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spk01: Good morning and welcome to the Spartan Ash Company third quarter 2022 earnings call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw a question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Kaylee Campbell. Please go ahead.
spk00: Good morning and welcome to the Spartan Ash Company third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. On the call today from the company are President and Chief Executive Officer Tony Sarsom and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Jason Monaco. By now, everyone should have access to the earnings release, which was issued this morning at approximately 7 a.m. Eastern Time. For a copy of the earnings release as well as the company's supplemental earnings presentation, please visit Spartan Ash's website at www.spartanash.com forward slash investors. This call is being recorded and a replay will be available on the company's website. Before we begin, the company would like to remind you that today's discussion was will include a number of forward-looking statements. If you will refer to Spartan Ash's earnings release from this morning, as well as the company's most recent SEC filing, you will see a discussion of factors that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Please remember, Spartan Ash undertakes no obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements. The company will also make a number of references to non-GAAP financial measures. The company believes these measures provide investors with useful perspective on the underlying growth trends of the business, and it has included in the earnings release a full reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures, which can be found on Spartan Ash's website at www.spartanash.com forward slash investors. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Tony.
spk08: Thank you, Kaylee, and good morning, everyone. We're coming off an absolutely epic week at Spartan Ash. On Monday, we took our people-first culture up a notch with a big Halloween celebration. On Wednesday, we hosted our first Investor Day in New York. I'd like to thank those of you who attended. It was a pleasure getting to know you better and sharing more about our long-range plan and company strategy. Last Thursday, we had the opportunity to ring the NASDAQ opening bell. We came prepared with our own cowbells to ring, and the energy in the room was electric. We also featured photos of associates from all levels of the company on the seven-story NASDAQ tower in Times Square. Then on Friday, we celebrated eight female leaders from Spartan Nash at the Top Women in Grocery Awards. And this week, we salute our military heroes on Veterans Day. We are proud to employ many veterans within Spartan Nash and to serve our military commissaries and exchanges. Thank you to those of you who have served our great nation. We are forever grateful for your service. Now, turning to our long-term goals. We have driven significant shareholder value since the start of our turnaround, and we are building on this momentum. We have a clear and credible strategy, detailed programs in place, and a purpose-built leadership team. Our entire team is energized about continuing to execute on our winning recipe and the path to achieving our long-term targets. Despite significant macro headwinds, we expect to achieve more than $300 million in adjusted EBITDA by 2025. This goal will be achieved through long-term value creation from continued organic growth, the successful supply chain transformation, our recently launched merchandising transformation, and the work we are doing around our brand identity and marketing innovation. Additionally, we continue to evaluate inorganic opportunities, which would be incremental to our adjusted EBITDA target. Now, jumping into our results. This morning we announced our full third quarter results following last week's preliminary release. Compared to prior year, we increased both net sales and adjusted EBITDA by approximately 11%. In the wholesale segment, which now includes what we historically reported as food distribution and military, we grew the top line by more than 11% and adjusted EBITDA by more than 30% compared to prior year. We are really pleased to see these significant improvements in cost rates realized from our supply chain transformation. At the end of the quarter, we reached an impressive 97% on-time delivery rate year-to-date. And compared to the prior year quarter, wholesale spill rate improved by 4%, while throughput rate improved by a stunning 8.5%. As of the end of the quarter, we secured $24 million in run rate cost savings from our supply chain transformation. We have made great progress in achieving our transformational goal of $25 to $35 million in cost savings by the end of this year. In retail, our comparable store sales remain strong, increasing 8% for the quarter. Our gross margin expanded sequentially by 88 basis points compared to the second quarter. And we are pleased that we delivered total retail year-over-year unit share growth, fueled in part by our strong own-brand performance with share growth both in dollars and units. Building on our marketing insights, our retail team has developed a detailed plan to ensure consistency of execution and a local hometown experience every