Shake Shack, Inc.

Shake Shack third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Anna Lee Luggett, Senior Manager of Investor Relations and FP&A. Thank you, and you may begin.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Joining me for Shake Shack's conference call is our CEO, Randy Garuti, and CFO, Katie Fogarty. During today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial 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. Reconciliations to comparable gap measures are available in our earnings release and the financial details section of our quarterly shareholder letter. Some of today's statements may be forward-looking, and actual results may differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those discussed in our annual report on Form 10-K, filed on February 18, 2022. Any forward-looking statements represent our views only as of today, and we assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements if our views change. By now, you should have access to our third quarter 2022 shareholder letter, which can be found at investor.shakeshack.com in the quarterly results section or as an exhibit to our 8K for the quarter. I will now turn the call over to Randy.

Thanks, Annalie. Good morning, everyone. We are pleased today with our third quarter results, especially noting stronger than expected sales exiting September, a trend that's continued into October. We delivered total revenue growth of over 17% year over year to nearly $228 million. with system-wide sales up more than 18% to over $353 million. Average weekly sales outperformed seasonality at $73,000 as we've maintained a trailing month AUV of $3.8 million. Same-shack sales grew 6.3% year-over-year, driven by both traffic and price mix, and October's comp has accelerated to more than 8%. We generated a shack-level operating profit of $35.8 million at a 16.3% margin, up year-over-year, even with a material pickup and inflationary pressures. Our urban markets performed well in the quarter. We saw strong momentum coming out of Labor Day as mobility and back-to-office trends broadly improved. It's clear that in our hometown of New York and other urban centers, things are improving, with more and more people moving about. We remain cautiously optimistic on urban trends long-term as new patterns emerge, but it's good to see the momentum in the right direction. I recently visited our shacks on the West Coast, And you can feel the energy even in downtown San Francisco and the South Bay continuing to emerge. On the development side of the business, we've opened some great shacks recently in places like Beverly Hills, the Meatpacking District in Jamaica, Queens, and New York City, and in suburban Massachusetts and Florida. As you know, it's been a frustrating year of extended timelines to opening new shacks. And delayed openings have probably been our biggest headwind to overall sales growth. In the third quarter, we opened two company-operated shacks, with four more so far in the fourth quarter, as we continue to face challenges from permitting and landlord construction delays to availability of kitchen, electrical, and HVAC equipment. However, I'm happy to report that the tide is slowly turning, and we currently have 35 new shacks under construction, with more to come. We still expect to open 35 to 40 new shacks in fiscal 2022, but looking more likely to come in at the low end of this range, with many of these opening towards the very end of the year. Unfortunately, we and many other retail and restaurant companies are seeing this trend, but it's one we've been preparing for and believe we can execute. That growth, while behind our initial expectations, still represents over 15% company-operated unit growth year over year. You can expect some additional shack-level costs in the coming quarters as we work through this high growth and the extra support needed given the compacted schedule. Despite these pressures, we remain focused on our long-term pipeline and building SHACs to stand the test of time. For 2023, we now expect to open approximately 40 domestic company operated SHACs, which will represent 16% unit growth year over year. We think that's a solid number heading into an uncertain economic and still bumpy supply chain and staffing environment, allowing us to grow significantly, also focusing on our current SHAC performance. I want to take a moment and talk about our bigger total development opportunity. We're not updating any long-term guidance today, but we know we have much more white space potential than our existing targets. And I've been doing the work to quantitatively and qualitatively discuss that opportunity as we assess over time. The high inflationary environment has impacted our historically high returns with near-term profitability pressure, increased cost to build shacks, as well as disrupted sales patterns experienced in the recent years. We've historically targeted our blended AUV for new openings to be approximately 3 million. Clearly, we've outperformed that over the years and expect to continue to do so. We believe our plan to balance urban and suburban growth through a multi-format strategy, including drive-through, has the potential to generate strong long-term AUVs. With the continued strength of our brand, the amount of new formats with which we can target a market, we believe our total addressable market continues to increase. On the profitability side, prior to the COVID and inflationary impact of the last few years, we outperformed our long-term targets of 18% to 22% outprofit at the shack level. While many of our current shacks beat these targets, on average, this is a number we're not consistently hitting today. But we continue to believe it's the right long-term target and one we can return to. We have much to do in this area, and we'll be highlighting some of that work as we go. When we look at overall returns in our shacks, Even against double-digit inflationary pressures and COVID recovery impacts, our business has navigated in the past several years. Our recent classes continue to show strong returns, but we aim to do better than our long-term guidance. Historically as a company, we have done just that. We expect this will take a mix of targeting shack-level operating profit margin improvement, including an intense focus on our operations, cost pressures in our digital business, and further rationalization of our build costs over the long term. We're focusing on improving on our design and construction to optimize sales, throughput, and build costs, while streamlining SHAC models that look and feel better than ever. It's early days, but we're excited for the near and long-term impacts this will have on our development plans in the coming years. Before I move on, just a quick update on drive-thru initiative. We now have six drive-thrus operating today and expect to open three to four more by the end of the year. with another 10 to 15 in the pipeline for 2023 and more identified for 2024 and beyond. Drive-thrus are a key step in the evolution of our company. We're encouraged by the early operational flow and performance to date. We're optimizing for learning and building on our long-term goals. Initial drive-thru investments will be high as these new units have larger footprints, more tech elements, and continue to have a great in-shack dining experience. This is the right place to focus additional capital right now with the goal of unlocking a larger total addressable market. I believe in the next year, as we get a strong class of drive-thrus and we learn more about the real estate design and operational decisions we've made, we'll have a much clearer view on the size of the prize. On our licensing business, where revenue grew over 20% year over year, even as we lapped a heavy opening schedule in 2021, faced COVID disruptions in China, and have a new headwind from the strong U.S. dollar. We opened six new shacks in the quarter, including a roadside location on the New Jersey Turnpike and our first-ever museum location at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Virginia. We also opened our eighth shack in Shanghai this quarter, which is our 28th shack in the greater China market. After a pause during COVID, we're happy to see our partners in Japan return to growth, with our newest shack opening at the Universal Studios in Osaka last week. We're leaning into this important part of our revenue and profitability plans long-term and are excited to deepen relationships in current and future markets. In Korea, after recently opening our 23rd shack and nearing the early completion of our development schedule, we've extended and expanded our operating agreement to go even deeper in the market. We're looking ahead towards new markets of Thailand and Malaysia in 2023 and 2024, We just announced the shack will open in a premier location at the Atlantis in the Bahamas. Lastly, we've just opened our first ever roadside shack on the New York Thruway as we look to unlock new format opportunities both here and abroad. We have a robust pipeline worldwide next year and expect to open 25 to 30 new licensed shacks in 2023. A few more updates on the rest of our strategic plan. Above all else, we remain committed to elevating our people. A relentless focus on standing for something good with our people, with our guests, is a key pillar of our culture and how we intend to grow our workforce. Staffing and retention have improved slightly but remain challenging. There's no question we have an opportunity to optimize throughput and total opening hours as staffing patterns improve over time. We're heavily focused on recruiting, retaining, and developing our people and just graduated our sixth class of team members looking to grow into management through our new Shift Up program. It's a key pipeline for our hourly team members who receive the training required to elevate to a manager position. We're also proud to offer our teams competitive wages. In some of our shacks, with our new tipping availability, team members can at times be earning more than $20 an hour in pay, on top of generous benefits and development opportunities. So current and potential team members can see Shake Shack as a long-term career path. These are just a few examples of how we strive to be an industry-leading employer. When it comes to the all-important guest experience, we're focused in the shacks, where most of our gains are happening. And while we're committing more than ever to our digital evolution and the continued strength of those channels, we're also working with a persistent attitude towards clean, welcoming, and well-operating restaurants. In menu innovation, we continue to lead the way with dynamic and fun products, providing our guests with elevated, premium, high-quality ingredients that they can't find at traditional fast food, other fast casual concepts, or even casual dining. Currently, we're running a great LTO, partnering up with YouTube sensation Hot Ones on a collab creation of a spicy bacon burger, bacon chicken, and bacon cheese fries. We even offered the option for our bravest guests to buy the extra spicy Last Dab hot sauce packet on digital channels only. The Last Dab was the Hot Ones menu's hottest sauce, made from the Apollo Pepper, California Reaper, and a Pepper X Hybrid, landing at $2.5 million on the Scoville scale. This menu also had strong guest reception and satisfaction results and is particularly successful on our own digital channels. On beverage, we continue to see increasing demand and contribution to average check through our latest seasonal lemonades. We also just launched our holiday shake trio, which has historically been a fan favorite. This year, we're offering Christmas cookie, chocolate milk and cookies, and chocolate peppermint shakes. Lastly, as we look to attract even more frequency long term, we continue to test a new non-dairy chocolate shake, and we'll be testing a new version of our veggie shack at about 30 shacks towards the end of this year. I'll now pass it over to Katie to discuss our financial performance in more detail.

