Welcome to BJ's Restaurants, Inc. fourth quarter 2022 earnings release and conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star 0 on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Greg Levin, Chief Executive Officer and President. Thank you. You may begin.
Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, welcome to BJ's Restaurants' fiscal 2022 fourth quarter investor conference call and webcast. I am Greg Levin, BJ's Chief Executive Officer and President. Joining me on the call today is Tom Houdek, our Chief Financial Officer. We also have Greg Lynds, our Chief Development Officer on hand for Q&A. After the market closed today, we released our financial results for the fiscal 2022 fourth quarter. You can view the full text of our earnings release on our website at www.bjsrestaurants.com. Our agenda today will start with Rana Schermerhorn, our Director of SEC Reporting, providing our standard cautionary disclosure with respect to forward-looking statements. I will then provide an update on our business and current initiatives. Tom Houdek will provide some commentary on the quarter and the current environment.
After that, we will open it up to questions. Rana, please go ahead.
Thanks, Greg. Our comments on the conference call today will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and that undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. Our forward-looking statements speak only as of today's date, February 16th, 2023. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements or to make any other forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, unless required to do so by the securities laws.
Investors are referred to the full discussion of risks and uncertainties associated with forward-looking statements contained in the company's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Greg?
Thanks, Rana. BJ's fourth quarter results demonstrated continued growth across key metrics as we beat the industry as measured by comparable sales and comparable guest traffic according to Black Box, and we made further progress improving our restaurant- level cash flow margins. Our comparable restaurant sales increased 6.6% over the same quarter a year ago on a 14-week versus 14-week basis. While a slower start to December and late winter storms provided a slight headwind to the industry, BJ's still delivered its highest weekly sales average ever, reaching more than $131,000 the week before Christmas. With our focus on staffing our restaurants to ensure we are delivering gold standard service and gracious hospitality in our high-energy, lively restaurants, we were able to increase dining room sales while maintaining off-premise sales at twice the pre-COVID levels.
Of note, our comparable sales performance has accelerated in fiscal 2023 to date, driven by growth in the dining room guest traffic and an additional 3.7% of menu pricing, which is 190 basis points more than our pricing round that we took last February. If our year-to-date sales trends continue, first quarter comparable restaurant sales should be in the high single digits. Currently, we are carrying pricing in the mid 7% range compared to a year ago. Like all consumer-facing businesses, we are closely monitoring customer trends and the broader macro environment. To date, we have not seen any meaningful change pointing to a slowdown in spending at BJ's.
For example, our check-driving incidents for add-ons such as appetizers, drinks, and of course, our Pizookies remain above pre-COVID levels. We are not seeing negative mix shifts towards lower priced or discounted items. The one area that has moderated somewhat has been our alcohol incidents. We are still selling more alcohol per check in our dining rooms than before the pandemic. The amount of extra drink incidents has declined modestly. This trend began in mid-2022. We believe it has to do more with a return to the more normal guest behavior than any macro impact on our consumer. During the fourth quarter , we made progress improving our restaurant- level cash flow margins despite the ongoing inflationary pressures. We all know growing sales leads to incremental profit and margin expansion.
The sales growth we generated in the quarter, coupled with some early success from our margin improvement initiatives and, to a lesser extent, the extra week in the fiscal year, helped propel our margins ahead of both the same quarter a year ago as well as the third quarter of 2022. Our focus for 2023, this current year, is about expanding our restaurant- level margins through our sales- driving initiatives, our margin improvement project, and allocating capital to high- returning investments. Our sales- driving initiatives target capturing even more dining room traffic through a menu focused on craveable, familiar made- brewhouse fabulous offerings, high- ROI remodels that have proven to lift sales as well as driving additional off-premise sales through our own channels with our new e-commerce platform and through our third-party partners.
In regards to our margin improvement initiative, as we discussed on our third quarter conference call, we are targeting at least $25 million of annual cost savings with 200 basis points of margin improvement. We expect to see savings from sourcing changes where we can enhance and differentiate BJ's high-quality products through our kitchen technology competitive advantage. For example, which we touched on last quarter, the change to slow roasting our own wings alone will save us over $4 million annually and benefit our margins by 30 basis points. We continue to test a number of other impactful opportunities to optimize our business, including a simplified menu that is still broad, but reduces the menu item count, complexity, and SKUs while improving execution and prep hours in the kitchen.
