Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to BJ's Wholesale Club Q1 Fiscal 2021 Earnings Conference Call. As in only mode, after the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question, one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I have here today, Faten Freiha, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining BJ's Wholesale Club Earnings Conference Call. Lee Delaney, President CEO, Bob Eddy, Chief Financial and Administrative Officer, and Bill Werner, Investor Relations are on the call. Please remember that during this call, we may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Federal securities laws. These statements are based on current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could materially from our expectations described on this call. Please see the Risk Factors section of our Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March description of those risks and uncertainties. Finally, please will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe will provide useful information for investors. Depended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute of the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP.
Today's press release posted on the investors section of our website for a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. With that, I'll turn the call over to Lee.
Good morning, everybody. Are safe and healthy during these unprecedented. Our thoughts go out to everyone who has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic. So much has changed since we last spoke. This pandemic has presented us all with challenges in this new environment and deeply thankful for the contributions of our club and distribution center team members who have tirelessly served a surge in demand for our essential products while embracing new safety conditions and protocols. I also want to thank our home office innovate on safety and product supply, as well as their flexibility and also thank our vendor partners size demand. Our team enabled us to safely serve our communities. We are humbled by our role in these difficult times and value the trust and confidence our members have in us to provide them with essential products and services.
Our first and most important priority is the members and community. We have taken aggressive actions and implemented extensive safety measures across all our facilities. We have put in place and social distancing protocols, clubs provided and required team members to wear protective equipment given the close contact that they require and introduced temperature checks for all our team members reporting to work well and asked nearly all home office team members to work remotely. We have taken hundreds of other steps to work with federal and local authorities to ensure that we stay ahead of evolving safety and health standards. We are recognizing them with well-deserved temporary hourly wage increases as well as multiple bonuses.
In the first quarter, we invested in incremental in pay and bonuses for our team members, we are supporting team members through an enhanced benefits package policy, the loosening of absenteeism policies, employee assistance programs, and financial assistance through our employee relief fund. In April, we also decided to close all our clubs on Easter Sunday. We will continue to support team members during these difficult times and ensure that we maintain a healthy and safe work environment. As you have no doubt already read, our financial results this quarter were strong, led by a 27% merchandising sales comp and EBITDA was well ahead of our plans at $194 million. Earnings per share increased by 165%, we generated more than $430 million in free cash flow.
With the balance of my remarks, I will frame our view of the three contributing factors that led to this outsized. First, we clearly have become an even more on-trend and needs changed in response to COVID-19. COVID-19 has brought with it a new way and the social distancing and stay-at-home measures we have taken as a society to fight it have resulted in dramatic changes to grocery shopping behavior. Grocery goods, which represent roughly, were in extremely high demand starting in late February and continuing throughout the quarter. Consumers consolidated their trips and justify increased consumption at home needs. While needs shifted throughout the quarter from cleaning supplies to pantry loading to perishables, we offered a one-stop destination with industry-leading value on the large sizes consumers need to stock up. These trends were relatively consistent in shape and magnitude across all our geographies.
As a result, we believe we have gained considerable share in every region across most categories in which we compete. Second, our business model augmented with the capabilities we built over the last four for this environment. We run large clubs and distribution facilities with capacity for growth. We operate efficiently with focused labor and lower marginal expenses than many of our competitors. We have upgraded our operational standards with new practices and systems improvements, and we have built an expanded suite of digital capabilities with relatively advantaged economics. Together, the model and our improved capabilities allowed us to rapidly scale our business, meet unprecedented levels of demand for digital shoppers, deliver improved bottom-line performance. Third, our team and dedication.
Late in February, we were able to identify demand signals utilizing our new demand and fulfillment software to quickly and significantly bolster order flow and keep up with the surge in demand. Our merchants did an excellent job of working with existing suppliers, as well as expanding our sources of supply from new vendors, including those that service the restaurant industry. Our logistics and distribution teams worked around the clock to keep goods flowing. Our frontline employees worked tirelessly to keep shelves stocked and members happy, and our support team in the home office met an ever-changing set of demands. While challenging in the near term in certain categories, we believe our systems, agility, and capacity should continue to serve us well. Lastly, it is clear to us that we are well-positioned to see increased demand for the foreseeable future.
