart 2 provides full year 2024 adjusted operating expense as a percentage of gross profit dollar improvement by 24 basis points versus 2023 and 92 basis points versus 2019. Full year 2024 adjusted EBITDA per employee increased 13% versus 2023 and 18% versus 2019. Now please refer to slide five. The charts here display the progression of customer orders coming via our digital platform, which include orders coming via mobile and website. Investments in our digital platform continue to contribute to margin enhancement as our team drives both online order adoption growth, enhancements to customer-facing functionality, and improved real-time data analytics supporting our sales teams. As of the fourth quarter of 2024, approximately 56% of customers ordering through our domestic specialty locations are online versus 48% in 2023 and 20% at year end 2019. Now please refer to slide six. Slide six plays the five key areas that our teams are focused on in order to deliver our expectation of continued above industry average top line gross profit dollar and adjusted EBITDA growth as well as targeted incremental adjusted EBITDA margin improvement over the next four years. We look forward to expanding more on each of these areas at our investor day this coming March. With that, I'll turn it over to Jim to discuss more detailed financial information for the quarter and an update on our liquidity. Jim?

Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. I'll now provide a comparison of our current quarter operating results. versus the prior year quarter and provide an update on our balance sheet and liquidity. Please refer to slide seven. Our net sales for the quarter ended December 27, 2024, increased approximately 8.7 percent to $1.034 billion from $950.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. Net inflation was 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter, consisting of 5.1 percent inflation in our specialty category and inflation of 1.8% in our center of the plate category versus the prior year quarter. Reported inflation was impacted by two primary factors in the fourth quarter versus the prior year quarter. Prices in the chocolate category continued to remain elevated versus the prior year, and specialty product cross-sell growth in Texas. As we combine our legacy specialty and protein sales with our Hardee's produce operation, average revenue per case in Hardee's increased approximately 15% versus the fourth quarter of 2023, as the mix of higher dollar specialty cases increased. Excluding the impact of the Texas cross-sell growth, aggregate specialty inflation was approximately 3.6%, and overall inflation for the company was approximately 3%. Gross profit increased 9.8%, 251 million for the fourth quarter of 2024 versus 228.6 million for the fourth quarter of 2023. Gross profit margins increased approximately 23 basis points to 24.3%. And our procurement, sales, pricing, and operating teams delivered strong gross profit dollar growth across categories during the quarter. Selling general and administrative expenses increased approximately 8.9 percent to $206.8 million for the fourth quarter of 2024 from $190 million for the fourth quarter of 2023. The increase was primarily due to higher depreciation and amortization driven by facility investments and costs associated with compensation, facilities, and distribution to support sales growth. Adjusted operating expenses increased 7.7 percent versus the prior year fourth quarter And as a percentage of net sales, adjusted operating expenses were 17.7% for the fourth quarter of 2024. Operating income for the fourth quarter of 2024 was 46.5 million compared to 38.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2023. The increase in operating income was driven primarily by higher gross profit, partially offset by higher selling general and administrative expenses versus the prior year quarter. Our GAAP net income was $23.9 million, or $0.55 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2024, compared to net income of $16 million, or $0.38 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2023. On a non-GAAP basis, we had adjusted EBITDA of $68.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2024, compared to $59 million for the prior year fourth quarter. Adjusted net income was $23.9 million or $0.55 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to $20.2 million or $0.47 per diluted share for the prior year fourth quarter. Turning to the balance sheet and an update on our liquidity, please refer to slide eight. At the end of the fourth quarter, we had total liquidity of 261.4 million, comprised of 114.7 million in cash and 146.7 million of availability under our ABL facility. For the full fiscal year 2024, we prepaid 14 million principal on our 2029 term loan. We settled the December 2024 maturity convertible notes in a combination of cash and shares due to the partial conversion by certain holders. This resulted in $39.7 million of debt reduction and an increase in share count by 696,000 shares, net of 162,000 shares repurchased shortly following the conversion. Share repurchases under our authorized $100 million plan totaled $17.4 million for the full year of 2024, Timing of any future repurchases under our plan will continue to be dependent on share price, market conditions, and free cash flow generation. As of December 27, 2024, total net debt was approximately $557.8 million, net of all cash and cash equivalents. Net debt to adjusted EBITDA was approximately 2.5 times as compared to approximately 3.4 times as of year-end 2023. Due to the timing of certain payments at year-end, we estimate that net debt to adjusted EBITDA will be in the range of 2.5 times to 2.8 times for the foreseeable future. Turning to our full-year guidance for 2025, based on the current trends in the business, we are providing our full-year financial guidance as follows. We estimate that net sales for the full year of 2025 will be in the range of $3.94 billion to $4.04 billion, gross profit to be between $951 million and $976 million, and adjusted EBITDA to be between $233 million and $246 million. Please note, for the full year of 2025, we expect the convertible notes maturing in 2028 to be dilutive, and therefore, we expect the fully diluted share count to be approximately 46.3 million to 47 million shares.

