Hi, good afternoon. I'm Sharon Zackfia with William Blair, and I'm very happy to have with us today from Pinstripes, President and CEO, Dale Schwartz. Sitting in the audience here would be our CFO, Tony Qiu, because nobody can pronounce his last name. Pinstripes operates 17 large, high-volume sites with locations spanning from Connecticut to California, featuring chef-driven Italian-American fare, combined with entertainment, such as bowling, bocce, and flexible event spaces. The concept's broad consumer appeal is illustrated by healthy AUVs of $8.6 million last fiscal year, with nearly half of sales from private events, and of which about two-thirds of those sales are corporate. Before handing the podium over to Dale, I have to tell you, there's a complete list of research disclosures and potential conflicts of interest at williamblair.com.
Well, that, that sounded pretty serious. Thank you, Sharon. So before I dive in, can I just get a quick show of hands, who has been to Pinstripes before? Ah, terrific. Okay, so we've got an educated audience. Now, good to meet you. Oh, I gotta use this to click ahead. Wrong clicker. So before diving in, we opened Orlando just about 4 or 5 weeks ago. So let me just show you a quick video just to bring it to life. So let me just first put in context what we're doing, just to the extent anybody hasn't heard the story. So that's me on the far right, about 58 years ago. I grew up in Cleveland, bowled as a small child.
After grad school, I was in Manhattan, this is late 1980s, with a private equity group, was gonna buy a bowling alley at 74th and Broadway. Didn't do it. Was gonna do it with a few friends, got busy. Coined the name Pinstripes then, bowling pin, upscale pinstripe suit. Was in the biotech business and pharmacy business for a number of years, and 20 years ago, said, "Life's too short. Time to go back to the future and create a business that lets people gather in a quality way." In our case, we combine phenomenal food, if many of you know Hillstone Restaurant Group around the country, it's that level of food, coupled with, in our case, bocce, bowling, and then banquet space. So Sharon noted, nearly half our business at a lot of our locations, private events. We do 1,000 every year.
So Pinstripes is 100 yards from here. Deloitte, we're hosting a 400-person buyout in about an hour and a half. So that's Exhibit A, Tuesday afternoon. We've got a sizable, exciting corporate event. We went public just about six months ago, so we kind of stole the term LIFO. We were the last company to go public, end of calendar 2023, and the first to list January 2nd. Went public via SPAC, and in the last six months, we've really done three things, and then I'll tell the rest of the story after kind of the highlight as to what we've been focused on the last six months. One is, we certainly successfully transitioned from being a private company for 18 years to a public company, and I'll touch briefly on that.
Number two, we have found over the last number of months some very substantial $10 million plus in cost savings that are gonna flow through our model. And then number three, we're keeping pace with some exciting growth, which I'll touch on. So we rang the bell. It was quite exciting. We raised, in the aggregate, about $70 million just vis-a-vis going public. Paid, of course, some various expenses to bankers and lawyers. And we did all this to position ourselves for exciting growth for the next 10-15 years. We've added a few more finance team members. The difference, of course, compliance with being a public company. I think we've quite effortlessly transitioned and done. And I think most importantly, all the focus of our team is running the business.
So there's some preoccupation with being a public company. Today's Exhibit A, but most of our time is focused on running the business. Quite importantly, we have found over 10 million of very exciting cost savings just over the last few months, and that'll translate into $10 million plus in cost savings. This is everything from hourly salaried labor to better and lower credit card fees and some more aggressive negotiation with suppliers and internet costs. So very substantial. That 10 million, and I won't get ahead of Tony, we'll formally give guidance in a few weeks' time with our earnings, but we expect to see at least 500 basis point improvements in our store contribution margins, thanks to that 10 million. So that's very substantial, and we're quite comfortable and excited about it.
