Kura Sushi USA, Inc.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Kurosushi USA Inc. Fiscal First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode, and the lines will be open for your questions following the presentation. Please note that this call is being recorded. On the call today, we have Hajime Jimmy-Uba, President and Chief Executive Officer, Steve Ben-Ruby, Chief Financial Officer, and Benjamin Porton, VP of Investor Relations and Business Development. And now I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Porton.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you all for joining. By now, everyone should have access to our fiscal first quarter 2022 earnings release. It can be found at www.curricelist.com in the Investor Relations section. A copy of the earnings release has also been included in the 8K we submitted to the SEC. Before we begin our formal remarks, I need to remind everyone that part of our discussions today will include forward-looking statements as defined under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore you should not put undue reliance on them. These statements are also subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect. We refer all of you to our SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact our future operating results, financial conditions, Also during today's call, we will discuss certain 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, nor should substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP. And the reconciliations to comparable GAAP measures are available in our earnings release. With that out of the way, I would like to turn the call over to Jamie.

Thank you, Ben, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I'm very pleased to announce a strong start we've had to fiscal 2022 and that we are on track to achieve the goals that we shared in our annual guidance. The sales momentum we discussed in the previous earnings call has continued into the new fiscal year, resulting in Q1 comparable sales growth of 19.9% as compared to the pre-pandemic fiscal first quarter 2020. As a reminder, our fiscal 2020 first quarter before September through November of calendar 2019. We believe these comps are a demonstration of the resilience of our business model in the face of renewed COVID concerns due to the Delta variant, and I couldn't be more proud of how far the company has come in adapting to the changes created by COVID. We continue to make excellent progress in returning to pre-pandemic unit performance with Q1 restaurant-level operating profit margin of 19.5% as compared to 17.3% in Q1 fiscal 2020. Q1 is typically our weakest quarter from a seasonality perspective, and to be so close to our historical peak annual restaurant-level operating profit margin of 20% is a great sign for our recovery. Regional sales tolerance observed in the previous quarter remained in play as Texas continued to be our strongest market with regional comps of 27.8% as compared to California's regional comps of 12.4%. Looking at the monthly cadence of sales, we benefited from an additional weak end in October as compared to the same period in fiscal 2020, which was offset by one less weak end in November. as compared to the same period in fiscal 2020. These differences in calendar timing resulted in a minor comp deceleration in November as compared to the preceding two months. After adjusting for this calendar shift, however, we demonstrated consistent comp strength versus fiscal 2020 throughout the quarter. Off-premises revenue was $1.3 million and sales mix of 4.5% against Q4 off-premises revenue of $1.4 million and mix of 5%. Now, I would like to provide one update on the pricing event we mentioned in our last earnings call. We increased pricing high single-digit at the beginning of September and saw minimal guest pushback, despite this being the largest single-pricing move we've ever taken. I'm pleased to report that this response continued to be just as favorable, and I would like to discuss effects this has had on our most recent quarter, as well as for our business going forward. Looking at our comps breakdown is particularly instructive in terms of understanding the impact of our pricing. Most of the growth seen in Q1's two-year stacked comps of 19.9% was driven by price taken over this two-year period. As guests are able to control their ticket size due to our small plate menu, we believe plate consumption rates serve as an effective measure of price elasticity. It is encouraging that over this same period, the average number of plates consumed per guest increased. The increase in per-guest consumption in spite of pricing, leads us to believe we have yet to approach the threshold of price sensitivity for our guests and that our guests understand and appreciate the premium value that Kura offers. The increased plate consumption was partially offset by a dining room traffic deceleration of approximately 11% versus two years ago, of which we believe a portion of our off-premises sales served to offset. We actually believe this is a positive signal. First, we think this traffic deceleration is being driven by longer table turn times due to more time-consuming but important COVID safety measures as opposed to any change in demand as demonstrated by how long our wait times remain. Secondly, the Q1 comps of 19.9% and restaurant-level operating profit margin of 19.5% were achieved in spite of a double-digit dining room traffic headwind, underscoring the potential for improvement on historical AUVs and unit profitability as we exit the pandemic and traffic normalizes. Turning to development, we opened our first new restaurant of the fiscal year in October at Stone Town Galleria in San Francisco. Subsequent to the quarter, we entered the new market of Arizona, with one unit in Phoenix and one unit in Chandler, both of which opened in late December. While it is still early days, we are encouraged by the performance of this year's class of restaurants. Our full-year development plans remain on track, with two more units under construction and fully executed leases for the remainder of the pipeline. Now I would like to touch on three topics that are the current focus of the restaurant industry, supply chain, staffing, and the impact of COVID variants. Due to the variety of our commodity basket, we continue to be relatively inflated from recent supply chain pressures. While we have seen the impact of pressures that apply across commodities, such as freight costs, Our lack of reliance on any single primary protein has protected us from the cost volatility that others are experiencing. This mini strategy, in conjunction with the pricing we have taken in September, has allowed us to maintain ongoing control over our COGS spend, as Steve will discuss later. Our investment in recruitment and retention continues to pay dividends resulting in fully staffed restaurant teams which enabled our strong Q1 sales. Looking to the current quarter, the Omicron variant has caused some operational complications for us due to occasional shift-wise quarantining out of an abundance of caution. In late December, we saw some of our restaurants reduce their seating capacities or operating hours due to reduced workforces which unfortunately coincided with a more lucrative holiday season, but we believe this is a temporary setback. These labor pressures are a result of the increased transmissibility of Omicron and our prioritization of the safety of our employees and guests, as opposed to difficulties with hiring and retention, and we expect normalization following this initial wave. During the month, We also wrapped our mid-December 2019 pricing event, representing several points of comp headwind for Q2. Consequently, we saw December comp growth of just over 14% when compared to December of calendar 2019. Now I would like to provide an update on our recent initiatives. Table-side payment is fully rolled out, with get reception exceeding initial expectations. The pilot for touch panel drink ordering continues to expand across our system, with full rollout expected in this or the next quarter. Lastly, I'm very excited to announce one more initiative, robot servers. As of today, five of our restaurants are testing robot servers, which assist our waiters' staff with drink deliveries. Even beyond these labor efficiencies, It's been a true pleasure to watch our guests delight in the future coming to life in our restaurant. Pending the result of the pilot, we expect full rollout by the end of the fiscal year. Our rewards program continued to grow with 73,000 new members joining in Q1, for a total of 313,000 members, representing a growth of over 30%. Reward program enrollment and engagement remains a top priority as our members have significantly higher ticket averages and dining frequency than non-members. While we all look forward to the end of the pandemic, I am extremely proud of our recent performance and the amazing work that our team has done to deliver these results. I would like to extend my thanks to everyone in our restaurant teams and corporate support center for making this possible. With that, let me turn the call over to Steve to briefly discuss our financial results and liquidity. Steve?