time shoppers visit our stores. Our strategy includes added investments in our people, differentiated above and beyond customer service, a better in-stock position, and new shopper loyalty benefits. Year-over-year growth in our fresh volume has outpaced the rest of the store. We are committed to the best in fresh and recently rolled out our 200% money-back guarantee program. Our recently renovated D&W Fresh Market stores bring unique product offerings to the Michigan-based upmarket banner. These modern stores offer a terrific shopping experience and are materially outpacing our company average. Now more than ever, we remain laser-focused on our mission of delivering the ingredients for a better life. We are committed to providing food solutions for our wholesale and retail customers during this unprecedented inflationary environment. Our retail shoppers and the consumers served by our independent customers are eating more at home while continuing to seek indulgent food experiences. Our own brands offer a great option to satisfy these indulgent cravings while not emptying shoppers' wallets. Our marketing innovation continues to drive results, and our team is just getting started. As we build our private label programs, we are unlocking even more opportunities to help our independent retail customers and our own shoppers combat inflation. Now, I want to touch on our merchandising transformation, which is a key component to reaching our 2025 goals. Our merchandising team's vision is a customer-led focus to offer the ingredients for a better life, which resonates with our winning recipe. The key pillars include products and services customers can't live without, unbeatable value, and sustainable growth. I'd like to share a little about what we are doing to offer unbeatable value. As a food solutions company, we are focused on combating rising food costs, whether the customer is buying at a regular price or on promotion. Our merchandising team has upgraded their data-driven approach to comparing vendor cost increases with the underlying input costs based on commodity markets and other industrial benchmarks. Our methodical cost management helps drive growth and provide value for our wholesale and retail customers. We are providing an opportunity for our vendors to join us on this sustainable growth journey, and I'm happy to report that many leading vendors are partnering with us to find creative solutions during this inflationary environment. We look forward to providing you with regular updates as we build on our merchandise and transformation. I am confident that the pillars of this program, based on market-leading capabilities, will drive both top and bottom line results. Before turning the call to Jason, I wanted to highlight our recent guidance increase for fiscal 2022. Our adjusted EBITDA range is now $237 to $242 million, growing at approximately 12% versus the prior year. The updated guidance was driven by the ongoing benefits we are realizing from the supply chain transformation and our year-to-date results. Looking forward, we remain confident that we have the right team in place to execute on our winning recipe and drive growth both near and long term. And now I'll turn the call over to Jason, who will walk through the quarterly financials in greater detail.
spk10: Thanks, Tony, and welcome to everyone joining us on today's call.
spk11: Before we jump into our results, we announced a change to our operating segments. As noted in last week's pre-release, we combined our food distribution and military segments into a new wholesale segment. This change reflects the way we manage the business as one comprehensive distribution network and furthers our efforts to streamline operations, transform our supply chain, and better serve our customers. Now for our detailed results. Net sales in the third quarter increased almost 11% to $2.3 billion versus 2021's third quarter sales of $2.1 billion. The growth versus prior year was driven by net sales in both the wholesale and retail segments, each of which were favorably impacted by inflation. Gross profit in the third quarter was $351.2 million, or 15.3% of net sales, compared to $329.5 million, or 15.9% of net sales in the prior year quarter. The gross profit increase was driven by higher sales, while the gross margin rate decline was primarily driven by an increase in LIFO expense of $9 million, or 36 basis points. In addition to the impact of LIFO, lower retail margin rates were partially offset by improvements in margin rates within the wholesale segment. As a percent of sales, our operating expenses decreased 34 basis points from prior year, reflecting efficiencies from our ongoing supply chain transformation. These efficiencies were partially offset by higher corporate administrative costs, including incentive compensation expense and upfront investments in our merchandising transformation initiative. Overall, we achieved an 11.3% increase in our third quarter adjusted EBITDA of $57.3 million compared to $51.5 million last year. Our reported net earnings were $9.5 million. Our ratio of net long-term debt to adjusted EBITDA for our third quarter increased slightly to 2.1 times compared to 1.8 times at prior year end. The increase was due primarily to inflation-driven increases in working capital. Now turning to our segments. Net