As a leading large format club store with regional scale in the Northeast and a grocery offering of unbeatable value, strong private label brands, robust digital capabilities, and an efficient store model, we are more relevant to shoppers consolidating trips than ever before. While we would like nothing more than for public health fears to subside quickly, we expect the potentially recessionary impacts in the broader economy to drive increased demand for discount grocery options. We talked to you in the past about growing membership and engaging our members in digital capabilities, the current environment has accelerated these efforts, positioning us to leverage this unique opportunity to set the foundation for a multi-year profitable expansion of the business. In our view, the consumer's need for digital in the last two months.
We have had more members join our club and try these services and believe allow us to continue to invest. Before I update you on the progress of our strategic priorities for the quarter, I'd like to note that we remain committed to Project Momentum, we are on track to deliver $40 million in savings for this year. All savings will be reinvested back. Let's turn to our long-term priorities. First, let's talk about digital businesses, which remains a top priority. We built a robust digital team that drove significant progress in our omni-channel transformation. The team launched pivotal platforms such as BJ's mobile app, Buy Online Pickup in Club, or BOPIC, same-day delivery, and Ship from Club to better meet member demands. Our investments in these platforms set us up for success in the current shopping environment.
Digitally-enabled sales grew by more than threefold this quarter and represented 5% of our compared to 3% in the fourth quarter and 1.5%. We believe we have a structural cost advantage as we continue to grow these businesses, especially in our same-day delivery business, which was up more than eightfold over last year's first quarter. We capabilities and launch new offerings to delight our members and increase the value of their membership. In the first quarter, we began testing curbside pickup and BOPIC for perishables in select clubs. Second, we remain focused on membership, the cornerstone of our company, and a key leading indicator for the health of our business. In the first quarter, we saw a strong increase in the number of new members joining BJ's.
This new member growth will drive long-lasting benefits, including MFI growth in the coming quarters, higher average members per club, and strong comparable sales growth position long-term. We expect this progress to continue and will more members in our clubs. Looking ahead, we will continue to lean into membership investments, upgrading our acquisition tools and integrating membership, marketing, and analytics capabilities to continue to accelerate positive membership trends. Early in April, we appointed Paul Cichocki to lead our membership, marketing, and analytics organizations. I'm thrilled to have Paul on the team, as his extensive experience in leading performance improvement and business transformation will help accelerate our efforts. Third, simplifying our assortment and expanding into high-demand categories remains crucial to our success. As we simplify, we can operate with greater flexibility and better manage members' needs.
As we noted on our last call, we have built the space optimization tools that allow us to reflow space, optimize productivity, and allocate space based on demand. In the first quarter, we were able to accelerate various grocery assortment initiatives, like expanding into Better For You and organic snacks as we sold through existing center store grocery inventory at a high rate. From a general merchandise perspective, we expect the go-forward environment to become even more favorable as other sectors of retail come under increased pressure. As evidenced, our merchants saw early engagement this quarter from several leading suppliers who do not typically do business with BJ's. Into new service offerings, such as cellular phones and home improvement remains on track.
While scaling these offerings will be later than planned due to COVID-19, we are steadily working to enhance the portfolio with new and exciting services, elevate our value proposition, and prepare for an enhanced marketing strategy. Fourth, we remain focused on elevating our marketing and keeping it relatable to members. Our expanded digital capabilities enable us to engage with existing and new members across all digital channels. Our new marketing campaign launched in connect and engage with current and potential members across a variety of mediums in the context of the current, sets us apart from other retailers, pickup and same-day delivery. Importantly, we remain committed to integrating and simplifying messages across all channels to ensure members have a seamless and better overall experience. Lastly, I'd like to touch on club expansion.
Year to date, we have opened one club in Pensacola, Florida, and we currently expect our club in Chesterfield, Michigan, to open this summer. The Chesterfield opening was delayed as production bans. We expect similar delays to impact our prior club expansion goals for the year. Good real estate will open more opportunity in 2021 and beyond. We remain confident in clubs and expand into new markets as evidenced by our success in Michigan. We will aggressively look for new real estate opportunities throughout the balance of the year. Looking ahead, we structure and strength of our business, the progress we have made through our transformation, and our continued execution against our priorities. Before I turn it over to Bob, who will have more details on our financials and outlook, I'd like to close by saying that I am honored to lead BJ's Wholesale Club during these unprecedented times.