Thank you, Jimmy. For the fiscal first quarter, total sales were $29.8 million as compared to $9.4 million in the prior year period. We believe measurement of sales growth is most relevant versus the pre-COVID period of fiscal first quarter 2020. On that basis, comp sales grew by 19.9% with regional comps of 12.4% for California and 27.8% for Texas. Turning to cost, food and beverage costs as a percentage of sales were 30% compared to 32.4% in the prior year quarter due to pricing taken at the start of the quarter and largely normalized performance as sales volume improved. Labor and related costs as a percentage of sales decreased to 32.5% from 46.3% in the prior year quarter due to higher sales leverage. Occupancy and related expenses as a percentage of sales improved to 7.4% from 18% in the prior year quarter, also primarily due to higher sales leverage. Other costs as a percentage of sales decreased to 12.1% compared to 22.1% in the prior year quarter due to higher sales leverage as well. General and administrative expenses were $5.4 million compared to $3.5 million in the prior year quarter. This increase was primarily due to compensation related expenses as we made investments in our team to support our accelerated growth plans. As a percentage of sales, general and administrative expenses were 18% compared to 37.4% in the prior year quarter. Operating loss was $1.3 million compared to an operating loss of $6.3 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2021. Income tax expense was $12,000 compared to an income tax expense of $29,000 in the prior year quarter. Note that we expect to continue to incur nominal income tax expense quarterly irrespective of our pre-tax income or loss as a result of the full valuation allowance against our deferred income tax assets and incurrence of minor income taxes payable at state levels. Net loss was $1.3 million or 13 cents per diluted share compared to net loss of $6.4 million or 76 cents per diluted share in the first quarter of 2021. Restaurant level operating profit as a percentage of sales was 19.5% compared to restaurant level operating loss as a percentage of sales of 9.9% in the prior year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $800,000 compared to a negative $4.1 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2021. Turning to our cash and liquidity, At the end of the fiscal first quarter, we had $44.4 million in cash and cash equivalents and no debt. Finally, I would like to reaffirm our previously shared full-year guidance for fiscal year 2022. We expect total sales between $130 million and $140 million. We expect general and administrative expenses as a percentage of sales of approximately 17%, And we expect the opening of 8 to 10 new units with net capital expenditures per unit of $2.1 million. It bears mentioning that these expectations assume that we experience no further operating restrictions or material downturns resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Our expectations are based on the results that we have seen in recent quarters. And while we believe the expectations are appropriate given our current operating environment, The company and the restaurant industry generally remain highly vulnerable to COVID-related volatility. Now, I'll turn the call back to Jimmy.