Thank you, and at this point, we will open it up to questions. Operator? Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star and 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star and 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the start keys. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while we poll for questions. The first question comes from the line of Mark Carden with UBS. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks so much for taking the questions. So to start, you guys called out strength across the quarter. Did you see any impact from the softer industry traffic that we've heard about in December, or did the higher-income consumer just simply act a bit differently? And then, how much of an impact have you guys seen quarter-to-date from the southern winter storms and the California wildfires?

Yeah. No, I would say that the cadence during the fourth quarter was just pretty evenly solid or strong. And I think a lot of people were anticipating maybe some impact from the shorter period from Thanksgiving to Christmas, but we really didn't see that. Those three weeks were really typically strong for a holiday season. So there's really nothing to call out on the fourth quarter in terms of weather impacts or anything that we saw from a demand perspective. In terms of January and some of the weather impacts, The fires in L.A. did not really have a hugely material impact on us. We only had a handful of customers that actually lost their properties. And L.A. is a very big, wide market geographically for us. So there was a little bit of an impact, but it's not going to have a material impact.

Great, that's helpful. And then in terms of, I know it's a fluid situation, but there's a potential for tariffs to come back to play with Mexico, Canada, and Europe. If that occurs, how much exposure do you have to these markets from an import perspective? And could you pass through the inflation in most cases? Or would you look to pivot sourcing?

Yeah, I mean, historically, we went through a period of some tariff wars. Back years ago, I remember that we were dealing with tariffs some of the products that come from Italy and France and Spain, I believe. We have over 4,000 suppliers right now throughout our system at Chef's Warehouse. A tremendous amount of our products are domestic. And we've always been able to navigate it, find other solutions, and pass on products. I mean, again, I think the largest sector, I think, of the product lines are fruits and vegetables from Mexico. A lot of these are $20 boxes. So you're talking about a few bucks a case. I think our market, our customer base is kind of used to the ups and downs. We do sell a more high-end type of operation. And, you know, it's more labor cost that drives a lot of the costs. I mean, right now everybody's talking about eggs. Eggs is, I think, the biggest headwind we have had from the avian flu. It's caused eggs to go up. But when you really think about, you know, eggs are up, even if they're up 50 cents an egg, you know, how much of that goes into a recipe to our average customer who's charging $20, $30, $40 for an entree. So... Um, there's an effect, but it's, it's not something that, uh, really keeps me up at night.

Great. Thanks so much. Good luck guys.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next question comes from Alex legal with Jeffries. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Hi guys. Uh, congrats on the quarter. Um, I wanted to ask on the margin opportunities for 2025 and when you look at the implied midpoints for gross margin and OpEx, I mean, where do you think you see the greater opportunity to get more favorability? I ask that just because your adjusted OpEx percentage in 4Q started to flatten out and lever year over year for the first time in seven, eight quarters. So from the outside, it looks like a solid place to see some upside opportunity, but curious on your perspective.

Yeah, thanks for the question, Alex. In terms of 2024, we were pretty early up front in our guidance that the operating leverage was going to be heavily weighted to the back half of the year, especially the fourth quarter, given that we didn't lap some of the big facility investments and rent impacts until the fourth quarter. So that kind of played out how we expected. We had Very little operating leverage the first three quarters of the year and then a lot in the fourth quarter. And that resulted in the kind of 15 to 20 basis points of EBITDA margin improvement versus 23. In 25, you know, the guidance, you know, is obviously a range. You know, our goal is once again to incrementally over the next four years you know, improve operating leverage and EBITDA margin by, you know, kind of that 20 to 25 basis point range that we were close to executing in 24. And really, there's a lot of, you know, if you look at the chart that we put up about our 28 financial goals, all of those things, you know, and the projects that are below them are all going into both driving gross profit dollar growth and improvement as well as improvement in adjusted operating leverage on the OpEx. So, you know, really it's just doing the work and the teams executing and then getting there incrementally.