We intend to roll out a menu with approximately 10% less menu items in July, and we will test removing even more items later this year. Additionally, we just started testing AI-driven sales forecasting to provide an additional tool to our restaurant operators to forecast sales more accurately, which then improves labor scheduling efficiency as well as kitchen prep. I am very confident that we will achieve our goal of identifying at least $25 million of annualized restaurant cost savings this year. We also continue to evaluate our menu pricing strategy and expect additional rounds of menu pricing later this year in order to manage ongoing inflationary pressures and manage our margins. With commodity and labor costs now each up approximately 30% since 2019, menu pricing will play a role in our expected margin growth this year.
To date, we have priced more conservatively than many peers during the recent period of rapid inflation, which has benefited our guest traffic trends and value scores. As a result, guests continue to see the tremendous price point value provided at BJ's from our lunch specials, daily brewhouse specials, and happy hour offerings, along with our more indulgent favorites still at great prices like our slow-roasted prime rib and fresh Atlantic salmon. Remodels will also play a key role in our sales- building initiative for the next few years. The guest response, measured by increased traffic, sales, and profit, has been excellent. Our remodel program includes adding seating capacity and updating our bar statement where applicable and other highly impactful elements inside and outside the restaurants.
To date, the return profile on these investments has been highly attractive. We have made additional remodels an important part of our 2023 capital allocation strategy, which Tom will cover in more detail shortly. Based on our current and expected sales growth trends, our margin improvement progress to date and expected further margin opportunities and additional pricing, we expect run- rate restaurant-l evel cash flow margins in the low to mid-teens as we exit 2023, assuming a continued healthy macro and consumer environment. Finally, our new restaurant expansion strategy continues to provide strong results and growth. In the fourth quarter, we opened the final three restaurants of the year for a total of six new restaurants opened in 2022. We tend to open restaurants in markets with high sales and attractive restaurant cash flow potential.
To illustrate, in January, our class of 2022 restaurants had average weekly sales more than 20% higher than the rest of the BJ's system. We are very pleased with the strong sales performance of our new restaurant openings, which reinforces our confidence in the attractive financial returns by allocating capital to new restaurants. We expect to open another five new restaurants in 2023, one of which is a relocation of our Chandler, Arizona restaurant to a new prime location in the same trade area. Also reflecting prudent portfolio management, we will close two older restaurants in the first half of this year. On the people front, last quarter, I announced that we added BJ's first standalone Chief People Officer, Amy Colley, to our leadership team early in the fourth quarter.
Also in Q4, we welcome Putnam Shin as our new Chief Growth and Innovation Officer to BJ's. We are thrilled to have Amy and Putnam join the Executive team. They are both already making significant impacts across the organization, and I know they will be strong leaders as we drive the business on our road to $2 billion. In summary, we are focused on a comprehensive set of initiatives aimed at significantly increasing our average weekly sales, growing our restaurant margins, and continuing our national expansion with a controlled pace in top- quality sites with the goal of growing BJ's sales to $2 billion and beyond.
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All right. Thank you, operator. I believe we had some technical difficulty here. I'm just gonna do my last paragraph because I hear that's where we dropped off, and then we'll turn it over to Tom Houdek, our Chief Financial Officer. Sorry about that, everyone. As I was saying, in summary, we know the best way to grow margins and profit is to grow sales. Our recent sales trends have been encouraging, and we remain committed to being sales drivers first and foremost. We intend to continue building sales into 2023, with demand for experiential dining remaining strong. Our goal is to grow our sales into $2 billion and beyond by delivering this meaningful earnings growth and shareholder return.
In the meantime, we are incredibly increasingly confident that guest affinity for our brand and concept, coupled with the trajectory of our business and our current growth and margin enhancing initiatives, will enable us to achieve attractive near and midterm growth and margin objectives. Let me turn it back over to Tom to provide a more detailed update from the quarter and current trends. Tom.
Thanks, Greg, good afternoon, everyone. I will provide details of the quarter and some forward-looking views. Please remember this commentary is subject to the risks and uncertainties associated with forward-looking statements as discussed in our filings with the SEC. For the fourth quarter, we reported total sales of $344.2 million, an 18% increase from the prior year. Included in fourth quarter sales were $26.5 million from the extra weeks in our fiscal year. $3.2 million gift card breakage revenue related to a change in estimated redemptions of gift cards issued prior to 2022, which have yet to be redeemed, resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Excluding the extra week and gift card breakage adjustment, our sales increased approximately 8% versus Q4 2021.