We also, on the expansion front, ... Since January, we've opened 2 locations. So top, top left, that's Garden State Plaza. We opened in February with Westfield. We took over the Uniqlo and did 2 levels. We've opened up very strong. Orlando was the video you just saw. We opened in April. Generally, Orlando, most restaurateurs will tell you that you'll do 50% more sales than any other market. It could. It's opened up very strong, and it's been busy, and our team, to its credit, has been executing quite well. Walnut Creek, we're taking over-- That might look a little like a Crate & Barrel 'cause it was, so that'll open in a couple months. That's Apple right next to us. To the right of that is a brand-new $70 million Life Time, so we're quite excited to open up Walnut Creek.
And then Coral Gables will open August, September, and that's about a 25-minute drive from our Aventura, Miami location, so that'll be a nice cluster. So we certainly have opened up these locations. We also Jacksonville, that's a location we're doing with Simon. We're taking over the West Elm right next to Nordstrom's. That'll open next year. We announced and signed two new leases in Greater Seattle. Bellevue is one of them. Downtown Seattle, Lake Union, if anyone knows where Amazon's headquarters are, we're gonna be right on a stunning lake in Seattle. And then also, as it relates to our expansion, we announced just a few weeks ago a new partnership with Newmark. So Newmark is now our master broker that we're using all over the country, and overseas as well.
So we're in some discussions in London and Australia and Tel Aviv and elsewhere to possibly do locations overseas, and Newmark is gonna be a terrific partner just to augment everything we're doing expansion-wise. So just to share an overview before we more formally head into any Q&A, everything we're doing is we try to be best in class. So this happens to be Cleveland, which was what we modeled the Orlando build-out after. You know, this is 27,000 sq ft, 20,000 sq ft first level, 7,000 sq ft patio. We're the key exciting anchor to about a $300 million, at the time, east side of Cleveland mixed-use project. Us, Marriott, Shake Shack, REI, Whole Foods, et cetera, and we're the key anchor. Everything we do is back to the future.
Call it that quality, gather, spend time together, so we're the antithesis of the metaverse. We're certainly not a place that you're gonna come and put artificial Oculus glasses. It's real quality time together, and to put in context, when I started the business 18 years ago, we opened May 2007 in Northbrook. The iPhone was introduced 2 months after we opened, so all the reasons that we wanted to drive that good old-fashioned, three-generation spending time together has just been exacerbated by the iPhone and then, of course, COVID. COVID just got all of us a little tired spending time on Zoom, and hence, the importance of just spending that quality time together.
We do it with a phenomenal menu, so 75% of our sales is F&B, so quite unlike a lot of our peers, Bowlero, Dave & Buster's, Main Event, and others, that Topgolf, it leads sales with gaming. We're a restaurant with entertainment, not a bowling alley with food. It's a difficult stereotype to constantly break, but it's quite important. So you'll come to Pinstripes as a destination for lunch and dinner and drinks, or you may come and bowl and enjoy the same filet mignon or maple-glazed salmon while you're playing bocce or while you're at the fire pit. So we can, we, we can do it all. We certainly have very distinctive locations. These are large, 25-30 thousand sq ft. Top left, that's San Mateo. That's Pinstripes, 8,000, 22,000. Second level, that's Apple below and next to us.
Oak Brook, you could head over later tonight if you'd like to. Bottom left, I just showed you, and there's Paramus, where we kind of reconfigured a Uniqlo and did, in this case, 9,000 sq ft, 20,000 sq ft below grade, and then just did a stunning patio. All our locations, we love outdoor space, loved it pre-COVID, love it even more post-COVID, so we've got stunning fire pits, outdoor bocce, and the feel of Pinstripes is Napa Valley meets Tuscany. So Sharon and I just happened to get back from Lake Como. I had a wedding, and she was there with her son, but that's the ambiance of Pinstripes, and it's timeless. So we tend to stay away from bright blue neon lights and some of the things that some others do.