Okay. And on the food cost inflation outlook, do you think that Hardee's cross-sell impact will continue through 2025 to the same degree?

Well, I think we'll continue to grow the cross-sell. With Hardee's, it's similar to New England. We're trading out of some lower margin kind of what we call chunky corporate business and replacing it with what we call street sales, which are independent restaurants and the core customer that we're really good at serving. So that will continue. And if it continues to have a bit of an outside impact on the reported inflation number, we'll call it out. But product mix changes impact the inflation versus volume number, and we'll continue to call things out that are having somewhat of an outsized impact one quarter versus another.

Unfortunately, Alex, I think that it makes your job a little harder trying to look at us over the past 10 years, and I think we We continue to say you really got to understand, Chef, you have to understand our goal was to become a complete solution company in every market. So we have our protein offerings and we have now our fresh offerings combined with the specialty broad line. So the numbers are going to continue to evolve because our goal is to be that solution company in every market. And it's going to fluctuate, you know, depending if protein is growing faster than fresh or fresh is growing faster. It depends on the maturity of each market. But we're very, very happy with, you know, how our teams are growing, continually growing. And we called it a hybrid cell for a long time. I think I'm going to start maybe using a different phrase because, you know, maybe it's our total solution go-to-market strategy that continues to evolve and succeed. And I think you're seeing the success of how the teams are doing, you know, as we continue to get leverage on our overhead, you know, especially where we've invested heavily in people and technology and our new facilities. And as we start to grow the volume, you start to see us get that leverage that we keep talking about, you know, 20 basis point a year for the next few years. And we're marching towards our goals.

Got it. Thanks. Congrats again.

Thank you, Alex. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Peter Sarah with VTIG. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks and congrats on a great year. I wanted to ask maybe first on just if you give us a little bit of an update. Chris, you mentioned labor costs and maybe you could just give us an update on what you're thinking for labor availability and inflation in 2025, if you think that's going to be in line with historical or outsized. And then just on general commodity inflation, I know in the past you've mentioned, you know, optimal scenario is 2% to 3% commodity inflation with a little bit of volatility. Just any thoughts on what you're expecting in 2025 would be helpful. And then I've got a quick follow-up. Thanks.

Sure. Well, let me get the crystal ball out again, Peter. But I think if you back out the What we're seeing right now with you know, mainly I mean eggs is really What's got people going crazy at this point, you know? You know the chocolate the chocolate market is better, but it's still inflated But you we back out those those two big categories We're kind of seeing that two to three percent, you know, so I don't see anything, you know, that really would change that drastically. I mean, everyone's talking about tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, but I don't know. From my seat today, I see the 2% to 3% that we talk about, you know, and probably a little volatility. And we'll, you know, hopefully the, you know, the egg market, you know, we get over the control of the Avon flu and you know, the egg prices start to come down, give people relief. But, yeah, the meat market, I mean, we all talk about, you know, the beef, not enough cattle for the next two, three years. So I don't think we're going to get much relief on that. But we're seeing stabilization. We're not seeing, you know, we're not seeing anything crazy besides, you know, the big headwind on the egg market. So, you know, our category managers are really doing a great job right now, and I think you see the results.

Great. And then just, can I ask on the Salesforce, can you give us an update on how, you know, the investments you guys have made in the Salesforce, maybe the growth rate, and where are you getting most of this talent from? Are they coming from outside the industry, within the industry? Any insight there would be helpful. Thank you.