On a comparable restaurant basis, which is unaffected by the gift card breakage adjustment, sales increased by 6.6% compared to Q4 of 2021 on a 14-week to 14-week basis. The comparable sales improvement, in conjunction with certain savings we began to realize from our margin improvement initiative, and to a lesser extent, the extra week in our fiscal year, helped BJ's improve margins in the fourth quarter. Our restaurant-level cash flow margin was 12.9% in Q4. After removing the gift card breakage benefit discussed earlier, restaurant-level cash flow margin was 12.1%. Our Q4 2021 restaurant- level cash flow margin was 10.1% or 9.6% when removing the $1.6 million in Employee Retention Tax Credit benefit.
When comparing margins excluding the gift card breakage and ERTC benefits, restaurant-level cash flow margins improved by 250 basis points in the fourth quarter compared to the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA was $26.1 million and 7.6% of sales in our fourth quarter, which included the gift card breakage benefit. When again excluding the gift card breakage benefit from 2022 and the ERTC benefit from 2021, Q4 2022 EBITDA beat the prior year by $10.8 million, with a margin that was 260 basis points higher. We reported net income of $4 million and diluted net income per share of $0.17 on a GAAP basis for the quarter.
Our Q4 GAAP net income and EPS benefited by approximately $2.4 million and $0.10 per share, respectively, from the gift card breakage adjustment discussed earlier when applying our 24.2% effective tax rates. From a weekly sales perspective, we averaged more than 112,000 per restaurant in the fourth quarter, or approximately 7,000 higher than our Q4 of 2021. We maintained our off-premise weekly sales average in the low 20,000s while generating dine-in sales of more than 92,000 in Q4. Moving to expenses, our cost of sales was 26.8% in the quarter.
After removing the gift card breakage benefit to revenue described earlier, our Q4 cost of sales was 27.1%, which was 20 basis points favorable compared to Q3 of 2022 and 30 basis points favorable compared to Q4 of 2021. Food costs remained high though year-over-year inflation moderated to the low single digits in the fourth quarter. The inflation figure would have been approximately 2% points higher if not for the first round of margin improvement changes we implemented across our food basket, including the new slow-roasted wings that Greg highlighted, which were fully rolled out across our system early in the fourth quarter. We did not take any additional pricing in the fourth quarter, and our pricing carried was slightly less than 6% in both the quarter and the full year compared to the year-ago levels.
As Greg noted, we took 3.7% of menu pricing in January to combat ongoing inflationary pressures and to recapture additional margin. To date, we have seen no guest pushback to our menu pricing rounds. We are finalizing plans for an additional pricing round early in the second quarter. Labor and benefits expenses were 36.8% of sales in the fourth quarter. After removing the gift card breakage benefit described earlier, our Q4 labor and benefits expenses were 37.1% of sales in the quarter, which was 140 basis points favorable compared to the fourth quarter of the prior year after removing the ERTC benefit.
We continued to improve our labor efficiency in the quarter, which is driven in part by improving labor retention in our restaurants, which was at a best level over the past two years in Q4. Our overtime and training hours improved as well, which as a percentage of sales, were 20 basis points better than Q4 of 2021 and within 20 basis points from pre-pandemic levels in Q4 of 2019. Occupancy and operating expenses were 23.5% of sales in the quarter. After removing the gift card breakage benefit described earlier, our Q4 occupancy and operating expenses were 23.7% of sales in the quarter, which was 80 basis points favorable compared to the fourth quarter of the prior year as we leveraged higher sales.
We continue to identify O&O savings opportunities as part of our margin improvement initiative, with the first round of cost savings rolling out in the coming months, including new leftover packaging containers and changing the frequency of certain maintenance programs. G&A in the fourth quarter was $19.3 million, coming in lower than our prior estimates due to a true up for annual incentive bonuses, lower deferred compensation expense tied to fund performance in our deferred compensation plan, and other savings against our original G&A budget. Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with debt of $60 million and net debt of about $31 million. We are very pleased with the strength of our balance sheet and will remain consistent in our approach of prioritizing growth-driving investments by return profile, including building new restaurants, improving our existing restaurants, and funding sales-driving initiatives.
We finished 2022 spending $78.6 million in CapEx. CapEx would have been approximately $85 million, but approximately $7 million shifted from the end of 2022 to the beginning of 2023 due to timing of year-end construction payments. We did not repurchase any additional shares in the quarter, which leaves our availability under our currently authorized share repurchase program at approximately $22.1 million. Looking to the first quarter of 2023, as Greg said, we are encouraged by recent sales trends, we expect Q1 comparable restaurant sales in the high single digits. Factoring in our current sales and cost trends, I expect restaurant- level cash flow margins to be in the 12% area in Q1 and expanding through the year as we grow sales through strategic initiatives, make additional progress on our margin improvement initiative, take additional menu pricing.