I am thrilled to be working alongside talented and dedicated team members who are critical to helping our members get access to essential items and executing against our strategic priorities. Again, I would like to sincerely thank all our team members and members for their support and loyalty as we navigate these unprecedented times and continue to make progress in transforming and expanding. I'll turn the call over to Bob. Bob?
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Before I begin, I'd also like to take a moment to thank our team members for their incredible dedication and hard work during these challenging times. Our business is well situated to exceed expectations in an emergency such as the coronavirus pandemic that we all face. We are a one-stop shop while providing great value to our members. COVID-19 has heightened demand for our products and services, and our team members managed well through this environment, embracing their important role in serving our communities. As a result, our performance for the first quarter was extremely strong. Net sales for the quarter were $3.7 billion, exclude gasoline, increased by 27%, significantly exceeding our expectations, and were driven equally by ticket and traffic. Our digitally enabled sales grew by approximately 350% and drove about five full % points of our 27% merchandise comp.
About three-quarters of the Q1 growth in digitally enabled sales was driven by same-day delivery and buy online pickup in club or BOPIC. As we noted in the past, we have an economic advantage here compared to others. We operate in a limited SKU warehouse environment with significantly higher average tickets, which allows us to be much more efficient. As a reminder, BOPIC sales tend to skew towards higher ticket items, and through our partnership with Instacart, a same-day delivery sale has the same margins as a sale in our clubs. Before I turn to our divisional comps, let me give you a little color on our merchandise comp sales cadence for the quarter. For the first three weeks of February, the fourth week of February, comps accelerated to the low teens level. This acceleration continued to ramp in March, where we saw comp growth.
March provided the 3%. April's merchandise comp was 23%, driven by continued demand and increased EBT and stimulus payments. Importantly, that strong April comp number was not adjusted for the negative impact of being closed on Easter Sunday this year. Let's now turn to our comps by business. Beginning with this quarter, we have decided to revise our divisional reporting slightly. Going forward, we will be reporting comps for two divisions. First, grocery, which includes perishables, edible, and non-edible grocery. The second division will be general merchandise and services, which will include general merchandise and our service businesses such as optical and cell phones. Grocery saw incredibly robust comp sales of 33%. Perishables, edible grocery, and north of 30%. We saw very strong growth rates in all the categories you would expect. Paper products, cleaning essentials, fresh meat, frozen, dairy, fresh produce, packaged goods, and beverages.
As Lee noted, the team worked hard on ensuring we remained in stock by working with alternative distributors to continue to provide our members with these essentials. Overall, we feel great about our position in the grocery business as we exit the quarter. Saw a decline of approximately 3% decreased, and we turned off our services businesses. Our apparel business drove the bulk of that. The healthy growth in other categories, including TVs and other consumer electronics, small appliances, and recreational. Membership fee income or MFI, grew by $8.4 million. As Lee noted, we saw a significant increase in new member. As you know, membership fee income is a lagging indicator. We amortize the fees into the future, which is an unamortized look at the current view. Cash MFI for the quarter was up 16%, driven by 40% growth year's first quarter for years to come.
Despite these gains in the number, tier penetration at 28% and more than 65% Easy Renewal program. Membership is at the heart of what we do, and as we attract and retain more members. Let's move now to our gross margins. Excluding the gasoline business, our merchandise gross margin basis points over last year. initiatives as well as improved shrink and salvage rates provided appropriate wins. We experienced approximately 40 basis points. Markdowns were approximately 20 basis points. Distribution expenses associated with COVID-19 were worth approximately. As we experienced significant inflation in some commodities, like eggs, we invested meaningfully in value to our members. That investment was worth about 10 basis points. Both prices and demand for gasoline, driving our sales of gasoline lower.
However, offsetting the decline in the gasoline market provided robust margins. The net of all that was a very profitable gasoline business during the quarter. We estimate the benefit of unusual gasoline roughly $30 million. SG&A expenses were $590 million during the first quarter, comes in the prior year. Our SG&A expense included approximately associated with COVID-19. Let me break that total down for you into three main buckets. In team member wages and bonuses, safety and protective equipment, and $2 million in other operational costs, such as security. Please note that these costs have not been adjusted out in the calculation of our adjusted EBITDA metric. In spite of the [NA] by approximately 50 basis points, enabling great flow-through to earnings. $2 million from $28 million, driven by continued de-levering and the repricing of our First Lien Term Loan, which we completed during this past January.
