The Chefs' Warehouse, Inc.

Greetings, and welcome to the Chefs' Warehouse third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. We now like to turn the conference over to your host, Alex Aldous, 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 Leddy, our CFO. By now, you should have access to our third quarter 2026 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 and adjusted EBITDA, as well as historical adjusted net income, adjusted earnings per share, adjusted operating expenses, adjusted operating expenses as a percentage of net sales, and as a percentage of gross profit, net debt, net debt leverage, and free cash flow. These measures are not calculated in accordance with GAAP. and may be calculated differently in 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 third quarter 2026 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 discussed 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 third quarter results in detail. For a portion of our discussion this morning, we will refer to a few slides posted on the Chefs' Warehouse website under the Investor Relations section titled Third Quarter 2026 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, and thank you all for joining our Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. Revenue trends displayed typical seasonal cadence through the third quarter of 2026, building from the summer months into September with strong year-over-year growth. Our regional Chefs' Warehouse teams delivered excellent execution across markets and product categories, driving strong growth in revenue and gross profit dollars, as well as continued progress, increasing relevance with our customer base, with solid year-over-year growth and unique item placements and unique customers. Momentum continued into October, and as we head into the busy holiday season, I would like to thank all our Chef Warehouse teams from sales, procurement, and operations to all the supporting functions for their dedication and commitment to delivering our diverse, high-quality product and service in partnership with our suppliers and customers and the communities we serve. Our Middle East operations continue to operate effectively in a challenging environment. Revenue trends in recent weeks have been approximately 100% the prior year as food away from home activity is supported by local residents and ex-patriots returning from the summer off season. Our teams in the UAE, Qatar and Oman are doing an exceptional job of executing for our customers in the region and delivering high EBITDA margin results. We remain committed to our business and customers and to the region long term. With that, please refer to slide three of the presentation. A few highlights from the third quarter include organic net sales grew 10.3%. Organic specialty sales were up 8.4% over the prior year which was driven primarily by unique placement growth of 7.2%, specialty case growth of 6.1%, and price inflation. Unique customers grew 4.4% year over year. Reported unique customer growth was impacted partially by the conflict in the Middle East. Excluding this impact, third quarter unique customer growth was approximately 5.7%. Pounds in center of the plate were approximately 6.6% higher than the prior year third quarter. Gross profit margins increased approximately 84 basis points. Gross margin in the specialty category increased approximately 63 basis points as compared to the third quarter of 2025, while gross margin in the center of the plate category increased approximately 137 basis points year-over-year. Jim will provide more detail on gross profit and margins in a few moments. For an update on certain of our operating metrics, including continued improvements in year-over-year gross profit per route and adjusted EBITDA per employee, please refer to the slides provided in the appendix of our third quarter 2026 earnings presentation. 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?