As Greg noted, we are targeting restaurant- level margins in the low to mid-teens on a run- rate basis as we exit the year. We are expecting food cost inflation in the mid-single- digit % area in 2023. For 2023, we are targeting G&A in the $80 million-$82 million area, taking into account investments in strategic growth areas such as off-premise and catering, as well as a step- up back to more regular bonus payout and deferred compensation plan return levels. Our CapEx spend is planned in the $90 million-$95 million range, including the approximately $7 million of construction payments that shifted from late 2022 to early 2023. In 2023, our capital allocation priority will continue to focus on investments with attractive returns, including a mix of new restaurant growth, restaurant remodels, and other sales- building and margin- enhancing initiatives.
This year, we plan to open five new restaurants, with the first schedule to open later this month and the second in early April, and to expand our high- ROI remodel initiative to more than 30 restaurants or approximately 15% of our restaurant base. Additionally, as part of our margin- enhancing initiative, we plan to strengthen and optimize our restaurant portfolio by closing three legacy restaurants this year, one of which will be relocated to a great new site in the same trade area, which is included in the 5 new restaurants. In summary, we know the best way to grow margins and profit is to grow sales. Recent sales trends have been encouraging, we remain committed to being sales drivers first and foremost. We intend to continue building sales into 2023, with demand for experiential dining remaining strong, especially at BJ's.
At the same time, we have elevated productivity and cost savings through our margin improvement initiative, with momentum continuing to build. We have a clear path to sales and margin growth, and our long-term strategy remains intact. Thank you for your time today, and we'll now open the call to your questions. Operator?
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue, and for participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question is from Alexander Slagle with Jefferies. Please proceed.
Thanks, you guys. On the commentary on the restaurant-l evel margin expectations, it sounds like the cadence is sort of a gradual ramp. Is that sort of given the timing of the initiatives or, you know, might there be maybe the seasonally strong 2Q, maybe that one could get to the lower mid-teens margin level? Just, trying to dig into that a little bit more.
Yeah. Alex, this is Greg, and then, I'll pass over to Tom, if you've got other additional commentary. That's generally how we're thinking about the cadence in the sense that as our margin initiatives work their way through. I do think to your point, Q2 is our strongest weekly sales average, and I think based on where we are today and knowing how those sales can grow, tend to see that number go up. Then to your point, it would go down into Q3 and then accelerate into Q4 and kind of get us onto that trajectory of where we're going.
The other thing, just when we think about it as well, much like you saw in the news yesterday with Producer Price Indexes and so forth on inflation, we tend to have a certain amount of contracts that get reset on January 1st. In this first quarter, we have some of those resetting contracts. While our menu pricing of 3.7% will help offset that, as well as some of our other initiatives, our next round of pricing somewhere in that April-May timeframe is really meant to kind of take care of some of that additional inflationary pressure that we're experiencing right now. That's generally the ramp-u p that we see. I don't know, Tom, if you have anything to add to that.
Yeah, I'd agree. It's the, you know, the combination of pricing that we've taken some in January. We'll take more later in the year and the margin improvement initiatives that continue to build. Those, you know, that's how we see the margin it increasing as the year progresses.
Maybe you could comment on the contract resetting and sort of where you are, how much is contracted for the year at this point.
Sure. In January, we have the majority of our contracts come due. We are, you know, about 35%-40% fixed, which is a little less than we have been in the past. There's some contracts we're staying floating on this year because just the extra premium to lock in contracts for the full year, you know, we saw it more advantageous for our cost structure to keep them floating, take the lower cost now, and not expecting them to go up as high as some of the fixed costs. That was the, you know, extent of our contract resets that happened in January. As Greg mentioned, wings, for example, that's an area where the market is good right now and prices are still low.
We kept that contract floating to get the benefit of the current market, as well as where we think the market should go for the balance of the year. Yeah, as we look into Q1 and gave the forecast margins for Q1, it takes into account the extra cost that we saw come in January. As we think about pricing, you know, what we took in January, what we'll take again in Q2, that should offset that inflation plus, you know, extra to get some extra flowing through margins.
Great. Wanted to follow up on the capital allocation commentary, if you could provide a little more color on the remodel ROIs and maybe how many of each type of opportunity you see for 2023, whether it's the bar area or the seating. Any color there would be helpful.
Alexander Slagle, it's Greg Levin. As we mentioned in the call, we're trying to, you know, get a minimum of 30 done next year. I would say it's probably right now evenly split more so between the bar and then what we would call kind of expand capacity around the new seating. Some of those will overlap, or we can do both in those restaurants. What we've seen out of, without getting in super specific, I guess, is the bars is a higher cost as we do the bar taps to the back handle. We put in a 130-inch TV and really lighten up the restaurant. That cost can be anywhere from $500,000-$700,000.