Income tax expense of $26 million compared to $7 million in the prior year period. The variance between our normalized tax rate of 27% and this quarter's reported rate of 21% by $4.5 million of windfall tax benefit from stock options exercised. Net income in the first quarter was $96 million, or $0.69 per share. This incredible performance was 165% greater than last year's first quarter on a per-share basis. Adjusted EBITDA grew by 56% to $194 million, reflecting the considerable sales beat offset by investments directly in our team members and in their continued safety. The balance sheet, our AP to inventory ratio was approximately 97%, considerably quicker than last year, providing strong working capital benefits. We ended the quarter with approximately 5% less inventory than at our last quarter end. Typically, our first quarter is not particularly cash generative.
As an example, last year's first quarter provided $8 million in free cash flow. This quarter was much different from that perspective. As a result of our outsized performance and working capital benefits, we generated record free cash flow of $435 million for the quarter. No other metric highlights the strength of our business, our results, and the accomplishment of our team better than this one. In addition, while we clearly did not have a need to participate in any of the programs provided under the CARES Act, but from the deferral of payroll taxes this quarter. We began executing the first trades in our stock buyback program. When the crisis began to show in the markets, we quickly pivoted to a focus on liquidity. We saw and aggressively managed our cash.
As it became clear that our business was strong and the markets began to function more normally, we fully paid down the revolving portion of our ABL and allowed cash to build on the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $133 million in cash balances and a funded net debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio of 1.9x. Let's turn to our outlook. Let me start by saying that the current landscape has so many more external variables to track. The evolution of the public health crisis, government interventions and stimulus, consumer behavior, and unemployment levels will have tremendous effects on the entire economy, including our business. Given the uncertainty and unprecedented nature of today's environment, it is extremely difficult for us to predict how the year will play out.
For this reason, we have made the decision to speak to you qualitatively about the trends that we are seeing currently and expecting in the near future, rather than updating guidance. We believe that our business is strong, healthy, and poised for growth. The next few weeks and months may be hard to predict, but the capabilities that we have built and our ability to lean into growth positions us well for the future. It's our current expectation that something like the current consumer behavior persists for a while. As a result, we expect to see strong merchandise comp growth. We anticipate operating in a recessionary environment, even as activity in our geographical footprint begins to resume. Historically, our business has comped very well during recessionary environments where value becomes even more important.
We expect government stimulus to continue, when you overlay a much higher need or desire to eat at home, driven by government regulation or just the basic human desire to stay safe, the expectations for higher comps in our business crystallize. As we noted earlier, our Q1 exit rate on merchandise comp was north of 20%, May has not slowed. While I wouldn't stay it onto the year, I do think that our previous annual guidance of low single-digit comps is considerably low. Following that line of thinking, we also expect to continue to see strong growth from a membership perspective. We believe that new members will be easier to acquire in this environment, we will invest considerably into membership acquisition and analytics. Further, the new members that joined this past quarter will result in benefits for this year and beyond.
Given the fluidity of the environment, it's difficult for us to predict where merchandise margins will land throughout the year. In our CPI process will provide further gains, and we expect continued private label expansion. Potential negative impacts to rates include product mix, near-term inflationary pressures on certain perishable categories, the timing of reopening our service businesses, and the contribution from our apparel business. We feel good about our general merchandise business as it has returned to positive comps in May. It's also difficult to predict what will happen in the gasoline business. We do expect gallon sales to recover as the economy begins to reopen, normalize, and possibly contract below planned levels. This is often the case in periods following those with outsized margins like we saw in Q1. Let me touch on SG&A expenses.
As we think about the go-forward run rate of COVID-19 expenses in Q2, we expect to incur approximately $20 million-$25 million of incremental costs. We will continue to manage the level of expenses with a prioritization on the health and safety of our team members and making sure we're providing the high level of service that our members expect. As Lee mentioned earlier, we are on track to deliver $40 million of savings from Project Momentum this year. All savings will be reinvested back in the business, as previously noted. Lastly, we will spend into the beat in order to continue to invest in our business with a desire to take Q1's results and turn them into a multi-year growth phase for our company.
