TXRH
#The wage inflation looks like it was a little bit higher, bumping up against 4.5% for the quarter.
Definitely a little bit of a step-up in Q4.
It continues to be a little bit higher, but I think it came in around 115% or so for the quarter.
So I think we continue to see it stabilize versus last year
Hey, Chris.
The turnover, the growth in turnover percentage has definitely slowed.
That said, it's still in our minds way too high.
No that's doesn't include any of the overtime pay changes.
That's just wage rate inflation.
It includes minimum wage changes in certain states, but it has been getting more intense all year in 2016.
It varies like it always varies for us.
So there are some at 0% or close to 0% and there are some that are a good ways above 1%, but it does vary tremendously, and by item I might say as well.
Predominantly, yes.
I wouldn't say if there is a correlation there or a relationship with that.
We really haven't seen a regional our menu tier specific relationship on traffic growth or lack thereof.
You are welcome.
Hey, how are you.
This is <UNK>.
On the franchise acquisition, we did buy all the real estate.
So all that land and buildings we own all of that, it was all part of the purchase price.
And the franchise acquisitions, we are looking to get a certain return.
We will accept a slightly lower return pro forma on a franchise acquisition than we would a new store since we already know what the sales are and there is a lot of sales history in these franchise locations, and some of these restaurants that we acquired were some of our oldest in the concept.
There's a little bit less risk there for us in that regard.
I think share buyback has been one of those things where we have always had the opportunity to be opportunistic in our share buyback strategy, and we're going to continue to act in that manner.
That's what we've done historically and what we will continue to do that.
Obviously we have a lot of flexibility in our balance sheet to, if and when we decide to repurchase stock, we can certainly do it in a pretty big way pretty quickly.
Thank you.
For those restaurants it really depends.
It could weigh up the comps a little bit.
They start ramping up the growth, and in some cases that's exactly what happens.
Now, you're talking 27 restaurants on a comparable sales base of 370.
So chances are the impact on the 370 is going to be practically de minimus unless the comps are just humongous numbers.
If they are a few percentage points better or worse than the comparable restaurants, it's not going to have much of an impact just because our existing base is so large now.
This is <UNK> again.
I would say on G&A, one reason why on some of the years it's grown faster than revenue has been a couple lawsuits that we've settled because we include those in G&A versus somewhere else on the P&L.
Another reason is we have made some investments in our future which we believe will pay off, with both in the Bubba's concept infrastructure in Bubba's and also international, in our international group.
We made some investments and we have been able to keep generally our run rate in G&A in the low [$5 millions].
We've also had a challenge with some of the stock-based compensation, which has been a little higher because our stock price has been quite a bit higher as well which impacted some of our growth.
But our target internally is to grow G&A in a normal year, if there is such a thing, less than the rate of revenue growth.
Now, it will get tougher as our growth in percentage terms, unit growth, slows a little bit over time.
30 restaurants a year in a larger base is just a little bit lower unit growth.
It will continue to be a challenge for us, but we definitely ---+ again, we talk about it all the time and we think we have a very good balance and discipline in how we are investing our G&A dollars and holding our folks accountable to their budgets.
Probably the biggest one is our Texas Roadhouse app that some other concepts have rolled, and the app being an app where you can put your name on our call-ahead list, you can pay your bill and you can order to go from an app on your phone.
That is being rolled out as we speak across the country, probably won't be in the entire country until at least the end of this year, maybe early next year would be the case.
That's probably the most significant thing happening right now.
As far as any third-party delivery, anything like that, not even really in that game today.
We are very protective of the in-restaurant experience and so we've never really pushed, number one, to-go sales.
We want folks to come and dine in our restaurant and enjoy the hospitality, and likewise on delivery, same thing.
Could there be an exception.
Sure.
A New York City type situation, if we had a restaurant in New York City, I could see us maybe doing that, but I would say limited appetite at this point for us to get into the delivery game.
No.
We're still doing bump-outs and those bump-outs are still helpful to us.
We're up to, I think, about 175, 180 bump-outs now and we probably have 40 in the pipeline.
I don't know how many of those will get done this year, probably 25 to 30, somewhere in that range will get done this year.
Those are full steam ahead.
Star Bars, most of the system is done.
Star Bars is more of a helping us stay relevant longer term in the future than it is a sales-bumping investment in the short term.
In our restaurants, I would say I think nothing's changed in that regard.
I think it's just a question of, we don't get too crazy over a couple of months of sales data that haven't been as strong as where we've been the last few years.
We're also cognizant of the whole industry has tailed off quite a bit as well.
So that kind of tells us, we are still packed, we are still growing traffic.
We still have more people coming in our restaurants this year than last year.
We still feel like we've got some good momentum going, and sometimes you have to just weather the storms and not think you've got something wrong with your model and start changing things that maybe you regret in the long run just for the sake of a little bit of short-term heartburn.
This is <UNK>.
We have already had calorie counts on the menus in New York and we've seen no change in the product mix versus what they had before.
Just want to say thanks for joining us tonight and have a great night.
Thanks.
Thank you all.