Yeah. Well, I didn't answer your labor question before. I mean, you know, labor, it's a hard job, you know, working night shifts and, you know, driving, you know, big trucks in cities and delivering it, you know, up and down stairs. I mean, these people work really, really hard. It's a hard job. And, you know, we like to think we pay, you know, a very fair, better than most of our competitors. We try to. because we're delivering great expensive product to the best restaurants in the world. We need to have the best team. I don't think that that is the issue. It was obviously coming out of COVID where we were really challenged. I think it's really stabilized. We have a stabilized labor force. I don't see that as the headwind that we had before. And what was the second part of your question? I'm sorry. Oh, the sales force? Yeah. I mean, we hire from the kitchens, we hire from the front of the house, and we also hire people that have a passion for food, perseverance, and I think from all walks of life. It's a very diverse sales force. And I think it continues to get even... More diverse. I think what's really been paying off dividends is our investments in training, investments in HR, investments in recruiting, spending a lot of time, energy, and more and more investment in trying to recruit the best people because it does take time to become, I call it, to become a real CW person who can sell all our books online. Uh, that takes a few years. So, uh, hiring the wrong people who leave after a year or two is a, is a big cash drain. So I think the efforts in making sure that we're doing our best to recruit people that are going to stay. And I always say, you know, the people that stay more than two, three years, it becomes probably the best job, uh, you know, that they're going to have because we don't cap people. We allow them to keep growing and, uh, I think that story resonates. They see the success people have had at Chef's Warehouse, and I think that really helps us recruit the best people, the best talent that's out there, and I think you're seeing the results of that.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. The next question comes from Todd Brooks with Benchmark Company. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, and congrats on a great 2024. Thanks, Todd. A couple follow-up questions here. The strength that we saw in gross margin, you pointed to some specific drivers around the digital ordering mix, some beneficial inflationary experience, the higher kind of case value and profitability at Hardee's. As we're looking forward for Gross margin outlook for 25. Just thoughts on kind of key drivers of continued improvement and maybe if we can boil that into a magnitude, that would be great.

Thanks for the question, Todd. I really go back to what I, I guess what I alluded to earlier is that, you know, the guidance implies, you know, kind of very similar kind of gross profit margins as we delivered in for the full year of 24. And that's really because, you know, gross profit margins are now put in or affected by, you know, things like product mix changes, et cetera, as well as, you know, obviously inflation and deflation. So, you know, once again, we're focused on driving gross profit dollars and gross profit dollar growth. So Texas is a good example as we get more expensive boxes on hard-eased trucks. Our goal is to drive more gross profit dollar per drop per case average for the opco as a whole as we go through the year. And then the operating team is focused on managing operating expense. So I think when we build our guidance, we kind of just build in an expected gross profit range. It's not going to be perfect. And then our goal is to execute to gross profit dollar growth. So that's how we think about it.

Again, Todd, I think we've been saying focus on our spread between overhead, what it costs to run the business, and the GP dollars because we're seeing a a marketplace that didn't exist before in my 40 years of food service where, you know, you have a case of eggs that was, say, $30 a case, and now it's $200 a case. You don't need to make, you know, 25%, right? Because you're making the GP dollars because your input cost is so high. So the overhead is up. It does cost, drivers cost more, rent costs more, but... you know, it didn't go up double and triple costs. So, you know, you're able to operate in this environment. A case of prime fillets, you know, that say was 80, you know, it was $80 a piece and now it's $160 a piece. You have the same mathematical dynamics. So the margin, you know, we are a margin company. We focus on it, but when you get crazy increases in certain categories, it can kind of muddle the number. And again, that's why we're so focused on saying, you know, our focus is delivering that 20 basis point improvement, you know, every year. And it's really the spread between the operating cost to run the business and the GP dollars coming in because our mixes are changing, you know, We are a company that's focused on selling the best products in the world. A lot of them are more expensive. Our customers use more expensive ingredients. So it's not like we're stuck with a $20 box type of food distribution business and trying to make $1.95 a case. That's not who Chef's Warehouse is. That's why we give up. sometimes $50, $60, $70, $100 million, a volume that comes in from some of these acquisitions that doesn't fit who we are. And as we kind of right-size the market, as we talk about Texas, it starts to become more of a chef's warehouse, and it starts to look and operate more like a chef's warehouse, and the numbers start to become more like a chef's warehouse.

That's very helpful. Thanks, Chris. And just one quick follow-up with inflation being kind of a key topic on this call. How are you guys looking about potential issues as you go down the supply chain from labor availability, whether it's migrant labor on the produce side of the business or maybe labor on the meat processing and packaging side as an incremental pressure to inflation in your 25 outlook? Thanks.

Yeah, I think we got way ahead of it the past few years. I mean, we raised a lot of the wages, you know. I think that we, you know, we realized to get the best talent out there, we would have to pay, you know, in each market, you know, to be most competitive, to look for the best people. And again, you know, be successful, you can afford to pay more, right? So I think we're doing that. So I'm not sure that we're going to see a tremendous headwind coming from the labor front because we're already paying, I think, at the upper end of the market. And I think to keep attracting that talent, I think it's built into our market. So I think we're good there.

Todd, I would just add that on the processing side, given the facility investments that we've made over the last couple of years, we put in a lot of processing automation, and that's allowed us to hire fewer butchers. So that will help mitigate as well as we go forward.