Despite these costs and uncertainties, we expect to achieve profitability for the year that significantly outpaces the high end of the growth range of our original long-term algorithm. It's important to note that we feel extremely confident in our liquidity and ability to prudently manage capital in this environment. One only needs to look at our first quarter results to understand that our business generates strong cash flows, especially when we turn our inventories at an accelerated rate. In fact, this accelerated rate resulting in working capital benefits that drove a significant portion of Q1 free cash flow performance. We do not expect this benefit to fully recur in Q2. Further, as we rebuild our inventory balance, some of the Q1 working capital benefits may reverse. Lastly, we expect our full-year cash flows to benefit from tax deferrals provided by the CARES Act in the amount of approximately $30 million.
We will be opportunistic from a capital allocation perspective and adapt to our environment. As I said earlier, we have met our medium-term leverage target. Given our robust cash flow generation, we are in a strong position that allows us to be aggressive in investing behind business growth, in addition to considering capital returns to shareholders. In conclusion, our business is more relevant than ever before. Consumer behavior trends are in our favor, and the capabilities we have built over the last four years enable us to thrive in today's environment. Our comp trends are strong, and our member growth is heartening as we look toward a bright future. We go forward from here with a team that meets the challenge every day to serve our members and take advantage of this opportunity to build our business for the long term.
Our hearts go out to all of those affected by the pandemic, and we offer our work during these challenging times. I'll turn the call back over to the operator to begin the Q&A session.
At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star. Your first question comes from Chris Horvers with JP Morgan.
My first question, membership fee income growth. You talked about 16% cash in the quarter, but 40% new member growth. Does that suggest that the sign-ups accelerated over the quarter, i.e., you're not picking up all the cash, so you had more in April versus March versus February? As you think about the year, what would be your expectations for overall MFI growth and, any comment on cadence over the rest of the quarters would be helpful too.
Great. Good morning. This is Lee. As we begin, let me just note that Bob and I are in different-- play a bit of a role of MC. I think on this specific question, Bob, you're well situated to answer just the flow and the amortization.
Absolutely. Good morning, Chris. Thanks for the question. Membership growth during the quarter from a new member growth perspective, the purpose of doing so was just to give everyone a view at exactly what your acceleration of membership growth during the quarter. Certainly, as the quarter progressed, we signed up prepared remarks versus last Q1, 40% growth in new membership. Much higher than we had planned at the beginning of the year and much higher than the prior period. As far as membership going forward, we would expect more of the same. As we said in the prepared remarks, we believe that acquiring members will be a little bit easier to do. Cash to invest behind that idea and the membership team now led by Paul Cichocki, take advantage of this one-time opportunity to do so.
Great. Now,
Any color in terms of the MFI growth for the year?
It's difficult to predict, Chris, given all the different pieces of uncertainty out there, but certainly, heading into the second quarter, we would expect some accelerated rate of growth there at least, and then we'll see how the rest of the year plays out.
Got it. My thought, you've hit your debt target very faster than what we thought you would. As you think about capital allocation going forward, great to hear that you're spending into the beat and invest to gain share. In terms of the excess cash, and considering sort of the ability to open stores at this point, as you think about the next 12 months, is share repurchase going to be the best option in terms of reinvesting that excess cash flow?
Let's start with the fact that it's the number one focus to turn one into many years of growth. Earnings to invest. We've got a ton to be aggressive in doing so. That will take many forms as we go. Real estate is just one of them, and as you put into perspective, as construction in key markets was slowed down during the pandemic here. We have opened one club this year in Florida. We will open Chesterfield, Michigan, in July, hopefully. We have two other clubs under construction today. Both of those, a little bit of a delay given what's going on in the external world, but they will open around the end of the year, either late in this year or early into next year, as we sit here today.
Opportunities that come along, and we are firm believers that there will be many as the pandemic's fallout makes its way through retail. We will be very aggressive in trying to take advantage of those opportunities. Our real estate team is trying to get out in front of the opportunities. Bill Werner is on the call here today. He leads the new club identification team. That team is out there understanding and mapping where all of our retail competitors are, who are the ones that we think might be in trouble, and that have facilities of size that we could use. We will take every opportunity to be very aggressive, even within our own portfolio, if we can restructure leases. We have certainly enough cash to play with there.
