Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp.'s earnings call for the 1st quarter of 2023. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded on Tuesday, May 9, 2023. I will now turn the call over to Alexander Sewrattan, Director of Finance.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, welcome to the Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp.'s earnings call for the first quarter ended March 31st, 2023. Joining me on the call today are Pizza Pizza Limited's Chief Executive Officer, Paul Goddard, and Chief Financial Officer, Christine D'Sylva. Our discussion today will contain forward-looking statements that may involve risks relating to future events. Actual events may differ materially from the projections discussed today. All forward-looking statements should be considered in conjunction with the cautionary language in our earnings press release and the risk factors included in our annual information form. Please refer to our earnings press release and MD&A in the Investor Relations section of our website for a reconciliation and other disclosures related to our non-IFRS financial measures mentioned on this call.
As a reminder, Analysts are welcome to ask questions after the prepared remarks, and Portfolio Managers and media can contact us after the call. Before turning the call over to Paul for the business update, I wanted to spend a few moments reviewing the structure of the corp for our new investors. Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp. indirectly owns the Pizza Pizza and Pizza 73 brands and trademarks through a subsidiary, Pizza Pizza Royalty Limited Partnership. The partnership has two partners, Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp, the public company, which owns 76.1%, and the other partner, Pizza Pizza Limited, the private operating company, which owns the remaining 23.9%. The Royalty Corp. is a top-line restaurant royalty corp that earns a monthly royalty through a lease agreement with Pizza Pizza Limited.
In exchange for the use of the Pizza Pizza and Pizza 73 trademarks in its restaurant operations, Pizza Pizza pays the partnership a monthly royalty calculated as a percentage of Royalty Pool sales. Growth in the corp is derived from increasing the same-store sales of the restaurants in the Royalty Pool and by adding new restaurants to the pool each year. The Royalty Pool is adjusted at the beginning of each year by adding new restaurants opened in the previous year, less any restaurants that have been permanently closed. For the fiscal year 2023, the Royalty Pool was adjusted on January 1st, 2023 to include 644 Pizza Pizza restaurants and 99 Pizza 73 restaurants. With that review, I'll turn the call over to Paul Goddard to provide a business update.
Thanks, Alex. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's call to discuss the results of our 1st quarter of 2023. After our strong finish to 2022, we are happy to report the continued momentum with our 8th consecutive quarter of positive sales growth. For the quarter, our same-store sales, a key driver of yield growth for shareholders, increased 13.6%. This translated into our dividend increase in the last three years, a working capital reserve of CAD 7.2 million and Adjusted EPS growth of 16.2%. I'm excited about the year ahead for each of our brands, and I'm incredibly proud to see the hard work of our employees, our franchisees, and our partners, and their team members who are responsible for the results we're sharing today.
As we discussed on our last call, in 2023, we will continue to leverage our brand assets as we implement new promotions, knowing that the best way to improve the financial health of our owner-operators and shareholders is to drive traffic and top-line sales, while also programs to improve the bottom line and continue to provide quality offerings.
Let's get into our details on performance by brand, starting with Pizza Pizza. We kicked off the year with a 15.5% increase in same-store sales in Q1. Growth this quarter was driven by increases in both guest traffic and the average customer check. Customer traffic rebounded from pandemic-related restrictions in the first quarter last year, especially at our non-traditional locations like Scotiabank Arena and others. Additionally, sales have benefited from thoughtful calendar initiatives and strengthened core offerings, and results were further aided by enhanced restaurant operations and smart pricing.
Highlights during the quarter included a focus on the well-received, value-driven fixed rate pizza deal, supported by a new TV campaign, new menu innovation focused on our well-loved Chicken Wings, memorable brand activations around Valentine's Day, and our ownable dipping sauce category, which laddered up to our recently established brand positioning, Everyone Deserves Pizza. Pizza Pizza has always celebrated special occasions and dates, and this year we augmented the already busy Valentine's Day with a new brand action targeting Canadian singles called Singles for Singles. Select locations in multiple markets changed their name to just one word, Pizza, instead of the double, Pizza Pizza, to celebrate single people, and we gave out free slices that evening to each unattached diner who downloaded the app. With over 10 million impressions, it was our most successful social media activation to date.