sales and wholesale increased $165 million, or 11.3%, to $1.63 billion in the third quarter. driven primarily by the favorable impact of inflation, which exceeded 14% in the quarter. Although case volumes were down modestly for the segment compared to the prior year, military cases were up an impressive 6% due to strong demand within the military channel. The overall decrease in case volumes for the segment included laughing DG's 2021 insourcing initiatives. As planned, the impact of DG's insourcing fully cycled in September of this year. The decrease was also due to a modest decline in case volumes in the independent channel, consistent with market trends. Reported operating earnings for wholesale in the third quarter totaled $14 million, compared to $5.9 million in the prior year quarter. The increase in reported operating earnings was due to higher sales and lower supply chain expenses, partially offset by higher corporate administrative costs and LIFO expense, which rose $8 million in the current quarter. Adjusted operating earnings totaled $25.3 million in the quarter, versus 2021's third quarter adjusted operating earnings of $11 million. Retail sales came in at $667 million for the quarter, compared to $609 million in the third quarter of 2021, an increase of 9.5%. As Tony mentioned, our comparable store sales momentum remained strong at 8% for the third quarter, an increase of 150 basis points sequentially from the second quarter. Our third quarter reported operating earnings in the retail segment were $5.3 million compared to $16.8 million in the prior year quarter. The decrease was due to a lower gross profit rate along with investments in retail wage rates and corporate administrative costs. Retail adjusted operating earnings were $8.1 million for the quarter compared to $17.8 million in 2021's third quarter. In the first three fiscal quarters of 2022, we generated $7.5 million of cash from operating activities, compared to $144 million in the prior year period. The decrease was due primarily to the changes in working capital mentioned a moment ago. Through the third quarter, we paid $22.5 million of cash dividends, equal to 63 cents per common share. We also bought back more than 755,000 shares for a total of $23.3 million. In total, the company returned $45.7 million to shareholders through the first three quarters of this year. At the end of the third quarter, we have approximately $56 million remaining on our share repurchase authorizations, and we're committed to continuing to return value to shareholders. With regard to our 2022 guidance, we are reiterating the guidance raised announced last week in advance of our investor day. Our new full-year net sales range is expected to be between $9.5 and $9.7 billion. And as Tony mentioned, our adjusted EBITDA is now expected to range from $237 to $242 million, while adjusted EPS is now expected to range from $2.27 to $2.37 per diluted share. This update to our adjusted EBITDA and EPS profitability ranges recognizes the benefits from our supply chain transformation and ongoing solid growth, but is tempered by retail margin headwinds and the impact of our merchandising transformation investments. Wholesale net sales are now expected to increase between 6.5% and 8% from last year. We also expect retail comparable store sales will increase 6% to 7.5%. These updates reflect both trends observed in the quarter as well as our updated expectations for the remainder of the year. Prior guidance has been recast due to the combination of the previous food distribution and military operating segments into the wholesale operating segment. These recast figures can be viewed in the third quarter supplemental deck posted on the investor relations portion of our website. Our team has continued to build on its momentum and outperform expectations. and we are extremely pleased with the execution of our winning recipe. We remain committed to driving results and continuing to grow sustainable shareholder value. And now, I'd like to turn the call back over to Tony.
spk08: Thank you, Jason. As a People First organization, I want to take a moment to thank our associates. This past quarter, our leadership team gathered to celebrate our top-performing frontline associates. We honored truck drivers in our fleet, cashiers from our retail stores, order selectors from our warehouses, and other essential workers. These frontline associates have gone above and beyond every day to deliver the ingredients for a better life to our customers, store guests, and their fellow associates. Congratulations to this year's winners, and thank you to the entire Spartan Edge team for their dedicated service. Our people are the reason for our success and a key part of why we are positioned to win. We are executing on our winning recipe, and we are pivoting from our turnaround to growth. Beyond the results we expect to achieve this year, we have a plan that adds $1 billion to the top line. The plan will also enable us to achieve more than $300 million of adjusted EBITDA by 2025, and any additional M&A will be supplemental to this target. We are executing on our plan and implementing our strategic initiatives to reach these goals.
spk04: With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to the operator and open it up for your questions. Thank you very much.