This concludes our prepared remarks. We are now happy to answer any questions you have. Operator, please open the line for questions. As a reminder, during the Q&A session, I may answer in Japanese before my response is translated into English. Please bear with us.

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd 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 star keys. Our first question comes from the line of James Rutherford with Stevens, Inc. Please proceed with your question.

All right, thank you, and congrats on the results here. Could you help quantify the extent of capacity limitations that you're seeing today, just so we can calibrate where we are today on that? And then if you have any estimate, I know it's hard, but any estimate on how much of a headwind that may have been to the comp you reported for December?

Thank you, James, for your first question. Please allow me to answer in Japanese. Ben is going to translate. In terms of the current situation, it remains highly fluid. But what we can say is that it has had a meaningful impact on our sales.

Particularly as it began in the latter half of December leading into now with the holidays, it's been on a rolling basis because of Omicron.

今この状態でもオペレーティングチーム、リクルーティングチーム、HRチームは非常に頑張っていまして、大部分のお店では通常の営業ができています。 それに関してすごく感謝しています。誇りに思っています。

That being said, our operations department, our opening team, our recruiting team are working on all cylinders. And as a result, the majority of our restaurants are able to operate without issue. And so that's something that we're very proud of and grateful for the work that they're doing. Also, just want to mention that these operating limitations are a result of quarantine shifts as opposed to anything like government mandate.

Oh, thanks for that clarification. And that's helpful. Kind of leads into the second question I had, which is, Regarding the traffic discussion, you mentioned demand is very robust, and I've seen that myself when I've eaten at your restaurants. But you said table turns have crept up, limiting some of the traffic recovery. So my question is, what can you do to increase those table turns and claw back some of that traffic? Maybe it's through technology, or can you push people to shoulder periods? Do you have any ideas about what you can do to bring those table turns down? Thank you.

Sure. First of all, regarding table turn, there are three initiatives. I also mentioned the robot server this time, but I expect these three to be greatly improved. Of course, when it comes to returning traffic other than table turn, especially in the metropolitan area during the pandemic, the traffic is down, so if the pandemic is over, it will be recovered. If we can do it, I think we can also return traffic through marketing. Robot server, this is also In terms of reducing table turn times, the immediate focus would be those three initiatives that we've been discussing historically. That would be our table by payment, our touch panel drink orders, and now our robot servers, which are

working very well, at least as we've seen in the pilot so far. What we want to emphasize here is the table turn times are not a permanent impact on our operational throughput. It's really a result of the additional cleaning procedures that we take in between parties. And so that efficiency will be naturally regained as we exit the pandemic. Besides efficiency, some traffic pressures have been ongoing in metropolitan areas where Our restaurants are highly dependent on foot traffic, but we do believe that we can make up those traffic losses through increased marketing efforts. The robot servers, besides being an efficiency measure, are really a meaningful addition to the core experience, and they're highly Instagrammable. It's been a great draw for our guests.