Just to give you a rough indication of that, of the free slices that were redeemed, three-quarters of those were from new app downloads, so we're really happy with that. Our customers have a deep love for our brand, clearly, and especially our dips. This quarter, we developed a brand action rooted in Everyone Deserves Pizza based on varying dip behaviors, such as dipping the whole slice versus just the crust. As a result, we developed a new tool to make pizza eating that much easier, the Pizza Pizza Dip Roller.
Yeah, it's funny how much this went viral by the way. It was launched late in the quarter, and the early response was met with excitement and positive responses from tens of thousands of entries to win a limited edition Dip Roller in the first couple of weeks, and our second-largest number of impressions on organic social channels ever behind Singles for Singles. That's been a lot of fun lately. Lots of fun chatter, plus millions of impressions in earned media by the end of the quarter. We were really delighted with the positive fun buzz around this on social media. It just gives us more ideas for the future as well.
Our brand activations and campaigns have not only been well received by our customers, they have also garnered us attention from news outlets, and we won several industry awards and gained several more nominations this quarter. Congrats team as well for their great work there. Turning now to Pizza 73, this quarter we focused on innovation in food, restaurants, and technology. We had 3% same-store sales growth for the quarter. This growth has come from an increase in average customer check and traffic. The company successfully passed along retail price increases, largely related to commodity and labor increases, and the reopening of our nontraditional venues really drove the overall increase in traffic for the Pizza 73 brand.
Digital ordering has fundamentally changed the business over the years and will continue to be a major driver of growth for the next several years and beyond. To help accelerate growth in this channel, Pizza 73 launched a brand-new suite of digital ordering platforms in Q1. The new website and apps greatly improve the customer experience with easier navigation, new product categorizations, and a smoother and faster interface. The customers can create their own pizza from scratch now, which believe it or not, we couldn't do previously at Pizza 73.
A lot more flexibility for the customer as well. All of these improvements have translated into an average customer check increase in customer check on our digital platform. Early signs are that it is also having a positive impact on traffic and our overall % of digital versus non-digital transactions. We're really encouraged there even though it's early days. It's a good sign.
In addition to the new website this quarter, Pizza 73 introduced a new product category, Gourmet Thins, which many of you will be familiar with, we launched here a while ago. We've tagged it with an interesting, slightly different approach up there saying, quote, "Fancy pizza without the schmancy price." We're trying to maintain that value image but quality product. The product is very similar to the Gourmet Thins of Pizza Pizza and takes more of a true, you know, hand gourmet feel with a thin crust for people. This new category for Pizza 73 is really designed to provide that sort of higher quality thin crust express image to people, to our existing customers, and also appeal to new customers looking for lighter pizza options. The three new recipes were developed, and five top-selling recipes were configured for our Gourmet Thin category.
In 2023, our marketing activity will continue with a focus on our strategic pillars, which, as a reminder, are building the brand, number one and number two, constant innovation across all aspects of our business, be it menu, tech, restaurant, or any other aspect of our business. We're always looking to automate internally as well and really leverage technology, and AI is a part of that as well, more and more, of course. Number three, driving organic orders, very important for us. Number four, maintaining and growing profitability of our franchisees and partners.
Turning now to our network, we ended the first quarter with a total of 749 locations, of which 649 were Pizza Pizzas and 100 were Pizza 73. Sorry. We opened two traditional and seven nontraditional Pizza Pizzas and closed two traditional and one nontraditional location. Additionally, during the quarter, the company opened one traditional Pizza 73, and we renovated 10 Pizza 73 locations, which we're also very excited about making great progress there.
Construction and supply chain issues have largely subsided early in 2023, but we are still experiencing some delays in obtaining permits and getting final inspections in some jurisdictions. Despite these temporary delays, our management team remains confident that we can continue to deliver profitable network growth. We remain focused on growing our business across Canada, and it's safe to say we are known and respected as a major homegrown national brand, coast to coast, and the leading pizza chain in the country.
One exciting piece to note, subsequent to our quarter end, our team traveled to Mexico for the opening of our first two international restaurants. The PZA Pizzeria brand, as it's known in Mexico, PZA Pizzeria, has been well received in Mexico, and we are looking forward to updating you further as we continue to open more restaurants down there. By the way, we will be opening our third restaurant down there, just South of Guadalajara, in Lake Chapala region within the next month or so. That's really exciting and we'll have more to share in future quarters on that.