spk01: We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To answer a question, please press star, then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble a roster. We have the first question from the line of Chuck Serankoski from North Coast Research. Please go ahead.
spk02: Good morning, everyone. Great quarter. Congratulations. Tony and Jason, if you could, can you give us a view of where you think your customers' heads are at by various retail segments, such as your own stores or independent grocers, etc.? ? based on how they're reacting to economic news and, of course, the reality of inflation, higher fuel prices, by giving us a look into what they're buying or trading into. Not necessarily down, but I suppose there's a fair amount of that.
spk08: Yeah, happy to, Chuck. Thanks for the question. So a couple things. So obviously, we can start with data. We have growth associated with inflation, revenue growth. And we see what's going on with our unit growth and pound growth in our fresh part of our stores, et cetera. And so we see what was a fairly predictable elasticity associated with the inflation. So we're seeing cases are like they were the previous quarter. are down, you know, maybe two and a half-ish points. We see that, you know, 10 plus percent of inflation netting out to, you know, kind of the 8% growth overall for same store. So people are making those decisions. They're making trade-offs because their income has not risen as fast as inflation. What's going on underneath that, though, is a couple of things that I think are sort of interesting. One, we have, I think, also a fairly predictable trend. higher growth rate on our own brands, which typically offer very similar quality to the national brands at a lower price. And so our own brands are growing kind of in the two and a half times the rate of the comparable national brands. People are looking now more toward those own brands as a great option to stretch their dollars. We see people who are making trade-offs on sort of the, in some areas, like I used as an example, I I think maybe the last quarter, but it's actually getting more accelerated, where people are making trades from buying maybe less steak and more hamburger, as an example. We're also seeing a lot of growth in the higher value-added meats. So at the same time, people are making some trade downs on their protein to get more kind of protein for their buck. We had really, really strong growth on our house-made items like our seasoned meats, our head-trimmed meats, our bratwursts, which are a higher cost per pound. And we saw a little bit of the same behavior in the Great Recession, where you had people who were trying to stretch their dollars. In that case, they had fewer dollars, not because of the inflation. But they're making tradeoffs on things where they thought they could get a good value for overall, which meant similar quality for lower price, and then still seeking indulgence. And I think that's instructive for us. It tells us that we need to be sharp on what we offer our folks in terms of value. That's why... Having great own brands matters. That's why this merchandising transformation matters so much. And it means that there's an opportunity for us to continue to serve people and serve them with the joy of food and provide things that are indulgent where they can have a great experience at their dinner table. So we look at all those things very carefully, and we're learning along the way.
spk04: So I hope that answers that question. It is. Thank you. Thank you.
spk01: The next question comes from Andrew Wolf from CLK. Please go ahead.
spk03: Hi, good morning. I wanted to ask about or focus on expenses and ask you, you know, I mean consolidated expenses showed good leverage, but as I kind of just sort of parsed through it, it appears to me that it's, you know, it's a little more complicated skewed towards the wholesale side of the business with obviously throughput has a leverage, big leverage, as well as some of the supply chain expense, although I guess that could go to retail. So could you give us a little color on how the expenses, and I think you called out expenses like wage rates and retail being up, just a sense of how much operating leverage there was within either quantitatively or more qualitatively at each of the segments, how they perform relative to each other on the expense side?
spk08: Great. I'll take a stab at that and then hand it over to Jason for a little more detail. I think broadly we feel pretty good about the leverage. There's really kind of two things going on, and you hinted at both of them. One is on the business overall, we're getting good leverage because we have great productivity programs in our supply chain, and our supply chain transformation has guided our folks to working smarter, more efficiently, more effectively, And that's what's allowing for leverage in that environment that is also experiencing some cost pressures on wages. So we're seeing really solid leverage there because of those throughput numbers that we mentioned on the call. On the retail side, within the store, we had, as you may recall over the course of the last year, have taken really some extraordinary cost increases on labor wage rates. You know, the overall wage rates for our entry-level positions are close to 30% increase over the last, you know, kind of 12-plus months. And the overall average is in the neighborhood of 15%. Well, in a normal year, that would have been – those numbers would have been obviously substantially lower, probably five, six times what you'd normally experience in that timeframe. So those wage rates that kind of keep up, which is a source of a lot of inflation, as we've discussed. have lent themselves a little less leverage in the short term. I would say we're also positive about the outlook for that and getting better leverage overall in our stores. But in this transitionary phase, we certainly had to invest money in our wages, and that's why you may see a little bit of pressure on margins.