We will invest in growth in all other ways as well, whether that's through membership or through any of the other growth vectors like omni-channel that Lee talked about in his performance. We get to the rest of cash, certainly we would expect to have some left over. We are a little bit behind our plans from a stock buyback perspective, given what went on in the markets and our pause on the buyback program. Consider going forward with that and also consider other forms of returns of capital. We have no firm plans at this point because we need to see how to work together with our board to figure these things out. I do think this is almost a once in a lifetime opportunity for this company.
Understood. Best of luck. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Peter Benedict with Baird.
Oh, hey, congrats on the good execution here. One membership question and then one pricing question. Just on the new members, can you give us a sense for maybe the % of those new members that signed up on auto renew, and how have their kind of repeat shopping patterns looked like? I know it's only a short time frame, but any color on that would be helpful. That's my first question.
Sure, Peter, thanks for the question. Today, when we sign up new members, all members are enrolled in auto renew and then need to make the choice to opt out of that. The penetration of auto renew in the new member base would be considerably higher than the 65% that we see across the overall penetration. It's really the members who've been in the franchise for a while and have chosen not to auto renew that represent the gap to 100%. Not surprisingly, the new members were elevated versus what we might normally see. That's clearly driven by the increased consumption tied to the pandemic. In terms of onboarding of those members, we feel good. They're shopping at a faster rate and engaging in our omni-channel platforms as well. Good early momentum with that crop of members.
Good to hear. With respect to, I think, mentioned the inflation in certain categories, but you guys were kind of holding price and delivering value. How have your price gaps versus some of your grocery competitors evolved over the last few months here? Just curious what you're seeing on that front. Thank you.
When you step back and look at inflation across the business, it was a relatively, measured in tenths of certain categories, there were quite considerable changes. Pretty meaningful increase in the price early in the quarter. We made the decision to drag the price on eggs simply because we felt like it would be kind of large measure of sticker shock to our members. It was a high-frequency category with kind of good price impression, and where we saw grocery and other competitors reflect a meaningfully higher price relatively quickly. It felt like an opportunity for us to invest in our price impression. There've been other places more recently, like protein, where the price of beef, for example. We are reflecting that in slightly higher retails to make sure that we are covering our cost.
That is considerably below what we've seen some other players do, where their retails have floated higher than ours. Overall, we feel good about our price impression and feel like large pack sizes, a discounted grocery option, and the really great value we have every day is only being accentuated in this market where people need to buy more, are building bigger baskets. We become a more logical destination.
Okay, great. Thanks, Lee. Good luck.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Edward Kelly with Wells Fargo.
Yeah. Hi, guys. Good morning. Just a quick follow-up on the membership trends. Could you give us a little bit of cadence on the member growth, sort of like you did with sales? I'm just kind of curious as to how the pace currently looks. As you look at these new members, what do they look like relative to the base, the typical BJ's member?
Sure. Thanks for the question, Ed. Let me start and maybe I'll ask Bob to build a little bit on it. The pace of membership growth looked relatively consistent with the comp. We became more on-trend as people look to stock up and make bigger purchases and drive fewer trips on kind of the shape of membership ride pretty consistently with the shape of the comp sales performance. We exited the quarter at a nice rate of membership growth, and we've seen continued membership growth on an ongoing basis. We're excited by that. Then, as I mentioned previously, the overall dynamics of that membership growth are pretty appealing. We're seeing, on average, slightly younger members, slightly more digitally enabled members, we're growth in online platforms. Then we're seeing really good shopping behavior, clearly tied to the pandemic and changes there.
The overall crop of members we're seeing is seemingly quite positive. Bob, anything you'd add to that?
No, I think you hit all the right topics, Lee.
Just as a follow-up to that, how do we think about incremental margins return on a member? I do remember you guys talking historically about how you average 25,000 members per store, just such a big deal, but that still only really scratches the surface on the gap to peers. How do we think about incremental margins on this business?
Yeah, Ed, I think that's one of the things that clearly benefited us throughout the quarter is the flow-through we're seeing from the growth in members and from the growth in sales. As we've talked to you about in the past, our boxes on a membership basis have historically been less developed than some of our competitors. We would average slightly north of 25,000 members per box versus Costco in the 60,000+ member per box range. We clearly have room to grow. We've seen that growth with the membership base, we've built that capability over the last four years and have a model that drives pretty profitable marginal growth, which is exciting to see. We're very efficient at getting with a relatively efficient labor model.