Very helpful. Thank you. Thanks, James. Thanks, James. Thank you, James.

our next question comes from the line of andrew streldick with bmo capital markets please proceed with your question hey good afternoon and congrats on a very nice quarter um i guess first i just wanted to clarify on the on the sales guidance that you gave i know the commentary was you know assuming no further i guess you know implications from covet etc but but what exactly does that mean i mean if you held kind of at this pre-COVID, relative to pre-COVID comp level that you would be in that range, or you're assuming that things go back to where they were? I'm just trying to square exactly what the commentary is with the recent trends.

Sure, Andrew. I mean, it does, you know, it takes into account what we saw in the business in December, which included, you know, as the month progressed, some more impact or challenge from Omicron. And I would, I guess just emphasize that, you know, that situation itself, it's truly For our operations team and our HR folks, it's a daily monitoring situation. Something can arise in a given restaurant with a positive case, let's say, among the team members and then result in the need to quarantine a certain number of the members who had been in contact with that individual, and they're working very hard day to day to work through that. Our view is that we believe the level of that activity is a temporary situation that hard to say what temporary exactly means, but, but, you know, for the near term, we're just really pivoting and adjusting on a, on a almost daily basis in some of our restaurants, given the circumstances. And so as we think out for the, for the entire year and the guide that we gave on revenue I mean, there's some, some expectation that, that over time, you know, the, the Omicron situation will moderate within the year here. and not be as much of a challenge maybe from one day to the next as it's been of late. But we certainly build in some expectation right now for some difficulties that go along with that that we're living through and have been for the last few weeks.

Got it. Okay. That's pretty clear. And then second question, I mean, I guess you were asked last quarter and weren't prepared to kind of commit. It obviously wasn't included in the formal guidance. But, you know, especially with the commentary you gave around the restaurant-level margins this quarter and what is, you know, typically a seasonally weaker period, you know, is there any way or color that you can give on where you think within that sales range your restaurant margins might land or maybe some color in there being impacted on the COG side so much from an inflationary perspective? But is there just anything to help us think about, you know, the margin trajectory here for the year?

Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, I'll start, you know, with, with, with the caveat about what we just talked about in terms of, um, you know, the volatility, but, but, you know, typically for us, our, our seasonal, you know, our most recent pre COVID year had about 23% of our sales base in the first quarter. Uh, and that would, you know, with that, then it went to 24, you know, so you had 47% in the front half and 53% in the back half of the year. you know, things like food are going to be, you know, they should be almost completely variable. Labor is sort of a semi-fixed, semi-variable, depending on how you think about it. And then when you get into occupancy costs and some of the other costs, you know, more of that is leverageable once you start growing sales. So if you think in terms of that balancing, but also, you know, with the caveat that, you know, the quarter we're in right now faces some COVID challenges that weren't as significant, at least in the earlier part of Q1, that can help you maybe do some modeling around the business. Suffice it to say, we're very encouraged by being at 19.5%, only 50 basis points from our historical peak annual margin in what is typically, in Q1, a lighter seasonal sales quarter. And so the pricing that we've taken, the impact or really positive reception that continues from our customers about our value, we think those all bode well for our future opportunity to grow margin.

Got it. That makes a lot of sense. And I just wanted to squeeze one more in here. Just, you know, it's interesting entering a new market in Arizona in this environment, which presumably doesn't have as much of an impact from COVID generally as maybe some others. But I guess I'm curious, is your willingness to enter other markets that may be more impacted, you know, would you, would you kind of reprioritize the markets that you're looking at or, or is that too kind of prisoner at the moment? I'm just curious for your thoughts on, on the, on the market level kind of unit openings and the preference there.