Looking ahead, in 2023, you will see us pushing hard on menu innovation, marketing initiatives, restaurant growth, technology, and other digital-first investments. We will work closely with our owner-operators to ensure they're delivering excellent and consistent products in a clean, safe, and attractive restaurant environment with a nice ambiance. I'd like to close by congratulating our entire team. One of the critical keys to our success is absolutely our people, our teamwork, our trust, our work ethic. I think they all combine together in our creativity. I think we've all worked really hard together. We also have a lot of fun together to create a very innovative, ambitious, and collaborative culture right across the country, and now internationally with our wonderful partners in Mexico at both brands, and now we have a third brand, PZA.
As we announced last quarter, I'm also very proud of our team for being recognized recently by Waterstone as one of Canada's most admired corporate cultures, and this quarter by the Canadian Franchise Association as a leader in and the winner of their Diversity and Inclusion Award. With that, I'd like to now turn the call over to Christine for a brief financial update.
Thanks, Paul. Before I go over the financial results, I'd like to remind everyone about the January 1 Royalty Pool adjustment. As Alex mentioned, on January 1 of each year, the Royalty Pool is adjusted by adding new restaurants opened in the past year, less any restaurants which are permanently closed. On January 1, 2023, the Royalty Pool increased by 16 net restaurants as a result of 45 new restaurants opening, less 29 restaurants permanently closing. For 2023, there will be 743 restaurants in the Royalty Pool, made up of 644 Pizza Pizza locations and 99 Pizza 73 restaurants. This is being compared to 2022, when there were 727 restaurants. Now I'll just briefly cover some key financial results for the quarter.
As Paul mentioned, it's a quarter that continued to build on the momentum of 2022. Same-store sales growth, the key driver of yield for shareholders, increased 13.6% for the quarter. Pizza Pizza restaurants reported 15.5% same-store sales for the quarter, while Pizza 73 restaurants were 3% positive. Both brands saw an increase in customer transactions as well as average ticket. The combination of restaurants being added to the Royalty Pool and the same-store sales resulted in an increase in Royalty Pool system sales and a corresponding increase in royalty income. Royalty Pool system sales for the quarter increased 16.1% to CAD 142.7 million, from CAD 122.9 million in the same quarter last year.
By brand, sales from the 644 Pizza Pizza restaurants increased 18% to CAD 123.7 million for the quarter, and sales from the 99 Pizza 73 restaurants increased 5% to CAD 19.1 million for the quarter. The partnership's royalty income earned as a percentage of Royalty Pool sales increased 15.3% to CAD 9.1 million for the quarter. Turning to the partnership expenses, administrative expenses for the quarter were CAD 143,000. These include listing costs as well as director, legal, and auditor fees. This quarter included the annual shareholder meeting costs. In addition to administrative expenses, the partnership pays interest expense on its CAD 47 million credit facility. The interest paid in the quarter was CAD 316,000. The partnership is currently making interest-only payments on the non-revolving facility.
Our interest rate is locked through April 2025 using a swap agreement that has fixed the interest rate at the BA rate of 1.81% plus our credit spread. The credit spread changes based on the level of debt-to-EBITDA. In April of 2022, as the partnership earnings increased, our debt-to-EBITDA ratio improved and our credit spreads on the facility decreased to 25 basis points for a combined rate of 2.685, compared to the same period of last year when we were paying 2.935. After the partnership receives royalty income and pays administrative and interest expenses, the resulting net cash is available for distribution to its two partners based on their ownership percentage.
As Alex mentioned, Pizza Pizza's interest increased to 23.9% on January first as a result of vending a new restaurant. Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp shares 76.1% of the partnership's distribution, pays taxes on its share of the partnership earnings, and the residual cash is available for dividends to our shareholders. Speaking about shareholder dividends, during the quarter, the company increased its dividend for the sixth time in the last three years. With this most recent dividend increase, our current dividend exceeds the pre-COVID rate and now CAD 0.225 per [audio distortion] . The company declared shareholder dividends of CAD 5.2 million in the current quarter or CAD 0.2125 per share, compared to CAD 4.7 million or CAD 0.19 per share in 2022. The resulting payout ratio was 104% for the quarter.
System sales in the first quarter of the year are generally the softest, historically, we have always had a payout ratio greater than 100%. Our target is a 100% payout ratio on an annualized basis. The company's working capital decreased by CAD 200,000 during the quarter, but ended the quarter strong at CAD 7.3 million. With an increase in this working capital balance, the company believes that there is sufficient cash flow to service all obligations as they fall due, and we will continue to monitor sales and royalty income to determine when additional dividends may be warranted. That concludes our financial overview. I'd like to turn the call back to the Operator to poll for questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you have a question, please press star, followed by the number one on your touch-tone phone. One moment, please, for your first question. We have our first question from Derek Lessard, TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Good afternoon, everybody. Congrats on some really nice results.