spk11: Thanks, Tony. Only a couple things I'd add to that, Andrew, and that was a great overview. Just a reminder, on the throughput on the wholesale side, it's running around about 8%. And we're seeing that flow through to lower cost-per-case movements in the supply chain and then flowing naturally into our wholesale businesses. On the retail side, kind of dial back the clock a little bit, and Tony mentioned the wage increases. The starting wage increases in retail have gone from $10 to $13 an hour. Now, that doesn't represent the full portfolio of labor costs, but it's indicative of kind of the front end of the scale. And it's really a driver of – it's among the largest drivers of our wage increase impacts in our retail segment. You may recall when we set guidance at the beginning of the year, we expected to see our wage impacts, our labor impacts to be a multiple of what they typically are due to the inflationary pressures. They were going to be north of $50 million. The bulk of that or the largest proportion is going to be in our retail segment. And we've seen that flow in in the last few quarters as those wage increases are hitting our expenses. So it's coming about as we expected. It is a significant uptick, and it's an investment in the people and in the long-term viability of our retail model that we talked a little bit about last week.
spk03: Okay. And just a follow-up, you know, you mentioned higher incentive comp and other costs, but also the merchandising is different. costs in the merchandising transformation, are those kind of loaded equally into both segments or proportionally or does one segment have more of that than the other?
spk11: I would say you should think about them as weighted based on the nature of the segment, the volume that the business is there. And on the incentive piece, just to kind of go back on that one, the company is overperforming so incentive compensation expenses are higher and are recorded. through the year based on the performance of the business and then kind of assigned to the segments based on their share of the total business. On the merchandising transformation, you should think about that weighing more heavily on our wholesale business as we focus on the wholesale piece and the buying and procurement of the goods and doing that effectively going forward.
spk04: Great. That's helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
spk01: The next question comes from Kelly Banya from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk06: Hi. Good morning. This is Ben Wood on for Kelly. Thank you for taking our questions. You guys have touched a little bit on the disparity between kind of wholesale margin rates and retail margin rates. I'm just wondering if you could provide more details on the retail side Are there any signs the pressure is easing, or what would it take to see retail margin rates turn around? And then kind of assuming your retail stores are a good proxy for the independence you serve, what are the risks that the challenges at retail more broadly start to impact kind of wholesale performance?
spk11: Yeah, and thanks for the question, Ben. This is Jason. Thinking about the... the margin structure itself at retail, and then we'll kind of address how we think about the potential second and third order effects across the wholesale business. Sequentially, our retail business improves gross margin, so your question on have we hit the bottom, what's the plan, and is there an opportunity to improve margin, we saw sequential improvement in our retail business from Q2 to Q3. So we feel good about the progress that we've made and that our teams have made to continue to pound out a little extra margin in that business. What we're seeing more broadly, as we've talked about the last couple of quarters, is not different from what the rest of the retail grocery market is seeing with respect to challenges with margin. And we continue to be smart about it and be precise with how we deploy our pricing and so that we get the best deal for shoppers and we find the right balance for margin on our side. Thinking about our independent customers, one of the benefits of being a retailer and a wholesaler is that we don't have to imagine what it's like to be operating in the retail space. We see it every day and we operate in that way every day. It's one of the unique benefits we bring to our independent wholesale customers. So I would expect that our independents are experiencing the same challenges we have and It's really another reason for us to redouble our efforts and focus on our merchandising transformation because, frankly, when our customers win, we all win together.
spk06: Awesome. Great. Thank you. And then just one more, if I may, kind of switching to the wholesale side. Thanks for providing the details on case volume. But wondering if you were able to kind of frame that in sort of case volume versus 2019 for independents and chains, maybe XDG and military. just trying to get a gauge more broadly what type of any kind of channel shifts you guys may have seen over kind of the course of the pandemic.