Ben, you know, In terms of our leases, we typically sign 20-year leases, and the impact that we're seeing from the pandemic is going to be temporary. And so we're not making any fundamental changes to our development strategy in response to the pandemic.

Largely speaking, we will continue to pursue the strategy that we've pursued since going public of doing a 50-50 split between entering new markets and filling existing markets. And since you brought it up, Arizona, while being a new market, has seen minimal impact or limited impact from Omicron and is performing extremely well.

Got it. Very encouraging to hear. Thank you very much. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, Andrew. Thanks.

Our next question comes from the line of Sharon Zaxio with William Blair. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good afternoon. I guess when you think about the trends here in the second quarter, can you talk about where you've seen more of an impact, if it's been California or Texas relative to the kind of November trend? And then I understand the reduced hours and the seating capacity dynamics associated with the labor quarantining. But are you sensing or have you had any evidence of consumer reluctance to come into the restaurants?

Sure.

Sharon, in terms of what we're seeing in quarter to date, we're not really seeing too much of a geography-specific impact. It really does boil down to each restaurant and the number of employees are quarantining. So it really does vary case by case as opposed to geography by geography.

And regarding the customer's situation, I don't see any major hesitancy. Therefore, the negative impact of sales is the shortening of our operating time, and limiting the seating capacity. I feel that there is an influence in such places. However, of course, as the situation changes every day, it may be rejected that customers will come to the store from now on, but as of now, I see that there is no big impact on that. Thank you.

The Omicron situation remains highly fluid, and so we can only speak to what we've seen so far. But so far, we've been very encouraged by a lack of consumer hesitation or change in consumer behavior. I think this is clearly demonstrated by how our wait times really haven't changed since entering the Omicron era. In terms of the sales pressures that we're seeing, it's really more a result of the The quarantining that we're doing out of abundance of caution, whether that results in fewer operating hours or diminished seating capacity, that's where the sales pressure is coming from. It's really not from a demand-related aspect.

Great. That's very helpful. And then I'm also curious if you've seen off-premises tick up. I mean, I know seasonally typically off-premises would tick up, you know, in the winter. But if you kind of level set it seasonally, if you've seen that, increase in December and so far into January. And then a second question on that. I know there were some potential dynamics associated with new units that you were going to incorporate to kind of make the off-premises business more frictionless. Can you give us any update on that as it relates to new unit development? Sure.

I'll speak for a moment. I'm sorry.

Go ahead, Steve. Yeah, I was just going to speak for a moment on the off-premises sales Sharon, we'll bring more detail about Q2 into the conversation when we talk about the results overall. What we did see in Q1 was kind of what we would expect was a slight percentage decline as a percent of the overall because we had a quarter where all three months we had full dining room capacity versus in Q1, California was only two and a half out of three. But in terms of, you know, it's still an area, you know, off-premises that we know there's a certain band of customers that like to consume. But we'll share more detail on the quarter when we get through it.

And to answer your second question, the units that are geared towards, you know, more frictionless off-premises, whether that's curbside parking or a pickup window, those have yet to be – those remain in our pipeline. So – No updates there.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you, Sharon.

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Jeremy Hamblin with Craig Hallam. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks, and I'll add my congratulations on the strong momentum in the business. I wanted to just come back here to the comp breakdown, in particular in December. In terms of that split that you saw in Q1, Texas up almost 28 percent, California up over 12. How have those splits been in the December period?

So as you look at December, overall Texas continues to outperform. California on the comp basis. And its pullback was a little bit more than the change in California. If you just go sequencing Q1 to December, I would add December, in addition to what we've talked about on the Omicron challenges to our staffing, it was also a little bit less favorable from a calendar perspective than two years ago. This year, we lost a weekend to both Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, whereas two years ago it was a midweek set of holidays. So a few things there. And then as well, I don't know if you caught during our prepared remarks, but we lapped a pricing event as well from December 19 that was a mid-single-digit increase at that time so that the pricing delta between two-year periods is less when you look at December versus But but having said that, you know, Texas continues to very, very strongly positive and more strongly than than California in the month of December.