And all our systems in the warehouse is making us more efficient. So we know that that's the key to the – The success going forward is, you know, you have to be able to figure out how to do more with less, and I think our teams are doing a phenomenal job of that. Okay. Great. Thank you both.

Thank you, Tom. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Ellie Nebu with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. This is Elle on for Ben Cleavy. Congrats on a strong quarter, and thanks for taking my questions. First, could you provide an update on the utilization levels in the new Texas, California, and Florida locations? How do these compare to your initial expectations, and are you seeing any regional trends going forward?

Well, we don't – thanks for the question, Elle. We don't really disclose utilization levels by operating company or by market, but in general, In Northern California, we completed the consolidation of four processing facilities into one. We completed that move in December of 2024, and so we're in the early innings of that operation. That is really exciting. We have a lot of room for growth in that facility, and we're starting to realize the benefits of removing four separate processing facilities and getting the synergies on the operating cost side. In Texas, we've taken some additional space in Houston. We're in the process of, as I mentioned earlier, tritting out of some, and Chris mentioned earlier as well, tritting out of some non-core business that will free up space in order to continue to grow the specialty and protein side of the business. selling to the large Hardee's customer base that we acquired with the acquisition, getting those routes was critical to that part of the strategy. So we're doing that in a number of different markets, maybe on different levels of scale, but hopefully that gives you a sense of where we are in a multi-year path to driving the improvements in those markets from those investments.

Yeah, that's great. Thanks. And then a second question, and then I'll hop back in queue. Could you break down your CapEx expectations for this year in terms of growth versus maintenance funding? How should we think about your capital allocation strategy between expansion initiatives and sustaining existing operations?

Yeah, sure. So we guided to CapEx of $40 million to $50 million for 25, very similar to what we were doing in 24. Our goal is to gradually get that down towards 1% of revenue. I think we'll be closer to that versus I think we were at 1.3% in 24. In general, because we're a growth company, 80% of our CapEx is basically investing in facility expansion. So we have two major projects that we're doing in 25, and that is our Philadelphia-Southern New Jersey facility retrofit that will optimize our distribution footprint between the New York metro area, the Mid-Atlantic, and Pennsylvania. And that's underway. And then our Portland... Oregon facility build out that will allow us to consolidate multiple facilities that we have in Portland as a result of an acquisition that we did over a couple of years ago. And so that's taking place this year as well. We anticipate to complete that either at the end of this year or early Q1 of 26. So those are the two major facility projects, and really the rest of our CapEx is investments in technology, in our digital platform build-out, and then the rest is maintenance CapEx.

That's great. Thanks, guys. That's it for me.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Kelly Benia. With BMO Capital Markets, please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking our questions. I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit more about the 4% to 7% organic growth and just help us break that down between how much high growth markets are contributing versus more mature markets. and obviously tie in Texas into that conversation and just what you're learning about the Texas market and the receptivity to the categories as you integrate kind of protein and specialty there.

So thanks, Kelly. I'll start with a little bit about the high-growth markets and the mature markets, and then I'll turn it over to Chris to add some color on Texas and the strategy there. But just on the 4% to 7%, You know, we have a, and we'll talk more about this at our investor day, but we have, you know, markets like Dubai and Florida and Seattle, even Southern California, Northern California, Texas, New England, where we've made, you know, either significant acquisitions that are aimed at growth and invested in capacity. And all of these markets that I'm mentioning are kind of in that group. And they're growing. I'm not going to call out specific markets, but most of them are growing double digits, anywhere between 10% and 20%. And then our mature markets are still growing, but obviously if you're in a market like San Francisco or L.A. or where we've been a long time, it's a very big market. We're growing through category growth. We're growing through penetration and continuing to add customers in the outlying markets where people are working, given hybrid work, et cetera. And many of those dynamics are still playing out. And so they're still growing, you know, mid-single digits or, you know, that kind of, you know, that kind of type of growth. So I hope that that frames kind of the 4% to 7% growth. And then I'll ask Chris to just comment on your comment on Texas and the strategy there. Yeah. Thanks, Kelly. Okay.