Great. Thank you, Randy, and good morning. We are pleased with the strong sales momentum we realized in the business, led by our urban shacks coming out of Labor Day. This coincided with a positive inflection in return-to-work trends, which still remain a potential driver of continued recovery in our business. Our third quarter total revenue grew 17.5% year over year to 227.8 million. Shack sales grew 17.4% to 219.5 million. Licensing revenue grew 20.1% to 8.3 million, marking the highest quarterly revenue for the licensed business on record. System-wide sales grew by 18.3% year-over-year to $353.2 million, and we surpassed $1.3 billion in system-wide sales over the past 12 months. We generated SHAC-level operating profit margin of 16.3%, up 50 basis points year-over-year, in the face of meaningful inflationary headwinds. Food and paper costs rose by high single digits year-over-year, and we have made significant investments in wages and benefits for our team members, and even utility costs are nearly 25% higher than last year. In the third quarter, we generated 73,000 in average weekly sales. We over-indexed to high income relative to traditional fast food, and we continue to see better sales performance from these guests. Consumer mobility trends were consistent throughout July and August when AWS trends were stable at 75,000. However, in September, which is historically a lower sales month, Consumer mobility in urban centers improved after Labor Day, and we saw AWS outperform traditional seasonality, falling just 5% month-over-month to 71,000. We grew same-shack sales by 6.3% year-over-year, led by double-digit growth in urban same-shack sales. Overall traffic grew 2.9%, and we had 6% price, inclusive of the March price increase and our different pricing premiums across channels. Our performance in the quarter was led by our in-check channels that skew more to single orders versus larger groups. And across all channels, more guests are ordering in smaller groups and single orders compared to 2020 and 2021. So adjusting for this dynamic, items for check trends in cold beverage, fries, and shakes remain strong. Mix was positive in the quarter, and our guests are trading up to the premium limited time offerings across burgers, shakes, and cold beverage. showing us that they really embrace and value our elevated and premium approach to menu innovation. Urban same-shack sales grew 11% versus 2021, and urban traffic grew nearly 7%. Trends were notably positive coming out of Labor Day, with New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. all showing positive traffic inflection. We believe our recovery would have been stronger if mobility, and namely return to office, urban transit, and urban tourism trends were stronger throughout the quarter. Manhattan same-check sales improved throughout the quarter and rose 23% year-over-year and stayed strong in October despite more challenging compares. Suburban same-check sales grew 2% year-over-year, lapping a positive 17% comp in the third quarter of 2021, even as we realized strong sales growth in our urban checks. In mid-October, we raised our menu prices by 2% to 10% across price tiers to address these consistent inflationary pressures. We expect to recognize 5 to 7% of this price increase and maintain a blended high single-digit price across channels into 2023. As a reminder, we raised our menu prices by approximately 3.5% in March 2022. Even with this price increase, a Shackburger, fries, and beverage is on average under $14, well within and often priced below the cost of other lunch or dinner options nearby. Our value perception among guests remains unchanged, and we continue to see strong demand for our premium LTOs. October same-shack sales accelerated from September levels and rose 8.3% year-over-year, led by menu price and mid-single-digit traffic growth year-over-year in our urban shacks. AWS was 73,000, up 3% from September levels. This is even as we lapped the 2021 launch of Black Truffle in the middle of October and a challenging compare for our urban business. Black Truffle was one of our strongest performing LTOs that had strong guest reception right out of the gate. Additionally, in-shack trends remained strong, consistent with what we saw in September. When we adjust for price, the September to October progression was better than historical seasonality. Development delays continued to be a headwind to our sales in the quarter, as we opened two shacks less than we had expected and later than we had expected. While our in-shack business is showing strong signs of recovery, we retained a large portion of our digital business. Our digital tools expand our reach with more convenient channels and occasions, laying the groundwork for sustainable long-term growth. We continue to target acquiring new app users and driving more frequency within our expanding digital base. In the third quarter, we grew our digital app purchasers by 40% year-over-year. Since March of 2020, we now have gathered more than 4.5 million users unique first-time digital app purchasers. We are building our digital base with successful marketing initiatives, including offering our limited-time Hot Ones menu to our digital users first and other promotions focusing on digital-only day parts. It's still early days for our digital journey, and we are encouraged by strong guest engagement and the new ways we are developing to reach and communicate with our guests. And more of our guests are enjoying us through our omni-channel experience, finding us both digitally and in check. This is a good thing for the long-term growth of our business. Kiosk is an example of how we are bridging the in-shack and the digital world, and we remain on track to roll out digital kiosks to nearly all shacks by the end of next year. This is our most profitable channel, and when compared to our in-shack channels, we see higher checks and better labor utilization. Now onto our licensing visits, where sales of $133.7 million rose about 20% year-over-year. Our domestic SHACs and select international markets performed well. We faced headwinds from COVID lockdowns and intermittent market disruptions that impacted mainland China SHACs and currency headwinds from the stronger dollar. These pressures remain in the fourth quarter. Total SHAC-level operating profit was $35.8 million, or 16.3% of SHAC sales. Our SHAC-level operating profit margin improved 50 basis points year-over-year despite inflationary pressures. As a reminder, the second quarter's SHAC-level operating profit margin had a 38 basis point benefit from one-time leadership retreat sponsorship credits in food and paper costs. Other operating expenses were impacted by an incremental 100 basis points from some near-term pressures to run our existing restaurants, including elevated utilities and R&M costs, as well as temporary support for some new openings. Food and paper costs were 67.8 million or 30.9% of shack sales. Beef costs declined by high single digit percent over a year. This was