The returns from a sales standpoint on those restaurants have been significantly higher than the return on sales, meaning the amount of sales that we're getting on just adding the three additional booths. The three additional booths will cost only about $150,000, so it's a lot less of a cost, maybe $150,000-$200,000, depending on what else we do on there. The amount of incremental sales there, while successful and high in the sense that gets us a good ROI, doesn't drive the same type of return that redoing the bar does that really, I think, kind of accentuates the energy within our restaurant. That's where we are today.
We're looking at those returns somewhere, you know, where we'd like to be, maybe in the 20-plus % range for the cost of that investment.
That's great. Interesting. Thanks.
You're welcome.
Our next question is from Brian Bittner with Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. Please proceed.
Hi. Thanks. This is Michael Tamas on for Brian. Two quick questions. You know, the first one on pricing, can you talk about maybe what you're planning on having for the full year 2023, inclusive of the future price increase you were talking about in April? Are you planning any additional price increases beyond April? Just generally, how are you thinking about pricing against a more shaky consumer backdrop now? Thanks.
Sure. Thanks, Mike. Yeah, we're, you know, like we said, we took 3.7% in January. The April round is we're targeting somewhere in the 2% plus area, and we'll have another opportunity potentially in the September timeframe for more pricing. Adding that up, we could be in the, you know, 8% plus area for the year.
Okay, thanks. You know, just a commentary on the low- to mid-teens margins exiting 2023. I just wanna clarify. I mean, does that mean that for full year 2024, you'll definitely be in that range, assuming, you know, sales and everything sort of shakes out to where you think it's going to be? Is there anything that we need to think about that's different about that run rate exiting 2023 into 2024? Thanks.
Mike, that's our goal. Our goal would be exactly as you laid it out there, and that is, as we move our margins up through the year through the margin improvement initiatives, one thing that, you know, we didn't mention, you know, and Alex asked a question about how it plays out to the cadence, and that is starting in July, we'll have that reduced menu and continue to play with another set of the menu as well. That'll really help on the prep hours and the efficiency, as well as we talk about the labor forecasting from our AI, our artificial intelligence systems that we're working with.
As we work through those and get ourselves into that run rate, as we go into 2024, we'd expect our margins to be in that mid-teen range and move from there. Obviously it's gonna be seasonally adjusted. Q2 would be higher, you know, Q3 would be a little bit lower. Overall we would see 2024 an area where our margins are in the mid-teens.
Okay, that's perfect. Thanks. If I could just squeeze in a quick model and one on the remodels. Is there anything we need to be thinking about in terms of downtime, in terms of impact on either, overall sales or comps and margins, just as it relates to some of those remodels? Thanks.
No. Greg Lynds is in here, our Chief Development Officer, who's really his team is handling the remodels, and they have perfected it where they can get in there and do them at nighttime. Our restaurants stay open, so we shouldn't be losing any restaurant days or restaurant weeks. There's really no additional training or any other changes from that perspective. What we've tended to see is, you know, that pop might take a couple weeks just because guests have to, you know, see it and then build from there a little bit. We, we definitely like the pops that we're seeing. When you get to the weekend, you get to Valentine's Day, having that extra capacity really helps us.
Perfect. Thanks so much.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Drew North with Baird. Please proceed.
Thanks for taking the question. I was wondering if you would be willing to share an update on how the comps specifically were tracking quarter to date to appreciate the color on extrapolating the trends through the balance of the quarter, but just wondering if you could help quantify the quarter to date metric just to level set us here.
Drew, it's an interesting question. Without getting very specific, the first two weeks of January were really strong sales. They were no-north of 20% as we went over Omicron. Since that time, it's kind of leveled out where we feel comfortable with kind of mid-single digits, or high single digits, I'm sorry, which would tend to be kind of where we expect the next weeks and the other weeks to be. I think we saw first couple weeks of January with some pretty strong sales, and we've kind of level- set it into where we are today, maybe a tad higher per se.
Okay. That's helpful and understood. One follow-up on the margin, specifically related to the commodity inflation outlook of mid-single digits, I believe you mentioned. I was hoping you could share some perspective on the cadence of that inflation through the year based on your existing contracts and what you may be cycling.
