BJ's Restaurants, Inc. Barclays 19th Annual Global Consumer Conference

There you go. Gentlemen. Morning.

Sure. Yeah, speaking from the BJ's perspective, specifically in what we see, from our consumer perspective, we are not seeing a lot of stress in the consumer, right? We continue to see strong traffic-driven growth. We continue to see it across age and income cohort, across geographies, across day parts. Now again across channels. Dine-in throughout this whole thing has been very, very strong. Off-premise as well now. So, we are not seeing a lot of stress. If I take a step back and hypothesize, I think the way I look at it is I see a couple of things going on. When you look at all of the data out there, you have to assume that the consumer is under some level of stress. I look at kind of two things. One is what I call durable and disposable transactions.

I think we compete for what are pretty durable transactions. So we call it the social splurge space. Whether it is the weekly, couple of times a month, I am going out with friends, I am going out with family. It is an experience-based thing. I think people protect those things. I think the disposable transactions maybe tend to be more of my during the week quick lunch that I am going to grab or a quick dinner on the way home during lunch, before or after practice, one of those types of things. I think you are willing to kind of give up on some of those things and make your lunch or eat at home, to protect those kind of social occasions. That is where we compete, that is where we do well. I think that is potentially a dynamic why we are doing well.

You look at the fact that we're not alone in doing well, right? You see there's a number of our contemporaries who are doing well right now as well. You look, then you get into the full service category. I think this is where you start to see the spread of winners and losers. I think, in a time like this, where consumers, when they're giving a transaction, they want to make sure it's a great exchange. I think the folks that are winning are the folks that are investing in their value proposition holistically, right? Their product, their service, their atmosphere, and making sure they have a place where their team members and their guests want to be. Those folks are winning more.

I think thankfully over the past couple of years, we've made pretty significant progress across all those areas.

Because you mentioned some people might just eat at home during the week, so maybe you feel it on the week, but you make it up on the weekend or Well, so I think when I'm making that distinction, to me, again, it goes back to kind of the disposable or the durable transactions, right?

I'm not sure that for that kind of couple of times a week when I'm getting together with friends and family and I want to have that social occasion, that I'm really competing so much with food at home. But I do think that if you think about, am I going to get a fast food lunch during the week or do that at dinner to just fill a convenience occasion. That's where that choice might be coming into play more so I can protect that social occasion. So that's kind of how I see it.