OK, got it.

And then I just wanted to come back because I I did miss the in terms of the nineteen point nine percent in Q1. versus 2019, what was the breakdown specifics of transaction growth or transaction change, I should say, versus average check?

Sure.

Sure. So as Jimmy talked about, the vast majority of the difference can be attributed to the pricing that changed that had happened over that two-year period. It was It was, whereas the comp was the 19.9, there was about 18% of pricing over a two-year period, and I think at least three pricing events during that time window. And so we out-comp the pricing by a slight amount. And the two elements that go into that, as Jimmy talked about, the plates being consumed per customer on average between the two periods, was, was up and, you know, we attribute, or that tells us a few things. One, one, you know, we don't feel like our customers are pushing up against a price value threshold or anything of that nature at this point, you know, those pricing moves did not cause them to pull back on their, you know, their plate count averages, you know, and to the contrary, you know, because of, you know, I would say the value we offer our marketing activities, our rewards program success, we're actually, selling more plates per customer than we did two years ago. And then that increase was partially offset by the traffic reduction over the two years, which we called out as approximately 11% reduction in the comp stores over the two years. With that largely associated with the fact that there's COVID-related activities that do put some pressure on our turn time capabilities in the restaurants you know things around how we have to sanitize between table settings and also what things we can leave on the table right now at least for for customers versus what has to be replaced every time a new set of customers comes in so does that give you kind of the anatomy i guess of the the numbers there yeah that's uh that's super helpful um

I want to come to unit growth, the timing. I think you obviously opened two units subsequent to the quarter end. I think you said you had two more that are under construction currently and then leases signed on three additional locations. Could you provide a little bit more color in terms of the timing of completion for the units that you have kind of under construction and the timing for the back half of the year as well.

Sure.

We do have those two units under construction. They're making great progress. One is in San Antonio, Texas. The other is our upcoming location in Watertown, Massachusetts. We're very close to breaking ground on two additional units. Given that our typical construction time is four to five months, you can extrapolate what our expected cadence is there. Obviously, with additional pressures on municipal governments in terms of permitting or inspections, there can be delays that are outside of our control, but currently that's what we're expecting.

Got it. Helpful. Last one for me. So as we look at your unit volumes here and comps up 20% versus two years ago, when we look at the other operating cost line item where you have you know, your utilities, repairs, and maintenance, your credit card fees, you have that line item up, I think, about 40 basis points versus Q1 levels from two years ago. I wanted to understand which components were the driver of that. Is that more coming from the utilities and maintenance and repairs, or is that, you know, I'm not quite sure how much credit card fees are up as a percentage, of the sales since that timeframe, but any more color you could share on that, on that increase of 40 basis points?

Yeah, I don't know that I could speak to the precise, you know, change or build it for you necessarily, but, you know, components that go in there like credit card fees, they really are straight variable costs. You know, they run as a percentage of sales. Some of the small tools expenditures, you know, for the little bit of off-premises business that we do, there are some additional costs that run through the P&L and the other costs area that would perhaps be a minor deleveraging factor on a sales number since we have a meaningful percentage of business happening there. Things like insurance costs with growth in the business as well, they tend to go up along with the exposure metrics and those exposure metrics are often sales from the insurance company view so so you know some of those costs you know maybe not as as as leverageable over a multi-year period as as others um like in the occupancy you know the pure you know rent category for instance great helpful caller best wishes for continued success guys thank you jeremy thank you our next question comes from the line of george kelly with roth capital please proceed with your question

Hi, everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. So just a couple for me. First, I was hoping you could start with the tech initiatives that you talked about. Did you say that the table side payment is now fully rolled out across all your restaurants? And if I heard that correctly, how impactful is it? How much of an impact do you think that'll have on turns and timing at the table?

First of all, the question of whether the whole thing is rolled out is a yes. As for the impact, we can see the effect of the workload. But from here on, we are focusing on the customer service, so the numbers we can see have not yet come out, but if there is a token that can be announced properly, I would like to talk about it. Please go ahead.