I mean, Texas, again, I think it's going to be a top three market. But, yeah, we have to look at it over the next four or five years. I mean, we've been through this drill before where we acquire some businesses. They're not exactly what we call a chef's warehouse, and it takes time to get the buildings right and the technology and the mix and train the salespeople. So, Couldn't be prouder of our team in Texas and all their accomplished, you know, trying to create, you know, the Chef Warehouse formula. And I think it's going to be a little bit out of time. And then you get that giant waterfall like we've done in a lot of other markets where we do get everything aligned. We build the sales force that's trained, understands all the categories. We get the customers that we're really looking for that fit who CW is right. We off-board, not purposely, but there's a lot of business that comes with some of these acquisitions that's really better served by maybe a chain distributor. That's not what we really focus on. And we really build that, the independents, the small groups. And Texas is just booming. with the culinary scene that's more typical of New York and San Francisco, LA, Chicago. A lot of our operators are opening up in Texas, and that's why we were so excited to get in that market. And we're just being patient now, what we call transformation. We bought some really great businesses, but making them into a shape warehouse takes some time, and I think right now they're probably in the second inning. You know, I think we got through the first. We're making great headway, and that team is just going to continue to march over the next four or five years, and then, you know, looking further out, I think it starts to look more and more like New York, and that's really our goal.

Very helpful. Just another follow-up. I think the slide... The slide deck mentioned 56% of specialty customers ordering via digital. Just wondering if we could talk about that a little bit more. Are your smaller specialty competitors really ramping with this type of service? And just how is this favorably impacting gross margin and gross profit growth? And where do you see that penetration of digital going kind of over time?

Yeah, I mean, I think that over time, 80%, 90% of the customers are not going to pick up the phone, right? So it's email, it's text, and then it's using our online capabilities. As we get better and better, as that team continues to build, I think we have tremendous upside still in improving our website and improving our capabilities, even though we've come a long, long way. And it just creates a more dynamic addition to dealing, you know, with Chef's Warehouse. You know, we have over 55,000, you know, in some markets, 80,000 items that go through the system. So it's just such a great tool to support the sales team. You know, I think you've heard me say for a while now, you know, the sales force of the future are consultants. You know, they don't have to do what they did years ago, you know, be, stuck at their computer waiting to take orders. I mean, I remember when we started the company, it was paper and pencil, right? So laptops were great. They freed up salespeople. They can go on the road and then pull over. When they got Wi-Fi, they can take orders from the road, from hotels. And now I think the next big jump is the customers are placing their orders online. Salespeople are checking in, referring items, suggesting. They're becoming more solution type of consultants. And as that continues, the customers are finding more items online that they didn't know we carry or they're changing menus and they're searching. And that's where really our strength is. We have the long tail. We have so many different types of gourmet items and solution items. And I think that's what's helping the margins. I think that's helping placements. We saw in a year that all we heard about was the headwinds of the restaurant industry. Customer counts were down. People were spending a little less. And we had a tremendous year, I think, because of the tools we've added and of all the training and the salespeople were aligned with us. And I think that's just going to continue now. And we haven't even really... implemented into our protein divisions and some of our new companies. So I think we have tremendous upside, you know, as we continue to mature.

Thank you.

Thanks, Kelly. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Andrew Wolf with TL King. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning. On the deck where you referenced the increase in EBITDA per employee, you know, really a big jump last year, 13% year-over-year increase. And, you know, I think, Chris, you referenced better training and HR practices and so on. But could you give us a little more color? Is that more on the gross profit line, if you were to break it down, or more on the operating leverage line? And, you know, is there sort of a bit of some catch-up in there from sort of the COVID-19 impact on productivity and, you know, people are finally, you know, learning their jobs and there's a big productivity surge. And what I'm really getting to is, you know, is this something that is sustainable? Is it going to be a much better, you know, uh, as you guys look at the business through 2028, um, much better type of, um, you know, um, employee productivity, uh, on the profit side, I would imagine on the sales side as well.

Yeah. Uh, I'll start with, uh, the first part of your question, Andy, um, The 13%, it's really aligned with our overall EBITDA and operating leverage improvement 24 over 23. And as I mentioned earlier, it was a little uneven with a lot of that leverage coming in the fourth quarter, and that's really driven by the cadence of the facility investments and and when we lap them. So, yeah, from a productivity perspective, I think our teams did a great job of managing headcount and managing operating spend throughout the year, and that shows up in the productivity that you're talking about on the chart. It came from both Gross profit dollar growth and margin improvement and as I mentioned sometimes you'll get gross profit dollar growth with you know minimal margin improvement because you're selling more expensive boxes or you're driving the product mix that That Chris talked about with different markets like Texas Etc. So it's all it's really just comes from you know from that our teams executing on that strategy and And then, I'm sorry, the last part of your question was?