It's quality, timeless, for whether it's a six-year-old or parent, singles, couples, grandparents, anybody in the community. I mentioned a moment ago, but we lead with F&B, so 75% of our sales, heavy food and beverage. That happens to break down about 65/35, so 65 food, 35 liquor, and then depending on the location, about 50% of our sales is private events... So that's almost split 60/40, corporate/social. So this is everything from weddings every weekend, birthday parties, bar mitzvahs, high school reunions, corporate events from the Deloitte 400 next door in a couple of hours, to team building. We've seen terrific trends post-COVID. The trend towards the suburbs, where most of our locations are based. Companies are needing team-building events just to keep the retention amongst companies. So the Tuesday, Wednesday is the new Friday.
You know, if somebody's working three days a week, it's Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and we're seeing a significant uptick in corporate events, in particular during the weekdays. Gaming, we stayed just true to bowling and bocce, so it's that Italian-American duality, bocce, bowling, Italian-American cuisine, Italian-American wine, that we stay true to. So we've been asked in the past, should we add curling to cold locations in Edina? No, you're not gonna see dart throwing, or axe throwing at Pinstripes. So, you'll see bowling and bocce that lives well with weddings and the events and people spending that quality time. Gaming continues to creep up, so it is about 23%-25% of sales. It's highly lucrative, 100% gross profit, so we're constantly doing exciting initiatives to drive that increase in gaming sales.
Events I mentioned, quite importantly, so we have 3-5 sales team members per location selling private events. And we're also spending $millions on a digital-paid digital ad campaign, whether it's, Facebook or Google AdWords to drive leads, all in the context of driving that private event business. And it's very profitable. So food costs are lower with events, liquor cost is lower, labor is lower. So where our event business does better, it helps margins. Our food costs have never been lower, over the last couple of years, even with any of the inflationary sensitivities. Our liquor cost is lower than ever, again, thanks to events, and labor continues to benefit. In terms of our expansion, so this happens to be Bethesda. Stunning location, that's 8,000 sq ft.
First level, 20,000 sq ft, a 7,000 sq ft patio. So this we're a key anchor with Federal Realty in Bethesda. As I mentioned, we're currently in 10 states, 13 markets. We've been able to show that we can go east and west and north and south. And as we've grown, we started this about 5 years ago, we have forged some very exciting partnerships with the leading real estate developers in the country. So $40 million, prior to going public, we raised an equity from Brookfield, Simon, Macerich, LaSalle, Westfield. They all invested equity in conjunction with us signing leases, and we expect to continue to do so. And they did that in addition to providing us with very substantial tenant improvement monies.
So we've already been, call it, given or provided with about $100 million in tenant improvement dollars that allows us to expand our business in a somewhat capital-light manner that I'll touch on. As by way of example, this is Topanga. So Westfield, in this case, took over the Sears, spent over $200 million reconfiguring the Sears into luxury entertainment. So now it's Hermès, Dior, Pinstripes, Food Hall, STK Steak coming next to us. Terrific example of that type of repurposing of Sears, and you're probably all hearing and seeing it, whether it's Sears, JCPenney, Macy's, these opportunities are happening all over the country.
I could rattle off a lot of other malls and lifestyle centers that we're looking at, but often landlords come to us because we can bring 800,000-1 million people, quality people and customers, coming through Pinstripes that shop and spend time at the rest of the co-tenants, and hence they lean into us. Topanga, we opened, as I mentioned, in September. Aventura, we opened just in December, second, third level. This was the reconfiguration of a Sears. Coral Gables will open in a few months' time. Loews Hotel opened about a year ago. This is a 3 million sq ft mixed-use project. Landlord is the Jose Cuervo family, so they spared no cost, during COVID. It's a spectacular project. Garden State, I mentioned, and then far right, Orlando, I mentioned as well.
When we're doing any location, square footage, we usually stay in the 25,000-30,000 sq ft. King of Prussia Mall, we happen to be looking at a 16,000 sq ft location, two levels. So in the right circumstance, we'll tighten up the square footage to get into a prime property. We love second-level space or two-level space. So Garden State Plaza, you go in and downstairs, right up the street here in downstairs to river level. More often, you go in and you go upstairs. So we love the adventure and feel when you get two-level space, and it helps the economics and negotiations with landlords because it's difficult often to find a tenant for second-level space. Co-tenants are very important to us. We love being next to the Apples and Life Time and others, and vice versa.