Thanks, Derek.
Derek.
I guess I'm gonna start in reverse order, and I wanted to talk about the Mexican initiative. I know, Paul, you said it's in the early days. Congratulations on opening your first store there. I just wanted to know, you know, maybe if you can give us an idea of what you guys are thinking strategically long term for, for the, for the brand there and maybe internationally.
Okay. No, good question. We are excited about it. Like you say, it is early days. We really like these partners. They came to us four years ago. They're a very well-established group down in Guadalajara. They're actually working with another, an American QSR brand, non-pizza, down there as well. We like that. We did our due diligence on them. We think there's a tremendous market opportunity down there.
Just as rough numbers, food service sector there, especially in the piece that we're in, it seems to be growing about double the rate of what it would be here. Depending on you know, which research house you look at, you hear numbers like 8% or 9% roughly growth there versus, say, 4% here. There's a bit of play in there, but basically it's at least double, and the per capita pizza consumption's high. It's a growing market. You know, you got three times the population essentially down there. Obviously you know, it's a complicated environment down there for obvious reasons. We didn't go into it lightly, but we like the partner. They have great experience. They know the city well. We've spent a lot of time over COVID. It slowed us down a little bit.
We'd hoped to launch sooner than we did, but we're not that much delayed actually. You know, we had extensive training with them up here, down there. It's just we feel like we really know how to hit the market there. I think there is existing competition. There's independent players down there. There's also some familiar names you would know down there, some global brands. We're not the first people on the block, but we just think we have a very compelling value proposition, as we do here. Really highlighting, you know, also our Canadian roots. You can get exactly the same pepperoni slice down there, same ingredients, same quality in a you know, really nice environment, you know, just like our beautiful renovated stores here.
People seem to really already be, you know, really resonating with it. We've, I think been very pleased with the attention that we've generated from here and also to credit to the Mexican folks down there, they've done an amazing job with their partners and their marketing partners to drive attention. you know, we're starting slowly and carefully. We're training them to be a good master franchisee, essentially, and then sub-franchise from there. They've got to meet certain criteria to do that. We know the store economics are very good there. Margins are very good. Labor is obviously a lot cheaper down there. Things like construction are actually not that cheap. There are some challenges down there. Overall, the economic picture is much better on a unit level.
We're encouraged by that because we know that not only can they make money while they have them corporately, when they sub-franchise them, the sub-franchisees should do very well. Even though we're saying, okay, three stores, you know, right now, two to three, and then we'll probably have something like eight to 10 end of the year, and probably 10 a year or so is our rough growth forecast in Guadalajara. That market probably has potential to 30 or 40 or so in Guadalajara, if not more. We also hope with these folks to expand the partnership with them to other jurisdictions. We're already kind of, you know, doing some thinking about that. You know, certain criteria have to be met. We think there's huge potential in Mexico. We won't go everywhere in Mexico.
We're you know, there's certain places we may not wanna go. But there's a heck of a lot of opportunity there. We really like this brand because it's very clear graphically that it's our same brand. It's sort of squished into the PZA, which obviously is our stock ticker. Still got the Canadian flag and the letter A. The only difference is that we've -it a little bit. We've got things like al Pastor pizza there. It's very popular there. It's already, I think, our third-selling item fast behind pepperoni and another one. It's really encouraging and we just like our positioning. We think for value, we can be a really key value player with better quality, better technology, and all the other aspects that our brand can bring in Canada. We're bringing it down there.
Just our expertise behind the front counter is also an advantage. We have more automation, I think more efficiencies than some of our competitors. That makes us pretty optimistic. You know, it's still early days. I don't want to get too excited, but, you know, it's kind of encouraging. We think Mexico could be a very big market. Obviously, on a broader basis, we're thinking, yes, if we can prove ourselves here, and we don't have to wait years by the way. We are also, you know, we're getting knocking on our door even more since we announced this.