slightly favorable versus our expectations. Other food and paper inflationary pressures were higher and in some instances exceeded our expectations. Dairy costs were up nearly 30% year over year. This was led by butter, cheese, and custard. Friar oil costs rose materially, as did fries, and paper and packaging costs grew nearly 20% year over year. We have more details on this on page 11 of our shareholder letter. Labor expense was $64.6 million, or 29.4% of total SHAC sales, down from 31.1% in the third quarter of 2021, and down 10 basis points quarter over quarter. Other operating expenses were $34 million, or 15.5% of total check sales, up from 14.2% in the third quarter of 2021, as we are facing inflationary pressures and aspects needed to operate our in-check business. This includes energy, repair and maintenance costs, and costs to maintain the dining room. Also, in certain markets where we are facing staffing pressures, or in markets where we're bringing lots of new openings at the same time, we're having to bring in management and hourly teams from other SHACs to support some new openings and build up the local teams. We are planning for elevated T&E expense for the foreseeable future as we support some new upcoming openings, but long-term, we are targeting more normalized travel costs to support openings and expect this expense line to reach more typical levels we have shown in prior years. Occupancy was 17.3 million, or 7.9% of total SHAC sales. up 10 basis points from the third quarter of 2021, and up 40 basis points quarter over quarter. G&A was $26.6 million, or 11.7% of total revenue, down from 12.6% of total revenue in the prior quarter. This is reflective of a more measured approach to G&A investments in light of a wide range of potential scenarios on our business and our development delays. Pre-opening expense was $3 million in the quarter as we opened two new SHACs and prepared for the busy fourth quarter opening schedule ahead. Depreciation was $18.6 million. We realized a net loss attributable to Shake Shack Inc. of $2 million or negative $0.05 in earnings per share. On an adjusted pro forma basis, we reported a net loss of $2.3 million or negative $0.06 per fully exchanged and diluted share. Excluding the impact of stock-based compensation, our pro forma tax rate in the third quarter was 40%. Our balance sheet is strong, as we ended the quarter with $337 million in cash and marketable securities, and our primary usage of cash remains opening new shacks and supporting our other company-wide initiatives. Now onto guidance for the fourth quarter and full year 22, as well as some initial thoughts on 2023. Our guidance assumes no new COVID or supply chain-related disruptions, additional unknown inflationary pressures, or major shifts in consumer spending. We are assuming that urban and suburban consumer mobility trends remain consistent with what we realized for much of the third quarter, and are factoring in that we realized about 50 to 70% of our mid-October price increase. For the fourth quarter, we are guiding total SHAC sales of $225 million to $230 million. We expect SHAC sales to grow by mid-single-digit percent year-over-year, and we expect to open approximately 21 new company-operated SHACs. We have opened up four so far this quarter, and we are planning for many openings to occur at the end of the quarter. As such, they will have a limited impact on fourth-quarter revenue. While recent sales trends are encouraging, risks include a wide range of unknown impacts to the consumer amidst the uncertain macro backdrop, uneven consumer mobility, operational disruptions as teams support many new openings, and unforeseen continued development delays. We're also mindful that our recovery trends in New York City were really strong in the fourth quarter of 2021. Licensing revenue guidance of $8.2 to $8.7 million is supported by strong performance in certain domestic and international markets, as well as new shack openings. We are anticipating macro pressures in certain markets and broad-based currency headwinds to continue. This guidance range does not assume new COVID closures or pressures, and reflects opening 7 to 10 new licensed SHACs in the fourth quarter of 2022 to reach our raised 2022 licensing opening guidance of 27 to 30. We expect total revenue of $233.2 million to $238.7 million, growing about 15% to 17% year over year, and SHAC-level operating profit margin of 16% to 18%. As a reminder, pre-COVID, we had shown AWS in margin compression in the fourth quarter versus the third quarter. This fourth quarter, we will have the benefit of nearly a full quarter of new menu pricing to help address some inflationary pressures we are facing. We are planning for high single-digit inflation in food and paper costs through the rest of the year, led by continued high inflation in dairy, accelerating cost pressures in fryer oil, fries, and ketchup, and low double-digit inflation in paper and packaging. While the inflationary backdrop remains uncertain, we expect beef costs, the largest portion of our basket, to decline by mid to high single digits year over year. We expect other operating expense as a percent of SHAC sales in the fourth quarter to be at a similar level to the third quarter, given inflationary pressures on cost to run our restaurants, including higher utilities and R&M expenses, and elevated T&E to support new openings. We are committed to improving our profitability, driving sales growth, and investing ahead of our robust pipeline across the world. The operating environment is likely to remain challenging for some time, and we believe we have the right plan in place to elevate our people and drive the long-term growth of Shake Shack as we navigate these uncertain waters. As it pertains to planning G&A and CapEx for the rest of 2022 and into 2023, we have a disciplined but growth-minded approach to our investments, taking into account a wide range of business scenarios. With consideration for development delays and the unknown macro impacts, we now expect to land towards the lower end of our Titan G&A guidance range of $111 to $113 million excluding the $6.8 million of legal expenses we incurred in the first half of 2022. We continue to expect full-year depreciation of $70 to $75 million and are updating pre-opening to $15 to $17.5 million. We are accruing more rent than normal in pre-open expense, given the level of delays that we're experiencing. We expect our adjusted pro forma tax rates, excluding the impact of stock-based compensation, to be 30 to 32%. Looking out to 2023, we expect to grow our system-wide shack count by about 15% year-over-year, as we plan to open 65 to 70 total shacks across the entire system. We anticipate that around 40 will be company-operated shacks, and 25 to 30 will be operated by our licensed partners. We will provide more detail on our expectations for 2023 in the beginning of the year. Thank you for your continued interest in our business, and with that, I can turn it back to Randy.