Hotels, we love being near, just given our event business. Tony will touch on this in a couple of weeks, and we've mentioned in the past, but just illustratively, any location we open, by year two, we expect and want to do at least $9 million in sales. Venue-level EBITDA margin, at least 17%, and I think generally speaking, that'll be further aided and benefited from the cost savings and 500 basis points that I mentioned. Our gross build-out, ground up, we can build a Pinstripes for $8 million-$10 million. Landlords are often giving us, in that example, $7 million or $8 million of that. So our net cost to Pinstripes can be a quite modest $2 million-$3 million, and hence, some very attractive cash-on-cash returns of 40%, and paybacks as tight as two years.
So we saw that in Oak Brook, in Bethesda, San Mateo, by way of example. White space, to just touch on, so we currently have our 19 locations. We plan on opening 6-8 locations a year, starting calendar 2025. The go public was part of the rationale for that, not just the capital raise, but the added excitement amongst landlords that are constantly courting us. And there's kind of three prongs that we will find sites. One is what we characterize as retail. So retail is lifestyle centers, malls, where we will, like Oak Brook and, Garden State Plaza, open locations in, generally speaking, only A or A-plus malls. Our view has been that there, there will continue to be a bifurcation of shopping centers in the country.
The A-minus or A malls will get better because the mall owners will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to add all the exciting tenants. Those B or C malls, those are the ones that will get hurt or killed or go out of business, and those are the ones that we stay away from. We'll continue to find locations as such. Iconic locations, that's what we're doing in Seattle. Seattle, we're not going into Bellevue Square, we're going 2 blocks away, a stunning 2-level Pinstripes next to a brand-new 42-story Amazon. There's certain occasions, like next door here, where we characterize it as iconic. We don't have to be in a mall lifestyle center per se. We're unique enough that we could do something really iconic and exciting, like Restoration Hardware or Life Time Fitness or other somewhat iconic brands.
The third example. So if anybody's been to ICR in Orlando, we considered a couple of years ago, a group that bought the Grande Lakes Ritz-Carlton JW Marriott. They wanted to put us right next to the Ritz-Carlton, right in the front of the entire resort. So both in the US and overseas, there could be occasion where we go into resorts. Picture Atlantis in the Bahamas, that Brookfield owns, or others where we can quite materially help the rack rate or the convention business, and then we'll do a whole lot of event business and open play. So that's yet another potential prong, as is potentially airports. So we've talked to Westfield about LAX International, possibly doing some exciting Pinstripes, maybe in the future, entertainment.
Of course, there's restaurants and retail in airports, so that could be one day to come. That we'll do in the U.S., only in all company-owned. So company-owned, somewhat capital-light. In parallel, call it overseas, all the same international or all the same experiential trends that pre-COVID existed may have lagged in the international markets by a couple of years. I think our view is that COVID just accelerated that, and there's no lag. So when people in the U.K. and Australia and Israel and elsewhere, everybody had to shop online and nobody could go out, so a lot of retailers got hurt. So we will, overseas, more look to grow with partners, so more of an even more capital-light, royalty model like Topgolf, Cheesecake, Crate & Barrel, and others.
So back to the Newmark discussion, we're in some discussions in some of these exciting markets because landlords and partners would love to just add us to the mix, in a similar fashion that we've been added to the mix in the U.S. So I won't belabor any of the appendix. So I think just to sum, we've, we've been doing this for 18 years. We, during COVID, made limoncello out of lemons. It was a difficult time, and we, we used to make our own limoncello, and we navigated through well, and we'll keep navigating well as we continue to grow our base locations and open new ones and, and keep having fun doing it. So thanks for the time and attention, and I'll, I'll pause or stop.