We are already sort of vetting some entities that have expressed interest from other countries that, you know, there's different structures that could but we sort of like the very simple sort of master franchise type structure that a lot of brands have done when they've gone global. Again, we wouldn't necessarily say we're gonna be in every country or anything, but if a country makes sense and we can do well there with a good local partner like these folks in Mexico, then we think there's definitely multi-country potential, and we're pretty ambitious about that. We also learned, I think, how to manage it better because it's been quite a bit of work for us, right? And our team here, and we wanna make sure that, you know, we have 750 or so restaurants in Canada.
We've got three in Mexico right now. We don't wanna make sure we get too distracted. We also have some very independent partners now there that are less and less reliant on us. They really are doing a great job. They're very professional. Got a great team down there. That model seems to work. If we go to other jurisdictions, I think we can maybe even be lighter touch now that we have some more experience under our belt, learning how to be a good sort of, you know, Canadian-based master franchisor.
That's a great update, Paul, thanks for that. I guess I'm also curious. You mentioned that there are some of the same, let's call them, like, competitors down there. Curious on the, you know, the market shares of the, not specific, but just generally speaking, you know, is there anybody that has a, like, a super big market share compared to everybody else?
I think it's fairly split. I mean, I don't wanna get too specific on who we've been looking at more and things, but, just for competitive reasons. I mean, a lot of the names that you would be familiar with are very active down there and, you know, some seem to be doing a very good job down there that I suspect have, you know, quite significant market share versus some others that maybe haven't performed as well as you might think. I'm not sure if that's just because of their partners, their structure, where they are right now in their evolution. Some of them have been there for many years, some have been there, you know, maybe just only five, 10 years type thing. They have some local strong independents as well, like some, you know, smaller chains.
There's actually several that are quite well run from what we can see. You know, we had pretty instant demand and excitement when we opened our door. I mean, a lot of social chatter and real traffic. We also are very unique down there in that we offer slices. There's some independent Pizza Pizza shops there that also sell pizza by the slice. None of the usual suspects, if I can call them that, do slices, and we do that. I think that's one of our fortes, right. We know how to sell whole pies, that's for sure, but we also know how to sell slices, and we see that as a tremendous on-ramp. We witnessed it with our own eyes.
I mean, I was sitting there a day after our grand opening, coffee next to one of our locations, and I saw two ladies, they drove up a little service van. They walked in. They must have been hungry. They got a slice. They came out. They ate their slice. They went back in. About five minutes later they came out with about six pizza boxes, a three-liter bottle of Coke, and a whole bunch of Chicken Wings. I think it's a good on-ramp for a growing ticket and a you know, growing repeat visits as well. The slice is not a big commitment. I think others just don't know how to operationally do it or are afraid it's gonna really hurt their average ticket if you don't do it right.
We've been doing this for decades. I think it is one of the many unique things we have. I mean, we have our technology platform and our marketing power and our agility and all that kind of stuff. Our innovation iteration, I think, is more rapid than some others as well. I think we can be pretty agile, and I think things like a slice to augment our pizza offerings and our chicken as well down there. We're selling a lot of chicken already. I think that's pretty unique. You know, we plan to outflank some of our, albeit, our competitors we respect, but we think we can outdo them.
Okay. Yeah, again, super helpful. Then does any of this run through your commissary? Like the pizza-
Not our commissary. The way it's structured, really no. It's more of a, sort of a royalty stream we'll get back. It's not replicating our model here to kind of, you know, the private Opco model. Right now it's the franchisees really, you know, we work with some of their existing relationships, et cetera. We have definitely leveraged our relationships, our products, you know, the flour we use, the tomatoes we use. I mean, we've... It's, you know, identical wherever possible, unless there's a slight difference because of just logistics and supply chain. They have very good contacts as well that we like and we've met, and we feel pretty confident. We're not really participating in that, commissary model down there.
That, you know, that could potentially change in future, I guess. Right now we've kept it pretty simplistic, that we essentially just collect a royalty stream back. The operating company gets some, and then the PPRC, there's a stream back to. It's just sort of additional royalty stream income if we can get some scale there.
Okay. Okay, that's fair. Congratulations again. Maybe just switching gears, come back to Canada, and the strength in the same-store sales there. More specifically, I know you touched on it in your opening remarks, but can you just maybe add some color to that pricing versus volume dynamics? You know, I guess some more specifically the pricing, is that coming through more through because of the new menu innovation or bundling or just straight price increases? How should we be looking at that?
