Brinker International, Inc. 2027 Q1 Earnings Call

The floor is yours. Thank you, Joanna, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call.

Here with me today are Kevin Hochman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Brinker International and President of Chili's, and Mika Ware, Chief Financial Officer. Results for our first quarter were released earlier this morning and are available on our website at brinker.com. Kevin and Mika will first make prepared comments related to our strategic initiatives and operating performance. Then we will open the call for your questions. Before beginning our comments, I would like to remind everyone of our safe harbor regarding forward-looking statements. During our call, management may discuss certain items which are not based entirely on historical facts. Any such items should be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

All such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. Such risks and uncertainties include factors more completely described in this morning's press release and the company's filings with the SEC. On the call, we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures that management uses in its review of the business and believes will provide insight into the company's ongoing operations. With that said, I will turn the call over to Kevin.

Thank you, Kim, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us as we share insights from our first quarter and our outlook for the remainder of fiscal 2027. Q1 Chili's same-store sales were +10%, outperforming the casual dining industry by 720 basis points. This strong result was lapping a +21% in Q1 fiscal 2026 and a +14% in Q1 fiscal 2025 for a 3-year cumulative comp of +52%. Our Q1 sales result was driven by traffic increases of 6% versus year ago. Chili's traffic has now beat the industry the past 12 quarters. I am proud of our Chili's team rolling industry-leading comps from Q1 last year and 2 years ago with even more very strong comps in Q1 this year.

Our guest experience improvements and our everyday value leadership continue to support a powerful flywheel of traffic, sales growth, margin expansion, and reinvestment in our business. This steady approach is why the business will continue to win. Some have repeatedly said we could not possibly continue to comp on top of big comp numbers. Our Q1 result, putting three consecutive years of double-digit comp growth driven by traffic gains, provides ample support that our strategy is sustainable, even with a difficult macro. In Q2, we feel good about our ability to not only comp positive, but deliver a mid-single digit comp for two reasons. We continue to convert new guests into regular guests, which means sustainable growth regardless of the prior year comp, and we have very strong commercial and operational plans to keep the flywheel going.

While it is clear the consumer is challenged, we feel we are positioned to continue to win in this environment through market share growth. Our experience improvements, combined with our everyday value leadership, position us to win trips. A sustainable traffic-led strategy based on the fundamentals of why a consumer goes out to eat will continue to win the day. Now let us talk about the specific food and hospitality initiatives in Q1 that help keep the momentum going. We continued our advertising and operations focus on the Big Crispy chicken sandwich, and it was a key driver of incremental traffic throughout the quarter. Customers are responding to the size and quality of the sandwich versus fast food, as well as the price certainty of $10.99 for a large and abundant complete meal.

Customer reception to the Big Crispy has been very positive, and our traffic momentum is proving the sandwich reception has been great. In Q1, we maintained the 55 sandwiches sold per restaurant per day we saw in Q4. Customer social media comments tell the story. Quotes include, "Those commercials weren't lying. This thing is the bomb," and, "Chili's is making it affordable to go out to eat again." In addition to continued focus on the Big Crispy, we also completed the upgrade of several lower mixing menu items during the quarter. During our Investor Day, we outlined plans to renovate most of the remaining 40% of the menu that has not been touched over the next few years.

Recent menu changes included upgraded ice cream to the famous Blue Bell premium brand, the addition of sausage as a new protein to our high mixing pasta menu, the return of cheesecake, a highly requested non-chocolate dessert, and a newly renovated Kids Pepper Pals menu with the addition of ice cream floats, Shirley Temples, as well as the return of grilled chicken bites, cheese quesadillas, and Mini Molten. On the hospitality side, ongoing simplification, removing friction for our team members and managers, and North of 6 initiatives are continuing to improve the guest experience. Q1 was the first quarter we removed GWAP from our General Manager bonus, but as planned, this does not stop our customer experience improvements. Chili's Google ratings hit an all-time best in Q1 of 4.3. Key operational initiatives this quarter focused on the fundamentals of making our existing menu items more consistently.

We had another full court press on Big Crispy execution, focusing on scratch-made batter and hand-breading perfection, as well as ensuring fillets go out freshly cooked, hot and fresh every time. With the sausage addition to our pasta menu, we took the opportunity to retrain teams on pasta perfection, which includes how to cook the pasta for optimal taste and texture, as well as retraining on all pasta menu item recipes. Our last big ops swing for the quarter was the initiative called Staff to Grow Your Business. With all the incremental traffic coming in, we believed it was the perfect time to roll out North of 6 best practices on staffing, so restaurants can continue to take on more guests without sacrificing the customer experience.

As part of this big swing, we also retrained all above restaurant leaders and managers on how to write perfect labor schedules based on North of 6 learnings, which is one of the most difficult tasks for our restaurant managers. While our competitors were hard at work launching new items and new offers, we continued to keep operations focused on the fundamentals of delivering a great restaurant experience. We believe this focus will allow us to spend more time on what is important versus fringe limited time offers that will not have a lasting impact on the business. Marketing continues to bring guests in, and our restaurant operations continues to bring them back. Now I want to give an update on Maggiano's.

I am pleased to report the successful rollout of our new banquet operations program in Q1, where we have, one, restaffed our banquet sales managers we moved during COVID. Two, streamlined banquet execution. And three, created a single point ownership of the entire process to ensure guests receive great service through the entire banquet planning and event day experience. This cross-functional banquet team was formed back in January, and we are now seeing great results from these efforts. Banquet sales were up 11% for the quarter versus year ago. While banquets are only 15% of the Maggiano's business, this initiative is important for two key reasons. One, it shows that we can turn around Maggiano's results with focus in deploying cross-functional resource at a single-minded goal.

And two, Banquets are Maggiano's number one marketing vehicle to introduce guests to the brand as the vast majority of banquet guests have never eaten at a Maggiano's. Big congratulations to the Maggiano's team for rebuilding our banquet capability, an important part of the brand's DNA. Before I close out my prepared remarks, I also want to provide an update on the industry check averages we shared at Investor Day. We were recently informed by our third-party data aggregator, Black Box Intelligence, that there were errors in the industry benchmarks for casual dining per person average. Importantly, they confirmed our PPA remains below the competition, though the differential is now narrower than what we previously have quoted. The new data is expected to be included in the November update. We are confident our overall experience and price point provide the best value to guests.

One last piece of quick recognition before I close out. A big thank you to our Bedford Chili's GM, Nikki Castro, and our Pinnacle Park Chili's GM, Kara Miller, and their restaurant teams for allowing me to work hourly team member roles for a week in October. I learned some really important things, including, while it's easier to work at a Chili's today than it was five years ago, there's still lots of opportunity to make it a whole lot easier. Thank you, Nikki, and thank you, Kara, and thank you to your teams. As we discussed during our September Investor Day, the Chili's business has been rebuilt for the long-term sustainable growth, and our focus is on playing offense to keep this exceptional performance going.