spk11: Yeah, I think maybe starting with the military piece, we saw significant, as you know, we saw significant shifts in movement away from the military segment. We've seen that recover, and we've seen In the third quarter, we delivered north of 6% unit volume growth in the military segment. So just to kind of put that in perspective, at least how we think about it is, if you look at publicly available data on unit volume in retail grocery, units are down low to mid-single digits. If you look at publicly available data, our units are up in the military segment, or we're up in the third quarter by north of 6%. So we see The military is seeing a significant channel shift with performance that's around about 10 percentage points better than market norms. In our retail and independent space, we see the unit volume performance tracking relatively similarly between our independent retail businesses. And importantly, on our retail side, we're growing share. So we're outperforming the market with respect to unit volumes, and we're very proud of that.
spk04: and have plans to continue to build that going forward. Great. Thank you. Thank you.
spk01: The next question comes from Spencer Hannes from World Research. Please go ahead.
spk09: Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Just shifting to your long-term CapEx guidance, it calls for a pretty significant step up over the next few years. So with that step up in spend, where do you think you can take cost per case and throughput over time, and where are those metrics trending today versus where the industry is at?
spk08: The metrics on the cost per case, you mean?
spk10: Yeah, and throughput.
spk08: Yeah, we don't have thorough information, I think, on the external on cost per case because the business is very – It's not a bad question. I don't have that at my fingertips right now. In terms of the capex spending, the shifting capex spending, we go to more work essentially on growth and on productivity than we would have done in the recent past. The overall capex is essentially aligned with similar competitors, similar sized businesses, a combination of wholesale and retail. But you'll see more investments in our stores. We're remodeling for them for better growth and a better presentation to the shoppers. And more investments in our overall supply chain to make the supply chain more efficient. So in broad strokes, that's where the additional gap exists.
spk11: Yes, thanks, Tony. And great question, Spencer. We see significant runway still in our cost per case, a real opportunity to continue to build that going forward. And the capital that we're deploying is really building Strength around both specific programs and belts and suspenders type investments on that side of the house to ensure we deliver a terrific product to our customers in a very efficient way. Further to Tony's point, we will be building out and linking together with our banner consolidation a real focus on ensuring that we've got the right customer experience tied with each of our banners and the brand expectations that shoppers have for those banners. So we'll be investing in store renovations that support and engage consumers in that way. And I'd be remiss if I didn't say that along the way, though we are raising our long-term CapEx requirements over the three-year window of this plan, we also expect to nearly double the return on invested capital that we've been delivering, and we feel really good about that plan. This capital is going to help us get to the $300-plus million in EBITDA, driving long-term shareholder value.
spk09: That's helpful. And then can you remind us how many of your transactions are captured by the loyalty program today? And with the upcoming relaunch of that program, how do you think that impacts comp momentum and then also your ability to potentially build an ad network and interface better with CPGs over time as well?
spk08: I don't have good data on that. We're still building out the loyalty program. We have a you know, parts of our business that didn't have a loyalty program or had a different one. So that's still sort of high in the oven, so to speak. So, unfortunately, I don't have a great answer for you on the current state. In terms of how we think about in the future state, though, we think there's a lot of value in that piece. And we're getting in the early reads on some of the enhanced rebates in the program. We're getting good updates. So, Jason, you have something?
spk11: Yeah, maybe a little bit more color on that. We have... We've got our participation in the loyalty program is north of 50%. Some markets, it's north of 85%. For us, if you think about the way that we expect to deploy data and the linkage with consumer behavior, we expect that this program will allow us to get closer to those consumers to really drive consumer-specific promotional activities and to really link it again together with the the banner focus, the brand expectations, and the shopping experience that our consumers have in each and every store.
spk04: Great. Thank you. Thank you.
spk01: Next question comes from Christiane Gattai from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hi. Good morning and congrats on a good quarter. I wanted to follow up on retail. We're hearing increased focus on being sharp on pricing, and I think I heard you use that word today, too. Can you just talk about is that a response to inflation and consumers changing the way that they're shopping? Is it something that you're also seeing in the competitive environment in your markets? Just love to get your thoughts on pricing and rational peers.