I'll answer, and Chris might have a bit more to comment on, but I mean, I think we are seeing. You know, we obviously want order volume growth. That's our biggest thing. We wanna get our sales growth through traffic and order count more than anything. Obviously with what's going on with inflation, especially the last year or two, we've really had to pass on more price increases than perhaps we have historically. We've been pretty careful to, I think, find the balance quite well. I mean, we've been really closely monitoring traffic. Traffic's held up really nicely and we've, you know, we've not gotten greedy on price increases. We wanna make sure we're trying to find the balance there.
I'd say, you know, generally it's a mix, roughly, you know, just roughly, not exactly, we've probably seen a little more of the total growth come from more price, I guess. There's a good balance of traffic there, or-order count driving that as well. At Pizza 73, I would say, you know, we've still got work to do there, it's going the right way. We really like these signs now, that we've been working on it really hard, it, you know, it's a bit frustrating, we think we've really, you know, the plans that we've put in place, the technology, the enhanced marketing, everything is starting to really get some traction.
I think I said in my comments that, you know, a lot of the traffic was more driven by non-traditional coming back, and so we do need to drive it still for sure for 73. But it's going the right way now. We've got some check and we've got some traffic. Pizza Pizza, I mean, we're really happy. I mean, look, we've had some great double-digit growth these last quarters, and it's been great. Obviously that'll get harder and harder given the increasingly difficult comps, that we're lapsing double-digit comps. We're pushing hard. You know, as far as the machine seems to be really firing on all cylinders, and 73 is really coming to life now too. Overall it is that balance, I would say, Derek. You know, it's a balance of both.
Still like to see a little more on organic orders. Now we're, you know, we're pushing digital, delivery. I see more delivery. That's, you know, we've seen tremendous growth in pickup, walk-in, which is a real sign of the times I think, not just for us, but the industry. People are getting out more, whether they're just tired of being at home because of COVID isolation and they're making up for lost time. Economically, I think some people just like the convenience of ordering too, and just picking up, whether it's at Pizza 73 or Pizza Pizza. Owning that, I think you've probably seen some of the, you know, U.S., big global brands also comment that delivery's tough. Third party is still going. You know, those folks, we use them as well. But we prefer our organic delivery system.
We have this tremendous organic delivery fleet, and we prefer that. Even though we use those folks a little bit too to bring us people that only use those apps, we try and convert them as much as possible if they order through one of these. We put QR codes on our packaging, other little nudges to try and get them to download our app and order through us next time. All of that together, I think, you know, we definitely have some work to do, but, you know, we, there's areas we know where we're not that strong in, so growth in all these areas. It's just that, you know, we have all these challenges, you know, it's hard to get every channel firing and growing all simultaneously.
You know, we feel like we're hitting it pretty well right now. We know there's places that we're not still happy enough. We know it's delicious, so there's areas we're gonna put more effort into. Overall, it's, that's kind of the picture.
No, it's showing in those results for sure. I guess on another note, I've personally seen some pretty aggressive promo activity in QSRs recently. I guess I'm assuming that's a reflection of the higher interest rates and the economic uncertainty. Have you guys seen any change in the competitive activity and/or consumer behavior in reaction to that?
It kind of depends on what market. We've seen a little bit of that. We certainly see some aggressive behavior by some competitors, you know, that we all know, lately as well. Also you see what's happening in FSR as well. I think appears to be struggling quite a bit too. I just saw an announcement out, one of the chicken wing chains that's, you know, shutting a lot of its stores and things. I mean, there's definitely some pain out there. I think people that have high franchisees that has a big loan and interest rate exposures, hurting them more than it used to. These things are pretty painful. I think we're overall in a relatively good place. Maybe Christine has something to add.
Yeah. I think in the macro environment, being placed in the QSR segment, we're known for our convenience and our value offerings. We have an array to meet every customer's demand. Whether they want to walk in to save the delivery fee, we can meet your needs that way. I think given the backdrop and the uncertainty, I think we're well positioned. Recession resistant is a word that was always thrown around. Given the trade down, we would feel that we're there, we'll be able to meet the value, especially with what we've done in the past. We've had a pizza for CAD 16.99. It was well received. It's actually become one of our top sellers. We introduced it last year as those interest rates were starting to creep up. It was perfectly timed. We've just seen traction grow on it.
People are perceiving it as value, seeing that we're offering things to customers, we're not taking advantage of customers as a lot of others are doing. When the inflation was going up, people were just taking excessive price increases. We've managed to keep that balance for our customers.