Thanks, Katie. I want to end today's call with some quick remarks on the macro landscape. The next economic phase remains uncertain. And here at Shake Shack, we're planning for a wide range of scenarios as we think about the business in the coming quarters with a focus on growing sales, Shack-level profitability, and overall adjusted EBITDA. We're also squarely focused on the bigger opportunity ahead with a strong pipeline of Shacks in varied formats that can increase our addressable market and drive solid returns. None of this would be possible without the continued strength and resilience of our team members around the globe. Over the last few weeks, I've spent a lot of time in our shacks. I've been witness to a number of real-time promotions of leaders who began as team members. I've seen what can happen for people in this company when hard work meets preparation and opportunity. That's the opportunity we're building and plan to keep investing in as we build the road ahead. Hope we see you all soon for a hot one's chicken. And with that, operator, please open up the call for questions.

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. We ask that you limit yourself to one question so that others may have the opportunity to ask questions as well. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. One moment please while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Nicole Miller with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you so much and good morning. I wanted to ask about the pipeline for next year and if you could give a little context around the stores I suppose on the company-owned side that are identified maybe under LOIs or even under signed leases and then the cadence. But with that, Could you talk about, and you kind of did, but a little bit more color on the people side. So where do you bench these managers if the stores are a little delayed? What do they do in the interim? How do you hold on to them? And how material is that in the G&A right now? Thank you so much.

Thanks, Nicole. Let's start with a class for next year. We think it's about 40 shacks, roughly company-owned. Right now, the thing that we feel better about than last year this time is we have Nearly all of those 40 in signed leases and a number of them are coming and we feel like we're much further ahead. That said, we're still experiencing the same kind of challenges in permitting construction, the costs, and just the general timeline. So that's part of why we're thinking 40 is a really good number for us for total next year. We hope they're better dispersed than this year. We don't have such a fourth quarter crunch, but you know what? That seems to be a challenge every year. But as I said in my remarks, we have 35 shacks under construction today. That's the largest number we've ever had being built at one time. And that bodes well for hopefully a stronger start to the first half of next year. And we'll see how things go with that. Within that class, we've got 10 to 15 drive-thrus. We've got a number of different formats. So you'll see some elevated costs in that build with the drive-thrus. You'll see some core shacks that we know and love that has built this company. You'll see some drive up models. You see a food court or two. You've got kind of a really, really deliberate intentional mix. And we think it's the right way to think about it. Now, how the heck do we staff these shacks? This is the hardest thing going on right now. Some of the costs that Katie and I called out in our remarks are actually hitting shack level off profit right now. And that's part of the new pressure that we have. Now, let me be clear. I don't think that's a pressure that exists forever. This is new to us. And what does that mean? Well, you know, we've got a shack opening in Baton Rouge, okay, coming up in the fourth quarter here. That's a new market for us. We're building out our brand there, building out our employee brand. We've got to fly people in and keep them there for a while. We've got some shacks in the Bay Area where we need to build up our management bench. We have to bring some people in from other regions to help. That hits us in the shack level off profit. And that's part of our guide for, it's part of our What happened this quarter is part of our guide for Q4 and is part of what will happen certainly in the early part of next year. With the challenges of staffing, it's just harder right now at all levels, and we've got to kind of move our talented teams around a little bit more. With all of that, we have never been more innovative when it comes to our commitment to our people. We are thinking about all new ways, starting at the recruiting application process, starting in the first 30 days of employment, In this moment, they're in an industry that feels fully staffed and certainly not our industry. We know that's where we need to do better and we're making really big improvements. And by the way, that is where some G&A is going to increasing the size of our recruiting teams, our recruiting spend on advertising and the way that we're going to build up those teams. So we have a lot of work to do. None of it's been easy and it's been compounded by macro challenges. But we feel like this is what Shake Shack does. We're in a good place. We're going to execute this plan.

Our next question comes from Jared Garber with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning. This has been on for Jared. You mentioned in your prepared remarks that you've been seeing new urban trends emerge, and I was wondering if you could provide a bit more detail on these new trends. Is this related to differences in day of the week, day part, and then I guess to follow up, what changes, if any, are you making operationally to adapt to these new trends? Thanks.

Yeah, I mean, what we saw really throughout the quarter is was mobility trends were pretty consistent with what we saw in the second quarter in July and August. And then really, you know, when Labor Day hit, our urban market mobility and traffic inflected positively, even more so than it was prior to Labor Day. And, you know, it was mostly kind of, you know, in the weekday lunch and dinner that we saw the greatest impact. But, you know, There's still a number of shacks in particular in midtown Manhattan and kind of those more workplace centric locations that still have a pretty big impact here pre-COVID. And there's a great opportunity for us to continue to recover in lunch and dinner there as well. So while the trends were encouraging, we saw particular strength in urban transit. and in New York City and Manhattan in particular, you know, we're still, you know, on the road to recovery.

And this is a good thing for Shake Shack, right? As we've talked about, like we have, you know, this kind of really nice mix now of urban and suburban. We've seen it. I spent last Friday going around to a bunch of shacks and just trying to think about and understand kind of what is Friday going to look like in cities. And I was pretty encouraged by what I saw, even in midtown Manhattan on that day, just seeing people moving about and, you Look, we're going to adjust. I think new trends emerge daily, but it's clear that the momentum in an urban setting is going in the right direction for us.

Our next question comes from Michael Thomas with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, thanks. Good morning. I'm one of those brave customers you mentioned getting the last stab, and I can confirm it lives up to its name.

Thank you, Michael. Hope you're okay.

It is very, yeah, I'm getting, I'm getting better over the last couple of weeks. It was pretty hot. You know, Randy, you talked about getting back to the historical 18 to 20% restaurant margins is a target you believe you can still achieve over time. And you call that, you know, potential for operational improvements and a tighter focus on cost. So can you either bucket or like rank order where you think the most impactful opportunities are and, What are maybe those nearer-term opportunities versus some of those things that might take a little bit longer to unfold?