spk08: Yeah, we certainly watch what's going on in the competitive market very closely, like we watch what's going on in our stores very closely. I think just building on my earlier comments a little bit, we're studying what are the products that sort of matter, what are those kind of key value items that make a difference in terms of pricing, and we're making sure as best we can that we manage those to the the expectation of the shopper, and make sure that they get their hands on those items, some of those fundamental building blocks in their shopping basket at the best possible price. And so we have, on some of those items, we'll take lower increases in inflation than most of them. And you'll see that in the shopping experience at our stores. And we think we're seeing that amongst the competitive set as well. Again, getting back to the work that we're doing on the merchant transformation, that's also sort of part of that. We're bringing those kinds of inputs and data points to our suppliers and working with them on ensuring that we have between regular price and promoted pricing, we have the best offering overall for our shoppers and what they expect and what they need to manage their lives. And as I also mentioned, there's a little bit of a bifurcation between the stuff that folks are really, really eager to find that best possible price and the things that they're going to look for. The more indulgent experience is a little bit of a balancing act with the overall pricing.
spk11: Yeah, and Christina, thanks for the question. The only other thing I'd add to this is I wouldn't want you all to think that this is a new action. So inflation kicked up and we got sharp on pricing. The team has done a terrific job of building out capability and analytics around pricing itself to really move that capability forward. We talked about last week our insights that drive solutions. Pricing and pricing capability would be a really good example of an insight that drives solutions. And our teams have been working together to really optimize the shopper experience, leveraging analytics and analytical data to drive the best outcome for shoppers and, frankly, to drive performance for our stores. It's also a capability that we spend time talking about with our wholesale customers as well because it's something that we think that we can translate from our own retail experience to them as independents.
spk07: That's great. Thanks for the caller. And just as a follow-up, I wanted to ask about, obviously, case volumes that continue to be down. Where do you think we are in the cycle? Are vendors increasing their promotional spend to get their volumes back up? And how do you see that unfold with inflation, at least in a lot of food categories? It's really not abating, at least not meaningfully anytime soon.
spk11: Yeah, you know, industry-wide, I wouldn't characterize it as we've hit the point where vendors are changing the profile and really promoting. At this point, the way I think about it is inflation is running double digits. Elasticity is such that we're seeing low to mid single digit unit volume declines. And at the same time, we still have supply chains that are tight. So until the supply chains loosen up a little bit, there isn't a whole lot of incentive to make changes with respect to promotional activity from the supplier community. That said, it doesn't mean that we're walking away from opportunities to continue to partner with vendors. And many have started to step up to the table as part of our merch transformation to really go after that incremental volume and to really win and be a category winner together with Spartan Ash.
spk04: Thank you so much, and best of luck. Thank you. Thank you. Again, if you have a question, please press star then one at this time.
spk01: Here's a follow-up question from the line of Chuck Serankoski from North Coast Research. Please go ahead.
spk02: Thanks, guys. One more on gasoline. Can you just give us some data on how gallons fared during the quarter as well as profit per gallon?
spk11: Yeah, thanks, Chuck. This is Jason. So unit gallons were down about 6% in the quarter year over year. Pricing per gallon was up about 25% as the market moved up significantly. And margins in the quarter were up versus prior year, and I would say slightly higher than the kind of historical norm as we saw a fair amount of volatility in retail fuel pricing in our markets.
spk04: Thank you. All right. Thank you, Jeff.
spk01: Thank you. A reminder to participants, if you have a question, please press star and one at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back to Tony Sasson for any closing remarks.
spk08: Great, thank you, and thank you all for your participation on today's call. We look forward to speaking with you again when we report out our fourth quarter results. As we head into Thanksgiving, we want to thank our team of talented associates who work hard every day to ensure we can enjoy a special meal with our families. So from our family to yours, we'd like to wish you all a wonderful holiday season. Good day.
spk01: Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation.
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