In terms of the rollout, yes. The rollout is complete and is now in all of our restaurants. In terms of the impact, we've already seen a reduction to the workflow that our servers are responsible for, and we've seen that translate into greater customer service satisfaction. In terms of table turn times, the pilot's been going on for too short a period for us to quantify it, but we look forward to providing updates in the future.

Okay. This is usage data. 80% of our customers use credit cards, but the percentage of people using table side payments is 30% to 35%. Half of our customers use credit cards, and half of our customers use table side payments. You can imagine how much the workload has decreased.

To provide some additional color, historically, in terms of our customers' payment methods, about 80% has come through credit cards. Looking at our cable side payment, the usage rates across all transactions are about 30% to 35%, so just under half of that 80% that we've mentioned earlier. So you can imagine just how much of an impact that's having in terms of reducing workloads for our servers.

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. And then next question for me is a different topic. In the past, you've run promotions and prizes that are really impactful and drive a lot of traffic. And in the last two years since pre-COVID, I mean, you've grown so much in units and just absolute level of traffic. And so I was curious, as you look forward, I'm sure that those promotions and special prizes and things take a lot of planning. And just as you kind of map out the next year or so, Are there a lot more kind of special partnerships and promotions that are becoming available to you just because of your increased scale? Absolutely.

Absolutely, that's the case. That was one of the things that we're most excited about when we went public in 2019. Up until that point, we'd really worked with smaller brands, our own proprietary characters or Japanese brands. But since going public, we've had access to much larger internationally known brands, Right now we're partnering with Tetris, which is, you know, one of the best video games of all time. We have an upcoming partnership with Pac-Man as well. And we just had a, we completed a recent partnership with Sonic. And so you can see the quality of the partnerships are improving every year. I'm incredibly proud of the work that's being done by our PR marketing department. In terms of giving you an update in terms of what's upcoming, we like to stay pretty tight with part of that is just the licensures and Don't let us disclose things too far ahead, but we are very excited for what we have in our pipeline.

Okay, cool. And then last question for me. I appreciate the info you gave us on leasing on the construction and development pipeline, but if we could go, and I don't know how much you're going to want to say here, but could you go one layer kind of higher LOIs or I don't know what other kinds of numbers you could give just on number of things that are maybe in the pipe for more of a next year event. And what I'm trying to understand better is how much, if this year was more of a normal environment with timelines, I know that construction is taking longer than normal, but you've made a lot of corporate investments and getting that development team in place. I'm just curious what kind of a normalized environment year could look like beyond this fiscal year in new store openings.

In terms of LOIs,

We'd like to just continue with the information that we've already shared publicly, which is that the leases for the remainder of the year are fully executed. But as you can imagine, we're very diligent with maintaining a strong pipeline of LOIs given our aggressive growth plans.

As for the construction period, as with other industries and restaurant chains, this year's construction period is longer than usual. construction period. This is due to the delay in supply chain, or the delay in inspection, and so on. Of course, considering all of these, we are confident that we are in the current state of 8-10 stores. After that, we will continue to look at the three points of the unit growth pace after normalization. We want to determine the quality of the site. In terms of current construction periods, we're seeing the same thing that the rest of the industry is seeing in that there are some supply chain delays in terms of construction materials and

permitting an inspection can take a little bit longer than typical. But that 8 to 10 unit annual guidance that we gave and reaffirmed today folds that expectation into it and we remain confident that we can hit those 8 to 10 units. In terms of a more normalized environment, there are really three factors that determine our growth rate. The first would be our ability to identify high-quality sites. The second would be the quality and size of our management pipeline. And the third would be our liquidity. We think we're in a great place, and we think we're positioned to grow faster. The right environment is there. And so if we are to fundamentally reevaluate our growth rate and provide a new target, we'd be very excited to announce that in the future.

Gotcha. Thank you. Thanks, George. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question and answer session. This concludes today's conference and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.