Sure. There was a step-up, as we mentioned in Q1, when the fixed price contracts most reset. We do have a little more loaded in the back half for beef and steak items. The, you know, there's forecasts out saying, given herd sizes, that we could see some higher prices in beef in later in the year, so that's loaded in the forecast as well. Otherwise, no, it's, you know, I think this first reset was the new pricing and, you know, there's gonna be some markets, you know, somewhat up or somewhat flat, but I think beef was the only one worth highlighting beyond that.
Thank you. I'll pass it on.
Thanks, Drew.
Our next question is from Sharon Zackfia with William Blair. Please proceed.
Hi, good afternoon. It was really good to hear about how the new units are performing, and I understand the capital allocation strategy for this year. As you think beyond kind of 2023, I mean, how are you, I guess, dividing the thought process between further remodels and accelerating growth? Because it seems like the ROI on new units would be pretty healthy given the productivity that you outlined in the press release. Or maybe just juxtapose that with what you're seeing with construction costs and if that's been a major factor in kind of the thought process this year.
Yeah. Sharon, great question. Before I jump into that, we're excited to get one open in your neck of the woods here shortly in the Chicago area. That'll be our kind of our next opening.
I will single-handedly boost your incidence rate of alcohol.
That, and if you get some Pizookie, we'll be really happy. But you know, you kind of hit upon it at the end there, and that is the cost to build new restaurants, you know, has moved, you know, higher than we anticipated coming out of COVID. As we were building restaurants last year, they were kind of in the mid-sixes to maybe upper sixes. As we went out and got bids this year, those bids started to come in with a $7 million handle there, or starting with a seven handle. I can let Greg Lynds jump in here for a second. Him and his team have gone out and rebid that, and we're trying to bring those costs down.
While our sales to investment ratio is actually pretty good at one to one because our new restaurants have opened up really well, and we're really pleased with them, we kind of felt that the investment cost for a new restaurant versus having these high ROI remodels this year made more sense to pivot. Knowing that even as we go into next year, we're still gonna have restaurants that we wanna spend time on remodeling because we can only get 30 done next year, I think it's gonna be a little bit less as well. Taking all that aside, the ultimate cadence back in our business is to get our new restaurant growth back in the 5% plus increase in weeks.
While we're at five new restaurants this year, where we sit here today, we would like to increase that next year and increase that thereafter and get ourselves closer again to 5% plus. I think if we do that, we drive comp sales in the kind of 3%-5% range. You start to look at 8%-10% revenue growth. Leveraging and building margins allows us to grow earnings at above 10%. That, and I think at that time, we'll be throwing off some decent free cash flow as well, allow us to start to think about how we wanna prioritize our excess cash for our shareholders.
That's the longer term cadence in our business, even though right now we're doing a little bit of a, of a pivot towards remodels because of that high investment cost. I don't know, Greg, if you want to add anything to it.
I would just, you know, kind of add to what you said, that with our current initiatives going on, we think, you know, in 2024, we can get our total cost, and that's our all-in cost, so that's construction, FF&E, soft costs, site work, everything, back to that, you know, $6 million target is in that $6 million range. Which still gives us great ROIs in that 20%-30% range, depending on, you know, landlord contributions and that kind of thing.
Thank you for that. Just two quick clarifying questions. The mid-single-digit commodity inflation for this year, was that gross or net of anticipated kind of cost savings that you identify? Did you give traffic for the fourth quarter? Could we get that?
I'll do the traffic one because that's simple. For the fourth quarter we end up with 6% comp, our traffic was around 2.5% or so, the rest was the average check going up. Just to jump into the average check a little bit, we had mid-5% pricing. I think below the industry, our check's a little bit lower, that is really due to the fact that we've seen an outsized growth in lunch in the fourth quarter and the late-night business. Those areas tend to have a little bit lower overall average check, that's why our average check's more in the 4% range versus our 5% pricing. Again, our traffic was positive in the 2.5+% range.
I'm gonna hit on the commodities.
Sure. On the commodity and inflation question, the mid-single digits was a net number. There is possible for upside, just depends on what else we're able to achieve in the margin improvement initiative. Right now, the mid-single digits was net. You know, again, we're still evaluating a number of other attractive opportunities to save there. It, you know, there could be some upside on top of that.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks.
Our next question is from Todd Brooks with The Benchmark Company. Please proceed.
Hey. Good evening, everyone. Good to talk to you. Couple questions. There's one variable, and Greg, you hinted at in your comments, but in talking about the recovery in the restaurant-level margin and an exit rate for the year in the low-to-mid teens, what's the assumption of sales as far as... You talk about that as being your best driver of margin recovery. I know we've got the margin improvement program. I know we've got some pricing coming in, but what's the assumption for what you need for same-store sales growth as a component of reaching that target? Are you not expecting much on that front beyond Q1, and any increment there would be, put you higher into that targeted range?