Thanks. Thanks, Michael. Yeah, look, we believe we're going to continue to increase this over time. There's a few things that have to happen. Let's just start with the macro factors impacting our company and our restaurants and our world. We need some of those to go our way, okay? And we're not going to wait around for that, but it is a fact. When we have double-digit inflation in almost everything we buy, whether it's French fries, fryer oil, paper packaging. These things are tough to increase, and we're not yet taking the same price to offset that fully. So we need a couple things to go our way. After that, what are we doing about it? Well, we're obviously being a little bit more aggressive on price, and we've done that. We've just taken this kind of wide range between 2% and 10% that we think settles out in the 5% to 7% range just a couple weeks ago, and we think that'll help. And we're going to keep our eyes on future price raises. If we continue to see this inflationary pressure, we will have to take more price. And that's more aggressive than we've been in the past. So that's part of it. We've got to get staffed up. We've got to continue to do that. There's absolutely missing opportunity in our company just on not being staffed. We have not optimized our total hours open, and we have not optimized our throughput during peak hours. And that has been a challenge for the last few years. It remains a challenge. So we are putting massive efforts towards staffing and bulking up our teams to be able to handle this. None of that's easy. And then you look at little things. We'll continue to evolve our packaging, continue to evolve the packaging, the way that we package things. As less and less orders happen pre-ordering and we see more return to in-shack, those are more profitable channels for us. These are trends we need to see. And then there's some near-term things that Katie called out that we're going to get hit on, right?

Utilities are up.

This is happening in the world. Those things are up. Hopefully that's not up forever. The travel that we talked about, the support openings, is up. That is an impact we don't believe lasts forever. So when you think about us clearly seeing the route there, it's going to take some time. There's going to be work to do, but we believe in the long term we can continue to get back to those targets and returns.

One more thing just to add on there is on kiosks. So kiosk is our highest margin channel. It also has our highest in-check channel. We're going to be rolling out kiosks to nearly all shacks by the end of next year. And that's another way that we're leaning in here to help drive performance and margin performance and address some of the labor challenges that we've had.

And we'll have, I think, by the end of this year, about 20 to 30 existing shacks convert to to add kiosks before the end of this year, and then we'll continue that rollout. There's about 60, 70 left after that. That'll take through next year. Thanks, Michael.

Our next question comes from Sharon with William Blair. Please proceed with your question.

Sorry for my voice. It wasn't the hot sauce. I just think I have a cold. I guess I want to delve a little bit more into the labor and the thoughts on streamlining and kiosks. I mean, you've had kiosks for a while at locations. I guess I'm curious in locations where you have the kiosks. like what percent of the business is going through those kiosks? And how do you then manage labor? Is it more reallocating labor to more maybe value-added tasks than taking orders? Or do you actually just see incremental labor leverage? Is throughput better because people are working more on that? Just help us think about that. And then are there other opportunities? I know other companies are looking at like robotics and automation. Excuse me, I know your menu may not lend itself as much to that, but are those potential avenues?

Hi, Sharon. Yeah, I mean, you know, broad speaking, broad based, you know, kiosk is a really great lever for us to lean on here to help streamline labor in the shacks. And it's really about, you know, addressing that front of house opportunity. In the shacks where we have kiosks right now, actually a good portion of the guests do prefer that channel. We're, you know, in many locations we'll have five or six kiosks and maybe one, maybe two cash registers. And you see a number of people kind of instantly go towards that kiosk. If you haven't used one before, I highly encourage you to do so. It's a really great opportunity for our guests to sit with a menu within the shack to be able to page through. And we see that just translate through their order where they're, adding on more premium things. They see our LTOs, they get to experience, you know, the whole entire order flow of, you know, we're at our burger, we're going to have our shake and our fry and our lemonade, and they can visually see all that. So, you know, from both a labor perspective and a check perspective, it's definitely accretive. And, you know, you really kind of hit the nail on the head there with what we're seeing as far as how we're benefiting from that. So in some instances, we're able just to run a little bit leaner. But also, you know, we're able to take that extra labor and, you know, kind of dedicate it to other more value-added tasks, like, you know, if it's at Expo, helping out just to expedite some orders there. It's greeting guests in the dining room as well. So we're really excited by what we've seen and looking forward to rolling out these kiosks in short order.

Thanks. And then on the robotics or automation side, Is that something you explore?

Nothing yet. I don't think it's the best use of our time. I think we think about automation in terms of digital ordering and the way we just talked about kiosks and our other app and web channels. Today, I'm excited for it in the future. I don't think it's the best use of our time to be frontrunners on that, and we're watching closely. We continue to meet with interesting companies who are doing that work and seeing how it could impact us. But I think we're a little ways away from seeing something like that in a shack right now.

Thank you. Our next question is from Jake Bartlett with True Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Great. Thanks for taking the question. You know, my first is on the October average weekly sales. And I'm hoping you can just put into context, you know, the seasonality of October versus November and December. What typically happens in a pre-COVID world? to average weekly sales from October into the coming months?

Yeah. Well, part of us being a little bit of a younger company, we don't have that much history to talk about. And our comp base has changed dramatically. And as you remember, I'm sure in 2019, we faced some headwinds in the fourth quarter of 2019, which makes seasonality a little bit more lumpy. But, you know, just broadly speaking, kind of looking back, you tend to see more of a little bit of a softer fourth quarter than third quarter.

Got it. So just in terms of, you know, you don't have kind of holiday traffic or something like that that would make this. Is December typically going back years stronger than October? I'm just trying to put October in the context.

You do have a seasonal increase in December. However, November has been kind of depending on where holidays fall, it can be a little bit more flattish.

Great. Got it. And then I wanted to just dig in a little bit more on the development expectations for 2023. You know, it is less than what you're originally expecting on the lower end in 22. I understand that the macro headwinds. I just want to, you know, is this a change in philosophy? You mentioned kind of focusing, spending more of your energy on the existing base, and that's maybe part of why you're getting less aggressive on developments. or is this just really a flexion of the current environment, the lower growth in 23? I'm just trying to kind of understand, you know, long-term, whether this is maybe just a step back to, you know, focusing a little bit less on, you know, really fast growth, or if this is just more of a temporary kind of pause in that.

