Good Times Restaurants Inc.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Good Times Restaurants Incorporated Q1 2026 earnings call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the call over to Kerry August, Chief Accounting Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Elodie. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Good Times Restaurants, Inc. Fiscal 2026 First Quarter Earnings Call. I am Carrie August, the company's Chief Accounting Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the company's earnings release, which is available in the investor section of the company's website. As a reminder, a part of today's discussion will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore, you should not put undue reliance on them. These statements involve known and unknown risks, which may cause the company's actual results to differ materially from results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, among other things, the market price of the company's stock prevailing from time to time, the nature of other investment opportunities presented to the company, the disruption to our business from pandemics and other public health emergencies, the impact of staffing constraints at our restaurants, the impact of supply chain constraints and inflation, the uncertain nature of current restaurant development plans and the ability to implement those plans and integrate new restaurants, delays in developing and opening new restaurants because of weather, local permitting, or other reasons, increased competition, cost increases or ingredient shortages, general economic and operating conditions, risks associated with our share repurchase program, risks associated with the acquisition of additional restaurants, adequacy of cash flows, and the cost and availability of capital or credit facility borrowings to provide liquidity, changes in federal, state, or local laws and regulations affecting our restaurants, including wage and tip credit regulations, and other matters discussed under the risk factors section of Good Times annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2025, and other reports filed with the SEC. During today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP measures, which we believe can be useful in evaluating our performance. The presentation of this additional information should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP and reconciliation to comparable GAAP measures available in our earnings release. And now I would like to turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Ryan Zink.

Thank you, Carrie, and thank you all for joining us today. I am pleased with the results that our team has delivered in this first quarter of fiscal 2026. Although same-store sales at both brands remained negative for the quarter, performance improved sequentially from last quarter at both brands. Also, in spite of rolling over a 14-week quarter from 2025, we delivered marginally better net income and approximately the same adjusted EBITDA as last year with one fewer week in the fiscal calendar. Underlying sales trends in the second quarter have continued to improve at both brands. As you may have read two weeks ago, winter storm Fern was a major presence in the southeastern United States. It impacted 75% of the bad daddy system and another more concentrated storm last weekend affected all of our North Carolina stores with Charlotte receiving its fourth largest snowfall on record. We lost 28 full restaurant operating days between both storms and an additional 73 restaurant operating days had significantly reduced sales. On the flip side, weather in Colorado has been generally favorable to last year and warmer than historical averages, marginally offsetting the winter storm sales losses in the southeast. During January, we completed our transition to cook to order at good times. resulting in fresher, tastier patties compared to the previous process of cooking and holding batches of burger patties in advance of guest orders. We selected a new beef manufacturer to deliver fresh 100% Angus beef patties that work with our existing grills and allow us to still achieve speed of service under three minutes from point of order to the time when the guest drives away from the window with their meal. During this process, we have increased PADI size by about 10%, which we have been able to do without any cost increment. On the advertising and promotion front, we are already seeing benefits from our enhanced loyalty program powered by our partnership with Thanks. This was primarily a technology and user experience change, but the fundamental design of the program from a points and rewards standpoint did not change. We are measuring success by what we call loyalty attachment rate, which is the percent of sales attributable to loyalty members. Under our prior program, we were achieving 3% to 4% attachment rate, and now, with just two months under the new program, are exceeding a 7% attachment rate, with the highest performing restaurants exceeding a 10% attachment rate. The new technology powering our loyalty program has also added another endpoint from which we are able to collect and respond effectively to guest feedback. There has been recent commentary in industry press and by market analysts about the effectiveness of loyalty programs in the restaurant industry, with the increasingly common theory that loyalty programs merely pull forward existing visits and don't deliver true incrementality. We view loyalty differently for good times, and while there is likely some truth that the gamifying effect the points-based program do primarily pull forward visits rather than increasing the total number of visits the greater impact is the ability to better understand our guests segment them and then deliver hyper-targeted messaging this ability to drive more relevant messaging to each guest is what we believe ultimately will deliver incremental traffic for good times at bad daddy's We rolled out our final multi-month limited time menu promotion in January, which will end later this month. This promotion included two regionally inspired burger builds and a Mediterranean protein bowl. We've received positive guest feedback on all of these items. The protein bowl is currently performing better than all of the signature salads on our menu. And after a brief hiatus at the end of the LTO, we expect to add it to our core menu in April. The April core menu update will also feature a return of the strong selling elote dip from last year's summer LTO and the addition of our giant Bavarian pretzel, which was the top selling appetizer during its run in our most recent fall LTO. As mentioned in our press release, we are shifting to a burger of the month platform beginning in March. The focus of this program is to allow us to be more flexible with items that might have a shorter promotional value shelf life than a full eight to 10 week LTO. Additionally, we view the GLP-1 trend as somewhat more long-lived and more than just a short-term fad. In alignment with this view, we expect to lean more into our smash burger lineup with our burger of the month platform or future core menu items, while satisfying our guests that dine with us with our existing pub style burger. Between these two separate platforms, We believe we have products that appeal to a greater breadth of guest base, and we will be promoting that attribute of our brand more in the future. For Bad Daddies, our director of marketing, Jason Murphy, has launched a brand study to refresh previously fielded research related to our guests' perceptions of our brand across different demographic and psychographic profiles. We expect this research to be completed during the second fiscal quarter and to influence future product and promotional decisions beginning in the third quarter. Across both concepts, our vision continues to be running great restaurants that deliver a consistent guest experience with high quality ingredients and exceptional operations execution while creating an emotional connection with each guest that makes us memorable. One of the pillars of our business is the guest first mindset. In addition to viewing all decisions through this lens, it is also an operations north star ensuring that our employees ensure that each and every guest leaves delighted. Ultimately, we believe that is what delivers long-term sales and profit gains. I'll now turn the call over to Carrie for a review of our performance during the quarter.