Oh, just the outlook. I mean, your EBITDA is up 13%. The EBITDA per headcount is up 13%. You know, just sort of back of the envelope, it implies you didn't add net new headcount. I can't imagine that's the plan. So, you know, is it going to be something like it moderates to 10% a year? I mean, I'm just, and I'm not asking, I don't know if you want to share that number, but just the sense of, I mean, this is a big improvement. And, you know, what the, go forward look is like.

Yeah, Andy, I think you got to look, I mean, I know it's hard, it's hard for you guys to model, but it's kind of a Goldilocks. It's a little bit of everything. So I think you have to, you have to remember that, you know, we went from 300 million to a $4 billion company in the last 10 years. And we've, you know, and we've taken some hits, right? The stock's gone up and down. I think people may be misunderstood. how well we were doing because the numbers weren't always the numbers the street wanted to see because we were buying companies for the right price and we had to transform them. So the great thing about Chef's Warehouse is there's really nobody like us. The bad thing is there's no one exactly like us to buy. So we have to buy companies and we have to transform them. a chef and we, you know, we made that big leap. So, you know, we're in a much different position now than we were 12 years ago. Uh, sure. We want to be acquisitive. We want to take advantage of opportunities, but we know we built, you know, I don't know, 30, 40 warehouses. We've hired thousands of people. All that took time, a lot of training. We had to implement systems. We had to transform systems. And, um, Now you're starting to see more production. I mean, we expect that, right? We made the investment. So as people get better, as people get more highly trained, like in any industry, you go up the ladder. You get your bachelor's and maybe your master's and your PhD, and now you're becoming an expert in your field, and that's why we don't want to train people that don't stay. So I think it's a lot of investment in everything and we're starting to reap those rewards. Of course, you know, you hit a hurricane, everybody's numbers go backwards. But, you know, right now in a very tough market where, you know, there's competition everywhere for restaurants and, you know, maybe headcounts are down some and a little spend, the only way to put up the numbers we're putting up is by taking market share and I I think our team is doing a great job.

Thank you. I got that. And just one final one, if I may. You know, these integrated, you know, big distribution centers that you just put one up in Northern California. You know, I think, I don't know if Florida is the longest tenured one, but could you give us a sense of, you know, they may not be mature yet, but how they're performing, you know, the ones that have been open a while to either boost sales with more cross-sells just expanding the market with capacity and how the capital returns are looking. I know it's early, early, early stages for most of them.

Yeah. I mean, the newest ones, I think, you know, we've been announcing, you know, Florida's actually, I think we've only been in there. I don't even know if it's two years. Right. And they're, they're, they're, they're doing great. You know, we're really proud of them and we think they're, they're firing on all pistons and that's, that's Florida is going to be such a great market for us. You know, LA, I mean, that's a pretty new facility. So, you know, that facility was built to quadruple the business. So we have lots of capacity. They're doing great. So we're really excited about their future. The latest one to open was really a processing facility, like Jim referred to earlier, that we consolidated a bunch of facilities we had in Northern California into one of the most state-of-the-art facilities processing facilities in the country. So we're really excited about, you know, they went through a lot. I mean, to consolidate those many facilities is a lot of work. So they were very distracted. I think it was a really rough time the last few years, and now they can really focus on growth again. And, you know, now that they're under one roof, I'm sure there's other markets we've entered that, you know, we're still in the first inning, you know, small outposts as we develop, you know, going south into... Tennessee and into Detroit. But, you know, we've kind of slowed it down for everybody to catch up. You know, we have some new facilities. New England's going to need a new facility. They're operating out of multiple buildings. So we've seen that moving before. We just opened up, you know, what we call our Pennsylvania, South Jersey facility. It's not completed, but we're really excited about that. So a lot of exciting things going on.

Okay, thank you for the comment. Appreciate it.

Thanks, Andy. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as there are no further questions, I would now like to hand the conference over to Chris Papaz for closing comments.

Sure. Well, we thank everybody for joining our call today. I think we're very proud of what the CW family of companies has accomplished in 24 years. And we're looking forward to a great 25 and beyond. And we're looking forward for everyone joining our next earning call. Thank you very much.

Thank you. The conference of the Chef's Warehouse has now concluded. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.