Yes, that's a good question, Todd. I think when we look at our business and think about the fact that we're looking somewheres in the 7% - 8% menu pricing. Thinking about from the 7%- 8% menu pricing, I think we're thinking, you know, comp sales or revenue growth in the kind of maybe mid-single digits or so, hopefully a little bit better. We feel that there's opportunities that we can drive that margins by looking at our cost improvement initiatives to help manage that down. I think we've got to get that, you know, that pricing to come through in our business to kind of continue to move ourselves in the direction of those margins.
Okay. Great. Just a quick follow-up, and I'll hop back into queue as well. Is there a way with the early experience with the remodels and what you're seeing for lifts out of if you blended out the bar program and the incremental free booth program, what type of structural same-store sales do you see as we get into the program? As we do the first 30, there should be a lift because that is a meaningful piece of the overall chain from these efforts. How do we start to think about maybe a structural same-store sales tailwind from this program?
You know, I think the, well, a couple things there. One, we're definitely seeing a lift when we talk about the bar program giving us sales, you know, somewheres in the $2,000 a week level. I'm sorry, the expanded capacity is what we've mentioned. We're still working through the bar. The bar we've done, I wanna say three restaurants right now. Two are performing really well. One was just completed last week, so we're watching that one. It tends to be a sales number above that.
We will come back to the investors or the investment community after the first quarter, and we've kind of finished up with more of the expanded capacity, which is the additional booths, and then have more of the bar in front of us and come back and give you kind of where we think they blend out and what type of lift we're seeing. Right now, as I said, we're targeting a 20% return on that cash. You know, we could be spending $200,000 on the additional booths, and then we could be spending $500,000-$700,000 on bar and other areas, just depending. You can kind of back into that a little bit, but we wanna see where it kind of plays out the rest of this quarter.
Okay. Perfect. Thanks, Greg.
Our next question is from Jon Tower with Citi. Please proceed.
Hi. Thanks. two quick ones from me. first, would you be able to call out any differences maybe you're seeing in same-store sales in tech-heavy areas, maybe versus the rest of the system? anything along those lines?
Todd, Yeah. In regards to like looking at the first quarter, this is not unexpected, I think because of what we've seen over the last couple of years, the Bay Area now is outperforming in regards to comp sales. It's a pretty strong contributor right now. Actually, all of California is doing well, but the Bay Area is definitely coming back, and we're seeing some nice comp sales up in that area. I think across the board, we are seeing good comp sales in many areas, but we've talked at many times about Bay Area and Northern California being a little bit more of a drag in our business short term. Right now it's turned a little bit and given us a little bit of a tailwind.
Awesome. Thanks. Just one last one for me. Good to hear that you're able to get, some staffing resolved. Can you talk to how much you're seeing, for that as being macro driven versus, maybe what you're doing in the restaurant to help bring people in, applications or, retaining existing staff? Thanks.
Yeah. Jon Tower, I think it's a combination of both. We're hearing across the industry that finding people is easier today than it was a year ago. Definitely we've seen that. We've placed an emphasis within BJ's to make sure, you know, we're taking the time to do the things to onboard our people correctly, to make them part of the culture and part of the BJ's family to grow our business. That seems to have really helped us from that standpoint and something that we continue to do.
One of the things that will also help us going forward, we don't talk about it as much from a recruiting standpoint, is as we continue to work through some of our margin improvement initiatives, especially around the smaller menu, that helps bring people on board into, you know, an already complex business. Where we have 145 plus menu items, learning our menu is gonna be more challenging than getting a position in fast casual or QSR or other casual dining restaurants. Doing some of those things as well as some of the other initiatives that we've done in regards to our value statement and other things that we rolled out this last year, I think it's helped bringing more people on board for us and continuing to improve our staffing at our restaurants.
It's a real emphasis for us. I got to give my hats off to our general managers that have spent a lot of time rebuilding our restaurants and doing a great job to get people in there so that we can deliver gold standard, you know, level of operational excellence, and that we can deliver gracious hospitality to our consumers that come in and visit us or our guests.
Awesome. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Our next question is from Nick Setyan with Wedbush Securities. Please proceed.
Hi, this is actually Michael on for Nick. Just two quick ones from me. Did you provide what wage inflation was in Q4? Just the opening cadence for next year, it sounds as though you've got one in the first quarter, one in the second. Do you have any ideas of the timing of the relocation? Is that gonna be Q3, Q4?