Well, thanks, Jake. There's a few things in that. First of all, at the numbers we got, that would be the largest class of shacks ever. So we're not slowing anything down, right? I think when we think about how many is the right number for next year, we have to work with the environment that we're working in. And we got to make sure that we can open some really great shacks. We're also committed to a lot of new formats with a significant approach to drive through. We're also spending more capital, right? These shacks cost more to build. At an inflationary time here, we think there's no reason to race to spending a lot more capital when we hope that over a longer-term period, some of those costs of the bill can come down. Well, we're certainly going to live next year in an increased cost environment. Within all that, we've still got work to do on margin, on our current 250-ish shacks that we own and operate in this country, while still showing significant growth. I think I've said 15%, 16% expectations for next year in our company. That's some strong, strong growth. Um, we'll, as I've said for 10 years on this subject, as we absorb each class, we'll continue to think about what the next class is, should look like. And we feel really good about the class of restaurants, um, that, that, that we're building. Now, look, if things can go our way and we can pull some things up, we'll certainly look to do that. Um, but this year the opposite happened because the factor is out of our control and we want to make sure that we are preparing and guiding appropriately for what the right amount of growth should be. And that's a great class of 65 to 70 worldwide shacks next year.

Great. That's helpful. I appreciate it.

Our next question comes from Jeff Farmer with Gordon Haskett. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning. Just wanted to quickly follow up on staffing. So I guess it was last week. It was interesting to hear Chipotle indicate that They recently raised the starting hourly wage by about $1 to $3 across roughly 20% of the system. They did that simply to ensure that they could staff those restaurants. So I'm just curious if you've seen a similar potential need in some of your markets, meaning a bump in the wage rate to ensure staffing levels are appropriately met.

Yeah, that's absolutely happening, likely at a similar cadence to what you heard that I'm talking about, right? We've already been doing that mid this year, even this quarter. There's some markets we continue to bump up, some certain shacks who we need to bump up. So yeah, you can expect that. Our starting wages have continued to increase for our teams, and we expect that's going to continue into next year. There's no doubt about it. The inflationary pressure and finding great team members is going to cost more. In addition, as we've said for a little while now, our guests have for a long time asked for the opportunity to tip our teams. With that added functionality, our teams are doing really well, making a few dollars more per hour depending on the shack and really jumping up their total earnings opportunity to be competitive and above competitive in a lot of ways. So hopefully that will help turn the tide. It is still a challenging environment out there. There's no doubt about it. And we've got to keep investing in new and different ways. So you can expect continued pressure on our payroll as we look at that into the shacks next year.

That's helpful. And just one quick follow-up. So in terms of your initial drive-through openings, you've provided some color, but I'm just curious what sort of the key learnings are from those restaurants and how potentially those learnings might influence your the future drive-thru development that you already have planned. So just, again, it would be interesting to hear in terms of the surprises you've seen or, you know, good or bad as you've seen sort of six months of operations from these restaurants.

Yeah, I think it's going to take a while and a lot more drive-thrus to really hone in on the best format, and that's exactly why we're investing the way we are. Of the first six that are open, we have multiple different kitchen flows, external and internal design. and ways that we just kind of move the food through, not to mention very different real estate decisions. So what we're excited about, as I keep using the term we're optimized for learning, we're spending that capital learn because there's a much, much bigger prize as we learn and get it right. So with the next three or four that open by the end of this year, we're going to learn all new things. We've got one opening in Michigan next week, we hope. We've got some others coming that we're super excited about in Ohio, in the Baltimore area. and more. And in the next year with another 10 to 15, I think that learning is going to just accelerate. So what are we learning? We're learning about how much space we need for cars. We're learning what peak hours look like. We're learning how best to take orders. When is it best to have people outside? When do you not need people outside? We are honing in a lot better on how we think the kitchen flow should work so we can protect and maintain the premium ingredients that we serve. every way. We're learning what menu boards should look like, how big they should be, and what kind of things sell. You know, when we put shakes up there, they sell, right? So what should we do about that? So it's vast, and it's really a totally different model. So I think what we continue to try to share with everyone is it's going to take time, It's super exciting. We think we have a dynamic, really cool product out there with our drive-through. We think there can be lots of them, but we got a lot of work to do to optimize that, and that's going to happen over these next few years.

All right. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Our next question comes from Andy Barash with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good morning, guys. Just a couple of expense items, if you could. First on utilities, I mean, that's been a theme this earnings season. I mean, is there anything that can be done there? Is there differences between, you know, urban and suburban or regulated, unregulated markets? And then just if you're willing to kind of quantify the new restaurant opening inefficiencies that you're, you know, you're expecting here over the next few quarters, that would be helpful. Thanks.

Sure. Yeah, I mean, utilities expenses do vary by market. Some of our shacks are busier than others. Some of them have more utility demands just based on where they're located and zoning requirements. But overall, I mean, I think the theme that's been very consistent is just higher energy costs overall. And that's really what we're seeing here. We expect that will be cyclical, but that is hitting us and is a portion of the 100 basis points in added other OPEX that we highlighted. On the T&E to support the new opening side, look, we're expecting a handful, several of openings to require kind of this added support level, but, you know, there's a wide range of uncertainty there. So we've talked about, you know, when you're thinking about other OPEX, it's probably going to be, you know, about the same level as percentage of total SHAC sales is what we realized in the third quarter.

Excellent. Thanks for the call, Katie.

Our next question comes from Chris O'Cole with Stiefel. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks. Good morning, guys. Katie, suburban locations seem to be experiencing more normalized comp growth. And I'm just wondering, how does the average weekly sales at these stores compare to 2019? And maybe how does the labor cost or other operating costs or some of these costs that are probably going to be more permanent in nature, How do those look as a percentage of sales compared to 2019 in those suburban locations?

Yeah, it just really depends on each of the markets and the locations. You know, there's not always just a very consistent trend on that front to call out. But what I would say is that, you know, with the staffing pressures that we've discussed, we are seeing more of an impact in our suburban locations than our urban locations to help contextualize that a little bit.

Which is interesting, right? Because that may or may not be intuitive for you, but like you have to remember part of the challenge and the gift of the Shake Shack brand and real estate decisions that we've made is we generally tend to be in more higher income areas. We have a, generally have a higher income guest. That's, That's been part of what we shared, especially as we head into more recessionary environment. That actually makes it harder to staff in many of the decisions we've made, especially in suburban. So where some of our most acute challenges in hiring are in some of our, I might call them quotes, best locations when it comes to higher income guests, right? So that is different than some of our traditional urban environments. Again, some, every one has got its own challenges. Some urban environments are very hard. Some are much easier. So it's an interesting mix, Chris, that causes that pressure. And as Katie said, it's just a mix of volumes. And just because it's suburban doesn't mean it always acts the same. And that's why we're building out these different formats, continue to learn which is the best for which type of site so we can target all kinds of sites.