As we grew quickly, we were able to see good flow-through throughout the P&L and leverage from the G&A line, despite pretty considerable investments in safety and increased pay for our team members. Despite all of those investments, we still saw good flow-through, which is exciting.
Great. Thanks, guys.
Your next question comes from Karen Short with Barclays.
Thanks for taking my question. I was wondering actually if you could give a little color on ticket and where that's standing now in terms of COVID. I was wondering if you could just give-- I know you said that you're seeing slightly younger demographics, I think, on the new sign-ups, but maybe can you elaborate a little bit more on that? Just to throw a number out there, it looks like you're probably close to 8 million members. I think it'd be about 8 million members as of now and still growing. Is that fair?
Sure. Bob, do you want to take the question?
My landscaper's outside my house. Happy to take that question. We talked in the prepared comments, Karen, about the 27% comp for the quarter was pretty equally driven between ticket and traffic, and our historical ticket somewhere in the $95-$100 range. You can do the math on it from there. That takes it to somewhere near $110 for a ticket. Pretty sizable growth during the quarter, and similar results so far into Q2. I think your total members number is at least on a pace, but certainly we're seeing great growth and into May as well.
Okay. Then, well, I guess anything on the many more color on the demographics other than you did say skewed slightly younger, but any other color you could give there?
I would say the membership growth we're seeing is really across all of our geographies, which is sales performance as well. It was surprisingly uniform and surprisingly strong across the business and in terms of the new membership enrollment. In terms of the new members specifically, as I said, they're a little bit younger on average. A little bit younger for us is still people with families. It's not people in their early 20s, it's older than that, but relatively young for our franchise. A meaningful higher portion signing up digitally and engaging with our digital platforms, although that does owe to the business. Beyond that, we're still just getting to know these members from an analytic and from a qualitative standpoint. We may have more to say on future calls, which is quite positive.
Okay.
One thing I-
Oh, sorry.
Karen, is our ability to acquire these members in a digital way has really jumped. We're in the 10%, 12% range in past quarters, and this result in Q1 was almost 30% members acquired digitally. Incredible progress from that standpoint as well.
Okay, great. You commented that three quarters of the e-com growth was same-day delivery and BOPIC. Actually, can you just give more granularity on the split between those two?
Sure. Do you want to take it, Bob?
Sure. We saw tremendous growth in all things digital during 350%-ish growth in digitally enabled from same-day delivery and BOPIC. I believe, Lee, correct me if I'm wrong, same-day delivery was up about eightfold from the previous. That was the predominance of that number.
Yeah, that's right. We do think we have an economic advantage, Waltz. Think about the simple formula of bigger pack sizes leading to bigger % margins. We have higher dollar margins, and we're picking in an environment of 7,000 SKUs versus 100 other mass merchant or grocery. We were very excited to see the considerable growth in same-online pickup in club and pilot that, including curbside delivery and then inclusion of fresh goods as well into omni is a real differentiator for us, and the engagement in this quarter was fantastic.
Your next with Bank of America.
Oh, hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Lee, maybe for you, I was wondering if you could just tell us how you're thinking about the reopening phase and anything you have reopened or discretionary retailers start reopening stores. I'm just curious how you're thinking about how that could change the dynamics you're seeing now and how you would be planning for that?
Yeah, Robbie, it's a great question and something. Footprint is essentially Maine to Florida and as far west as now Michigan. As you think about our concentration in the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast in particular, we remain under those orders, and we will likely be that way, at least for an extended period of time. In our business in the South, including in Georgia, we've been watching this closely because it is the early indicator. So far, we haven't seen meaningful change for deceleration in the business. It would appear that people continue to consume significantly larger quantities of food at home. They haven't ventured back in large numbers to restaurants and about schools closed, offices closed, fewer people out and about during the day. You're seeing large quantities. I think even as they'll do it with limited capacities.
As we look at that, as that whole mix, it's really hard to predict what demand will look like. As we said in the prepared remarks, they're not being elevated demand for the foreseeable future. Open back up. That's part of the reason we gave the intra-quarter color on seeing a slowdown in May because we felt like giving a little bit more to help you think through the potential future results, which we're quite excited about.
