BJRI
#I will start.
I'd just start off by saying our trends were consistent with what you've seen in terms of timing from an industry perspective from NavTrak or Black Box from that perspective.
And I'd say because of our focus on lunch and value, lunch was a bit stronger from a year-over-year perspective as we weren't promoting broader or much on the dinner front.
But in terms of weekends or weekdays or other than things that are explained promotionally or from a menu perspective, there weren't big shifts.
The only other thing that we don't have an exact explanation for, but it just did seem like spring break timing was not as beneficial in those traditional high-value ---+ spring break is helpful for everyone, but we tend to see nice bumps during those weeks.
And when the laps we're going against us, this seemed to hurt a little bit more than when they were back and helping us.
Overall, it's just our perspective that we just didn't see the benefit from the Easter and spring break season that we have had before.
Some of that's probably weather.
But in general, just the calendar just didn't seem to benefit as much seasonally as it has in the past is the only other color I could give.
I would say and jumping on to Greg's comments there, our weekdays are starting to weaken, but that's as expected because we were promoting lunch.
Most of our lunch offers were through the weekdays, so we saw that stronger.
I still believe, <UNK>, what you tend to see in casual dining is when there is a reason to celebrate, events, casual dining tends to be stronger.
I think and that's because the way the competition might be with fast casual as well.
So you start off January pretty strong because people are still in celebratory modes, some of the people still have vacations those first couple weeks, and then as you start to get back into the rest of the normalcy of your patterns it seems to have gotten softer.
I think we tend to see that through our business.
When there's reasons to celebrate, whether it's Valentine's Day even days off of school whether it might be a Memorial Day, a Veterans Day, et cetera, those tend to be very big days for us.
That's what we've seen frankly over the last two years or so.
We're looking forward to Mother's Day and Father's Day and graduation season just around the corner.
<UNK>, we're not going to make any longer-term forecasts, it's obviously somewhat dependent ---+ that's why we're working as hard as we are on the cost structure side.
It is our point of view is the more progress we can make on that front, then we can take less price and even widen our value benefit and gap here.
So that is our strategy around it.
How that works out is going to be somewhat dependent on how successful we are on that front, and whether what's happening competitively et cetera.
But all the data that we are looking at is ---+ if you balance it regionally like when it's a little deceiving, not deceiving or you just have to keep in mind that when we say mid-2%s, we have a disproportionate amount of California pricing in that number.
More so than other concepts that aren't as California focused.
So when we look at it regionally, we think we're doing a good job of sticking to that strategy where both our nominal pricing is in line but are effective pricing after our promotional spend is, if anything, widening the gap from a value perspective competitively.
I don't think it's that impactful.
We pick up the Sunday, but as a result of the rest of the week's a little bit softer because that would have been a spring break week in that first quarter.
So you get a Sunday, but then you lose it during the middle of the week on the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdays when everybody would've on a spring percent.
So I think net-net, it's actually immaterial to where we are right now.
Well, I'll try and take most of that question, I don't know if somebody wants add on at the end here.
But we internally still believe that Texas is going to continue to be softer.
If you've got a new restaurant still coming online from a competitive intrusion standpoint, as well as frankly construction in a lot of our or a few of our big restaurant areas is really impeding a acceleration of comp sales there.
So when I think about building models for BJ's and where comps are going to be this year, I take that into consideration even though we're seeing a little bit more pricing outside of California.
And we're seeing stronger sales maybe in other markets, with Texas taking us down from that standpoint.
I do think, as Greg <UNK> mentioned, part of our plan will be that the a little bit more incentive based some of those Texas markets.
Because we do know, as Kevin also mentioned, that our guests, certain guests in those markets they are looking for deals.
That's a market with a lot of restaurants out there, and sometimes they're making a decision based on what they would be the best value of that day and that best value tends to be a deal in front of them versus maybe everyday low pricing.
It's really a combination of those two things,
There's no question that the energy may not directly impact family income, but it's a darker cloud in Texas than it's going to be elsewhere.
So I do think for that reason people are a little more or less confident about their future than elsewhere, and that's clearly impacting it.
But look, the other thing I would add is, we're looking at this as an opportunity to make our concept even better.
There's nothing we can do about oil prices, and frankly the number restaurants that are being built out there.
And our attitude about it is, we run great restaurants, we run still, if not among the busiest restaurants in the state of Texas and we love Texas and we make a lot of money in Texas.
So it's how do we leverage that position and the volume we're already doing to offset these negative trends maybe a little differently.
And it's a challenge that maybe we get better as a concept that we can take to other geographies as part of figuring out this challenge of how we get better as a concept in doing this.
We all wish it were all smooth sailing and that's why we build restaurants all over the country is you are going have these ups and downs and counterbalances.
We look at it as a challenge to get better, but at the end of the day, to Greg's point, the reality of the math is Texas is going to in all likelihood continue to be growing at a lower rate and being a drag on comps for this year.
But it's our goal to make that as little a drag as possible.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, everyone.
Thanks.