Okay, that's helpful. And I apologize if I missed this, but The company came in at the high end of the third quarter revenue guidance, but at the low end of the SHAC margin guidance. So I'm just curious, what caused or what cost surprised you the most during the quarter?

Sure. I mean, really, it is that 100 basis points have added, you know, other OPEX that we called out. So that was, you know, the higher energy cost. R&M is running higher here just with equipment availability issues. which we think we'll be able to work through over time, and then to support a couple of the new openings. We're expecting all of that to persist into the fourth quarter. And then on COGS, we had a little bit, slightly more than we had anticipated beef deflation, but there's just a number of line items that are up sharply, like dairy up 30%, fryer oil, fries, ketchup. These are all rising at a pretty fast clip here. And, you know, really to address these inflationary pressures, that's why we took additional price in October.

Perfect. Thanks, guys.

Our next question is from Andrew Charles with Cowan & Co. Please proceed with your question.

Hi. Thank you for the question. This is Zachon for Andrew. My question is also on kiosk. Can you talk about what the impact is to store operating expenses and CapEx in 2023? Thank you.

Yeah, we're not going to break it out to that level of granularity at this time. But, you know, I'll kind of reiterate the comments that I said on kiosks before. And that is, you know, we do see a higher check with kiosk orders. And we, you know, where we have kiosks is a meaningful part of our in-shack sales and guests really do like to use it. And then, you know, finally, we're able to utilize labor better. We're able to run more efficient in the shacks where we have kiosks than where we don't.

Great, thank you.

Yep.

Our next question comes from Brian Vaccaro with the Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good morning, and thanks for taking my question. I wanted to circle back on the topic of relative value proposition. And you noted the average price of a burger, fry, and drink is below $14. And I'm curious what that looks like if you break that out between urban and suburban markets. And maybe you could comment more broadly or maybe even quantify a little bit. how you view the brand's relative value proposition across different types of markets and consumers that you're reaching as you move into the suburbs.

Yeah, I think that we've gotten better and better over the years at pricing tiers and understanding our guests generally in each market. And we shared our pricing strategy in this recent raise, everything from a 2% raise in where we see that we're in a good position range and we don't need to come up too much more to opportunities, maybe a 10% raise. By the way, some of those may be strong urban, some of them may be very high income suburban. And we're doing it in ways where we think we have demand and we think we have opportunity. And we also look around at our competitors and it's kind of more important than ever. We haven't had to spend a lot of time thinking about this, but in this inflationary environment, everybody's in the same boat of taking that price. So Yeah, you might see it below 14. You might see it up in the 15 range when you look at some of our more expensive, larger price takes places. But the point we're making with that is I think that's a pretty good value deal. Shackburger fries and a drink in that 14 plus range, that's pretty solid when you think about who we compare to, who you might choose to go after. Now, are we going to compete on that with traditional fast food bundles? No, we're not. And honestly, we're not going to. We can't. That's never been our brand. We're serving a totally different level of premium ingredients and experience in our restaurants. And that costs money. And we're going to charge the right amount for that. And we're going to keep going. And we'll see. Look, we're in a new time for all of us with the highest inflation we've all seen in our lifetimes. We're going to have to keep measuring, watching, and being sure that our consumers feel that great value. That's the work.

There's also, you know, while we talk about the average is below 14, there are a number of shacks that are below that. You know, as Randy talked about, we've taken a very tiered approach here to menu pricing. And we look at, you know, the signs of, you know, we have positive mix here with price increase. We're seeing guests trade up and, you know, adjusting for the fact that, you know, more people are just kind of returning to their normal habits and, you know, coming in in single orders or smaller groups relative to like the COVID times. You know, we're seeing people, you know, add on more to their check. We're seeing great strength in cold beverage. All these things, you know, leave us encouraged that our guests, you know, really does value our elevated premium and differentiated approach to menu innovation.

Okay, thanks. And one follow-up, if I could, Katie, on the labor line, it came in a little better than expected. I guess you could look at it as a percent of sales. It was down a little bit versus the second quarter, even with lower average weekly sales, I guess is one way to look at it. But could you just elaborate on, is there anything specific that's driving sort of a more favorable trend in that line? Is kiosks starting to show up? Are there any one-timer moving pieces that are worth highlighting? And then could you also just comment on year-on-year wage inflation? I understand the labor is tight still and you're investing in that line. But is year-on-year wage inflation starting to moderate at all on a year-over-year basis?

So we, you know, on the labor line for the quarter, you know, broadly speaking, we did see that nice acceleration. You know, we were not down as much as we, you know, seasonally would be in September. So that was a little bit of an offset. But, you know, really, you know, we're understaffed. And, you know, we're running more efficient than we have historically run. And, you know, we – That's a good thing and also an opportunity for us to continue to step up and drive more sales. As far as wage inflation is concerned, we made big investments in our teams last year. We talked about that $10 million investment. A lot of that was higher wages that happened in July. So we're lapping that a little bit here, but we're continuing to invest in our team members. We're raising wages where we think it's appropriate. and our teams are definitely seeing the benefit of tips here. There are some markets where they're making over $20 an hour.

Our next question comes from Jeffrey Bernstein with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Great. Thank you very much. This question is on broader sales trends. Randy, Shake Shack and Broader Fine or Fast Casual, versus QSRs. I mean, the gap has always been clear. But at the same time, we never thought we'd see drive-through units for Shake Shack, or I think you said highway units and food courts. Obviously, you're embracing demand wherever the consumer is looking for it. But what's the potential for further evolution? And they mentioned you're not going to have value meals, but seemingly offering some sort of bundle to attract perhaps a lower income consumer or national television? Where do you see the lines maybe blurring further between your segment and traditional QSR? And then I had one follow-up.