On the openings, the relocation will tend to be Q3. We're looking at kind of one-ish here in Q1, one in Q2, and then we start to finish off the year, hopefully with the remaining three. We'd like to get the main thing in Q3, but probably we'll end up with one-two in Q3 and then one-two or however it falls out into Q4.
Let me answer the question. For wage growth inflation in Q4, on the hourly front, we saw about a 7% year-over-year increase in the wages.
Great. Thanks very much.
You're welcome.
Our final question is from Andrew Wolf with C.L. King. Please proceed.
Well, thanks. Good afternoon. I might have missed this. I don't know if you mentioned or could quantify if there what the impact might have been from, you know, the terrible monsoon-like rains that occurred in California during the quarter?
You know, Andrew, we did not quantify it. It definitely was a headwind for going over COVID from a year ago or Omicron from a year ago. Those rains were the kind of the last of December and the first couple weeks of January that all that was coming through. It got masked a little bit because of just the challenge a year ago from Omicron that really, I think, hit our industry and a lot of other industries strongly, I guess, or impactfully. We did mention, you know, because there was somebody else that asked the question about how the year started. I think it was Drew over at Baird. We kind of said the first couple weeks of January, our comp sales were north of 20%. We're saying that kind of double digit.
We started the year really strong. It probably would have been even higher if we didn't have the rains in California.
Okay, that's good color. I appreciate that. Now you're saying high single digit is sort of the current trend and, you know, is there any Omicron benefit in that? I guess is really the straight question. Or is that against a non-Omicron compare?
Not really. I think, as we've seen from other companies as well, if you look at Black Box and other data. It's kinda like a ski slope, you know, maybe a black diamond ski slope, or a double black diamond, in the sense that the first couple weeks of January were really impactful. As you kind of move through January, things started to normalize and companies built their sales. We did as well from a year ago. As we tend to look at ourselves here in the February time frame, it's much more of a normalized operations. It was, again, at this time last year about staffing up and staffed up we're able to drive dining room sales, and that's where we think we are today.
That big impact of Omicron was kind of the end of December into the first few weeks of January.
Gotcha. The other question I wanted to ask was, I think you've planned it. Well, you said you're planning a 10% menu item reduction. You know, you kind of obviously mentioned it'll help the P&L, but could you maybe give a little more color? I'm sure the operating cost, it simplifies that. 'Cause I was sort of thinking about it. These must be items that, you know, aren't selling so good, so you might save some shrink and procurement might get better. Just to sort of a sense of, you know, how that helps at the restaurant level. Also, you know, the flip side, how do you think about and plan for potential lost sales and, you know, sort of work that all out?
Andrew, first of all, that's a great question. Very insightful question, that is, it's much easier to grow sales when you're adding items versus growing sales when you take items away. We've been testing this smaller menu for a while. Right now it's trying a couple things with different placement, trying to see how we lose between if we're losing anything on add-ons or if we're losing it in the entrée side or how we can mix guests from one item to the next. Based on our testing to date, it looks like we're able to pretty close hold onto our current average check and our trends based on what we're removing from our restaurants. We continue to look at them, exactly as you said, what are the high sellers?
What's their reach and their frequency to the consumer? Something that might have low frequency seems like perfect item to take out, but if it's got broad reach to consumers, do you end up losing those consumers? As much as we would love to say we're gonna push this out tomorrow, the way we manage against it is we test it. On those tests, we've done a couple different iterations where we've moved different items in different places on the menu so that when we come into the July timeframe and roll it out, we'll feel comfortable what it does to top-line sales and feel comfortable what it does to the restaurant operations. Your restaurant operations is twofold. One is it will help with prep because you won't have as many items.
As much as we talk about menu items that we're removing, it's really about the prep hours and re-reducing more SKUs around prep than actual items for the guests. And that's one area that we go after when we look at it. The other side of it is the ability to cook something or just the memorization and repetition from less items will make our current products that much better. We'd rather serve a little bit less items, but make sure every single item is perfect every time is really the goal there. The other thing I do wanna bring up is, as much as we work this down, BJ's is known for having a broad menu. We're not looking over time to get down to 60 items or 70 items.
A competitive advantage and a differentiator for BJ's is to have a broader menu than traditional mass casual concepts. We will always continue to have that as we continue to go forward, and we'll continue to kind of prune where it's appropriate and make sure what we're putting on matches the brewhouse fit for the BJ's concept.
Okay. Thank you.
You're welcome.
That was our final question, so we can conclude today's conference. Thank you, everybody, for your participation, and have a wonderful evening.
Thank you.