That's fair. I guess, and maybe along the same note, how, like, how has the environment changed in terms of how, you know, I guess, franchisee profitability or even your franchisee pipeline given, you know, the higher interest rates and maybe the higher cost to acquire or finance a franchise?
Yeah. Very good question. I mean, look, it's not easy out there for sure. I mean, we're still seeing pressure on input costs and things. I mean, we're not sort of trying to say, okay, it's all, you know, glorious out there and everything's back. I mean, Sales-wise, we see a lot of fundamental demand across all channels really. I think profitability of franchise, we, you know, do look at cash flow per store and things like that internally. You know, overall, you know, people are doing well. Obviously, when sales are good top line and we control as possible, that gives them a good bottom line. That's fundamental for us. You know, I think it's been really good. I think that it's shown some improvement overall, for sure.
I mean, I know in Alberta, you know, we've got our stores out there. What's wonderful about those JV partners in Alberta, they don't have a lot of debt on those stores, so they don't have really any debt servicing charges. Most of them don't. They've been able to weather the storm in Alberta. Now that seems to be coming back, they should be doing better. I mean, there's been some lean months for some of those folks, for instance, out there. I think they're very resilient. They've been through these folks too, most of them. I think franchisee profitability is moving the right way, and the pipeline has been really healthy. I mean, all over the place. I mean, we always have more interest in Toronto than we have, you know, locations available.
We have success putting people in some pretty remote places or smaller cities as well. I think whether it's Quebec or, you know, Vancouver, Lower Mainland, et cetera, or elsewhere, even Alberta, we've had, you know, a little bit of growth. There's definitely interest. I think that's quite good. I do think, you know, we still have issues with drivers and things, but I think it has abated a bit in terms of availability for labor. I mean, we're definitely still struggling on occasion to find enough drivers for sure. I think the whole industry is, and third-party aggregators are as well, obviously. I think it seems to be abating.
I saw, I think it was RBC was expecting something like, was it 6% unemployment coming later this year is what their forecast is. You know, who knows how it shakes out. I do think to Chris's point earlier, I mean, we're just trying to make sure that we are always having a value message. There's something for everyone, right? That's kind of Everyone Deserves Pizza. It means, you know, we have something for everyone. This is sort of the other flip side of that, no matter who you are. We'll sell a gourmet pizza for a pretty high price tag, and it's gonna be super high quality. It's actually, you know, a smaller standard crust pizza, but it's really nicely delivered, really gourmet.
You, if you just want a pepperoni slice, you can get that from us with a Coke, and it's a very, very affordable meal. We're really trying to cover the bases, I think, pretty. A lot of other competitors I think are trying, and you know, the really good ones are also being successful too. I think we've shown that we're performing pretty well compared to the peer group, and we'll keep pushing.
Additionally, in terms of talking about capital cost and building out a restaurant, we can scale up and scale down our restaurants as we're building into different cities. We see this inflationary period, say for ovens, we may not put in four ovens, we may put in two. We can also go into new markets, smaller markets with our non-traditional partners in gas stations that have delivery. We're able to adapt as we look at our expansion to keep that pipeline to franchisees and the store growth going at a rate that we wanna see.
Okay. like, one final one for me, I obviously I don't wanna add any salt to the wounds, but could you maybe talk about the impact the playoff runs might have on your businesses?
The playoffs.
Oh, the playoffs. I mean, we definitely have seen. It's always a positive effect when you get that extra, those extra games, right? No question. There's just that thrill or that excitement factor of people. I mean, the longer it goes on, the happier we'll be for sure. Aside from business, it's just nice for the city. We're definitely cheering for the Oilers and the Leafs and we'll hopefully they can both hang in there. It definitely does have an impact. I mean, we see it, and especially if it happens to be on a weekend night or something. Yeah, it's great, you know, and the more the better. We'll see how it goes.
Yeah. As we have our locations in the stadiums, it's been great.
Yeah.
When games are on full packed stadiums with people buying pizzas, always something to look forward to.
Yeah.
Yeah. Awesome. Good luck. That's it for me, guys. Thanks for taking my questions.
Thanks.
Okay.
Bye, Gary.
You're welcome, Gary. Thanks a lot.
There are no further questions. I'll now turn the call over for any remarks.
Thank you all for your time. If you have any other questions, you can reach out to us after the call. Our contact information can be found on our earnings press release. Thank you.
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