Yeah. Well, whoever said we wouldn't do a drive-thru or a food court? We never say never around here. And I think we're constantly evolving, right? I think we want to go and do the things that other brands are unwilling or unable to do. That doesn't mean that just... Here's how I think about places like, oh, a roadside. Yeah, you wouldn't see traditionally a brand or an ingredient to the level that Shake Shack does there, but that's what people want. And when I pull over and get gas on a long ride, I'm elated when I see something that has a better quality than I was expecting for my whole lifetime. We think there's huge opportunity to disrupt those type of environments, whether it's a baseball stadium. And by the way, we have both World Series teams. are selling shack burgers in their stadiums. I don't think it's an accident that those teams made the World Series because of their healthy diet of Shake Shack in their stadiums. But these are the things that we got to keep doing, whether it's in Korea or Malaysia or all the places we expand. So to your question, I think it's a huge opportunity for us to keep being who we are in traditional places where the opportunity is vast. That is what drive-thru is about. It's what our expansion of these categories can be all about. And I think we can continue to do it so that the next generation of burger eaters, like my kids, has a higher expectation of what they should get. It doesn't mean people are going to abandon fast food. Fast food has a place. It's great. It's a great deal. And there's a place for that. We've never been that, and we're trying to continue to do this at an elevated premium. Sorry, go ahead on your second question.

I was just going to follow up just because clearly impressive to see the comps accelerate through the third quarter and into October. It seems like it's counter to all the challenges everyone talks about from a macro standpoint. Just wondering whether you think it's more that you guys are unique because the acceleration could be led by, like you talked about, the post-Labor Day return to office. I mean, clearly you're somewhat different than a traditional restaurant. I mean, are there any signs of a slowing macro on traffic or mix? I mean, what are you looking for to see some consigns of a slowing macro, again, relative to what seems like an accelerating trend? But maybe that's distorted by just the wave of return to office in some major markets. Thank you.

Well, I think rather than distorted, I'd say it's certainly supported by that return to office. There's no question that's a little bit more of a wind in our back. But again, Again, as we've said, we generally trend a little bit higher income guests. That tends to be stronger right now than our lower income guests and people who shop that way. But I think we've got to be careful because there's going to be lower income weakness. There's going to be trade-outs. People are going to have to make these decisions. And I think we've got to prepare for a lot of scenarios in this next few quarters. So our guidance assumes kind of a blend of that continued trend return to the tailwinds of urban mobility, balanced with there's got to be some trade down. Also, in some of our places that require more travel-related destinations, the strong dollar isn't helping us, right? And you'll see that balance. So I think it's a measured puts and takes on both of those things happening. that led to our kind of mid single digit comp guidance for Q4 that we feel good about. And believe it or not, Q4 last year, people forget before Omicron hit, there was an accelerating trend in our business and many others in that November, December timeframe. We're actually up against some really strong comps in November and December of last year. And then as we all know, right around Christmas into New Year's, it kind of fell off with Omicron and everybody you knew was testing positive, right? That's the trend. But that is actually a headwind for us in the comp line as we look at P11 and 12.

Thank you.

Our next question is with Drew North from Baird. Please proceed with your question.

Great. Thanks for taking the question. I had a follow-up on the margin outlook. Given the current sales trajectory and cost outlook and the inflammation, of the latest price increase. I was hoping you could provide some perspective how you're thinking about the annualized margin rate exit 2022. Not asking about Q4 specifically, that guidance is clear, but maybe how we should be thinking about 2023 based on what you're seeing right now. And maybe any early indication of how you're thinking about commodity or labor inflation into next year. Thanks.

Yeah, so we're not going to be giving any outlook on 2023, specifically today. You know, the puts and takes of our 4Q margin guidance for 16% to 18%. Look, you know, some of that will come where we fall on sales and how much price realization we capture with the most recent price increase. We've taken, you know, an appropriately conservative approach, assuming that we have about 50% to 70% of that price increase. and how, you know, urban mobility trends play out. I also have to just mention, you know, we have 17 new shacks that we're opening between now, we expect to open between now and the end of the year. And, you know, we are taking a more conservative approach to thinking about how that can contribute to our revenue and our profits, but it's possible that some of those could come in ahead of expectations. And then, you know, finally, you know, the overarching, you know, kind of question about, you know, where our T&E ends up landing as we're supporting all these openings as well and the impact to our overall system just from having to borrow some teams to support those open. So that's how I would be thinking about kind of the bottom end to the top end of that range on that front. And then, you know, we do expect inflationary pressures to persist. We're going to probably be investing more in our team members into 2023. and there's likely to be some puts and takes on the inflation line for our food and paper costs, but it's probably going to be more inflationary next year.

Our next question is from John Ivanko with J.P. Morgan. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, thank you. Randy, at the beginning of the call, you mentioned a goal to, I guess, have an intense operational focus, and If you haven't already addressed it on the call, and I'm sorry if you've maybe touched on various parts of it, could you talk about what exactly that means? I heard – maybe your staffing levels are a little bit less than what you'd like and you'd want to increase hours in certain stores. But what are the major opportunities that you see operationally for the brand in the near term? And is that something that you're hearing from customers? I mean, I don't know exactly what that would be. Maybe it would be the service or food quality is not as consistent, things that I don't think really have changed in the past couple of years. But I just wanted to see what would have driven that comment from your perspective.

Thanks, John. Yeah, let's start with this. As I said, most of our gains are coming in the shack, right? The last couple quarters, we've started to return to more of, obviously, our digital is retaining and really strong, but our gains are coming in the restaurant. It tells you people are coming back. People want to hang out at Shake Shack and want to come in there and hang out. With that, you've got just a return to increased foot traffic and how things work in the shacks. On top of the digital channels that never existed a few years ago, right? So we've got to get better. It starts with what you said with staffing. We're not staffed everywhere all the time where we want to be. Now, there's some shacks out there that I'm incredibly proud of day in, day out that are just crushing it on every aspect of those goals. And there are some that are not. And we need to do better on that. And where we are, we are very self-aware. And a lot of it begins and almost always ends with being fully staffed. That's what it's about. But it's also about clean restaurants. It's about making sure we're keeping up with R&M. You saw that be a little elevated this quarter. You're going to see that as we continue to keep our restaurants clean, working, and going. And as our restaurants, some of them, get a little bit older. It's about flow. It's about how do we move food? How do we continue to evolve from all of these kind of ups and downs of COVID-related operational decisions, whether it's in packaging or flow or digital pickup with delivery drivers and all of these things that are in a flow and they're evolving. And we've just got to keep that focus. And so much of our focus has been on digital and will remain there. But as people return, it's another call to action for us to just get in our restaurants and be relentless about how we execute. So to your question about guests, our likelihood to recommend our kind of scores that we measure have only improved over time. So we feel really good about that. But we're still not satisfied. We still need to be better.

And that's where we're going to be spending a lot of our time. Helpful. Thank you.

We have now reached the end of our question and answer session. And I would now like to turn the call back over to Randy Cooney, CEO for Closing Comments.

Thanks so much, everybody. We appreciate all your time and hope to see you at the Shack soon. Be well. Take care.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.