The [three color] you can give us on the impact from the stimulus checks hitting and how you guys supporting comps?
Sure. I think there's two factors that are likely support, kind of in terms of an economic impact, and that's the stimulus checks in EBT food stamps. We certainly saw late in the quarter into Q2 an acceleration in some different categories. Went from a negative comp in Q2. We saw relatively significant growth in work from home categories, but also some potentially more disc MPVs. We would imagine that there is certainly an impact from stimulus checks that are impacting the business. It's hard to quantify exactly what that is because the overall shape of demand and relatively consistent. I think it's right to assume there is some benefit flowing through from stimulus checks.
That's helpful. Thank you so much.
Your next question comes-
Hey, on a great quarter. Lee, you talked about something I don't think I've heard come out from BJ's in a long time about suppliers that you typically don't deal with starting to knock on your door and maybe look back at a history of Costco 10-15 years. Just wondering if you can maybe just amplify on that a little bit for us.
Sure. I think knocking on their door and them knocking on our door. As you think about our general merchandise business in particular, we've been fortunate to remain open when large sections of specialty retailers, mall-based retailers, the department stores, have been closed. Many of the vendors who supply those channels have had their own challenging. In that world, we become potentially up for opportunistic buys or for ongoing relationships. We have certainly asked our general merchandise team to push and engage on this measure because it's likely true that a lot of the other players, particularly some of the weaker or more financially leveraged players, may struggle if demand does not snap back pretty meaningfully. As those businesses come under potential distress, it creates an opportunity for us to engage with companies that may not normally choose or sell to us specifically.
That's a potential silver lining in this for us, as we may get access to some new categories, some new brands that would be new and exciting for our members.
Okay. That's great to hear. Then just to circle back on membership again, the 40% growth. Just, is there a way to put that number in perspective, maybe, if you look at the past four t o eight quarter average of what the average has been for new membership growth? Then, I think there's been a lot of retailers that have seen a surge in customers, and for you guys, clearly, there's a fee attached to it, so the stickiness, you would think would be good. Just wondering what steps you guys are gonna take to cultivate those relationships going forward so you can keep them, not for just the next two to three quarters, but for multiple years.
Sure. Let me start, and then I'll ask Bob to comment on it as well. 40% is really strong, and we're very excited about that growth. The challenge for us is, in a lot of places we've been in the markets for a long period of time, some people feel like they know us. It's always the biggest challenge to get people to walk through the door and see how we've changed the business, that we have omni-platforms, that we have new assortments, that we've changed lots of things about the environment. The pandemic has created an extra motivation to walk in the door that is above what we could drive simply by traditional marketing. The trick, once you get them to walk in the door, is to get them to shop. Been impacted as well.
We're hopeful that people signing up for a one year-long affords us a nice opportunity to engage those members on an ongoing basis and convince them of the value of our franchise. We'll be looking to pull all the levers we've developed. So engage people from an omni-channel standpoint, try to get them enrolled in our credit card offering to save even more money, promote to them to get them to explore different elements of the business. Against the backdrop of potentially, we think people will be looking to save money. Some of the challenges of shopping in a club, a little bit longer trip, a little bit bigger pack sizes are sacrifices people may be more willing to make. That's certainly been the history of the company. When there's been recessionary environments, we tend to outperform.
Okay, that's great. Just one quick follow-up for me would be, just curious how big of an opportunity BOPIC with fresh could be for you guys? I'm sure you've started to test it. Anything you can learn or share with us? Target's announced that they're going to start doing that in the next several months. Just curious how big of an opportunity that could be. Thanks.
Yeah, we think it could be a pretty meaningful opportunity. In the test clubs, we're seeing really strong engagement in terms of the number of baskets that have fresh goods in them. It clearly introduces an extra operational challenge in that you need to keep the goods refrigerated and be even more disciplined in terms of pickup times and making sure. The early dynamic has been quite favorable. We're working to get the operational model right, and then, with that, we think there's an opportunity to scale it. As Bob described, we would look to lean into that in this environment in terms of omni investments and other investments we can make.
Great. Thanks, Bob.
I will now hand the call back.
Great. Well, thank you everyone. We're clearly excited about the quarter, but more so for the potential signals it sends for our future. Thank you for your engagement, thank you for your questions, and please stay healthy and safe in this environment. We'll talk again soon.
That concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.