Greetings, and welcome to the Bloomin' Brands Fiscal First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow management's prepared remarks. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mark Graf, Group Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you, Mr.
Graf. You may now begin.
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. With me on today's call are David Deno, our Chief Executive Officer and Chris Meyer, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. By now, you should have access to our fiscal Q1 2021 earnings release. It can also be found on our website atbloominbrands.com in the Investors section. Throughout this conference call, we will be presenting results on an adjusted basis, An explanation of our use of non GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures appear in our earnings release on our website as previously described.
Before we begin formal remarks, I'd like to remind everyone that part of our discussion today will include forward looking statements, including a discussion of recent trends. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our forward looking statements. Some of these risks are mentioned in our earnings release, others are discussed in our SEC filings, which are available at sec.gov. During today's call, we'll provide a brief recap of our financial performance for the fiscal Q1 2021, a discussion regarding current trends and a select Q2 2021 guidance metrics. Once we've completed these remarks, we'll open up the call for questions.
And with that, I'd now like to turn the call over to David Deno.
Well, thank you, Mark, and welcome to everyone listening today. The Q1 was a strong start to the year and we had very good results across many measures. Results further reinforce our belief that the strategies and tactics are working and set us up well to achieve our near and long term commitments. Thank you to the teams in the restaurants and restaurant support center for your unwavering Thanks to all of you for your hard work. The first Thanks to all of you for your hard work.
The Q1 performance was the culmination of a multi year effort to elevate the guest experience, grow healthy traffic and pursue operational and simplification efforts to improve margins and profitability. This was accomplished by 1st and foremost, taking care of our people and customers. We did not furlough any employees during the pandemic and this decision has contributed to low turnover. Maintaining a motivated and well trained and engaged employee base is critical to our long term success. As sales volumes are now exceeding pre pandemic levels, these actions provide a competitive advantage to retaining talent as the industry faces some staffing challenges.
2nd, we are focused on providing great food and service to customers in the dining room while maintaining our off premises volumes. We made significant investments pre pandemic to capitalize on the growing off premises demand as consumers shifted towards convenience. Our to go and delivery businesses are performing very well and the high off premises retention levels are contributing to the strong sales outperformance. 3rd, we have been aggressive in pursuing opportunities to further optimize how we run and support our restaurants. We are realizing efficiencies through simplification efforts and across operations, menus and marketing offers.
This has led to lower waste, reduced prep and training hours and improved execution. These benefits translate into lower costs in the restaurants and in the restaurant support center. We will continue to look for ways to reduce complexity, improve consistency and increase profitability across revenue channels. As a result of these actions, we had higher than expected volumes and generated significant margin and profit improvement in the Q1. We believe the strategic and operational framework we outlined last quarter can deliver consistent performance in the quarters ahead.
As the country reopens, we remain focused on optimizing revenue channels across both in restaurant and off premises. Our goal is to preserve off premises volumes as dining room capacity grows. The Carrabba's team has done an exceptional job in this area. In the Q1, Carrabba's off premises sales were a portfolio high of 42% of revenue. We will enhance and strengthen the company's delivery and carryout business by 1st, continue to provide great food and service.
For example, the family bundle platform at Bonefish offers convenience at an attractive price point. The offering provides a fully prepared meal for 5 starting at 29.99 with 6 different options to choose from. And second, by expanding our technology and digital efforts. We improved our online ordering system for Outback and Carrabba's in late March. This technology creates a faster and simpler ordering process and resulted in a higher average check.
We are seeing strong consumer adoption with approximately 65% of all off premises sales in Q1 handled through our digital channels, representing 147 percent growth versus the prior year. In addition, we are in the process of updating the Outback mobile app to improve off premises execution for customers and our operators. We expect the new app to be available in Q3 of this year. As we increase off premises revenue, we will also continue to grow our dine in business. One of the key drivers is the new menu at Outback, which is performing ahead of expectations.
We designed the menu to reinforce our leadership through more accessible premium cuts and larger portions while also lowering menu prices. We are seeing strong customer preference as guests are trading up to larger cuts of steak, enjoying larger portions and increasing their attachment rate on appetizers and beverages. In addition, the efficient menu design reduces complexity, which improves execution and consistency. This results in an improved customer experience. We'll be doing similar work at our other brands.
The positive momentum of our initiative is carrying into the Q2. Through the 1st 4 weeks, Q2 U. S. Comparable sales are up 12.6% on a 2 year basis versus 2019. It is clear customers want to come back to restaurants and we are confident in our ability to provide a safe and welcoming dining experience.
Now turning to Brazil. Beginning in March, the country experienced a second spike in COVID cases, which caused the government to impose new lockdowns to slow the spread of the virus. This led to significantly reduced or closed in restaurant dining capacity for majority of the country. During this period, our restaurants primarily operated in an off premises only capacity. However, in recent weeks, we've seen in restaurant dining restrictions beginning to ease.
This has resulted in improving weekly sales volumes per store from $21,000 to $35,000 over the last 4 weeks. In addition, on April 24, Sao Paulo, which is our largest market, announced they are reopening in restaurant dining capacity to 25%. This provides further optimism about the future continued pace of the recovery. We expect these reduced sales volumes, while temporary, disproportionately impact Brazil's 2nd quarter results. As a reminder, last year, when Brazil underwent the 1st wave of COVID, we had to operate with an off premises only business model.
As capacity restrictions eased, sales improved quickly. We would expect a similar recovery once Brazil emerges from this recent wave of the virus. These near term headwinds do not diminish our long term enthusiasm for the business. We remain optimistic and expect Brazil to emerge stronger with an even better market position when the pandemic subsides, given the following. 1st, we have a leading market position and Outback remains a highly regarded brand with strong consumer appeal.
2nd, the competitive landscape could look very different on the other side of the pandemic. We expect that a large number of restaurants as high as 30 percent will remain permanently closed in Brazil. This reality combined with a high level of pent up demand for our brands could provide meaningful and rapid growth opportunities for this business on the other side of the pandemic. 3rd, we have an incremental revenue channel in off premises that did not exist before the pandemic and believe we can retain a large portion of this business moving forward even as restaurant dining grows. Lastly, we have a great local team in Brazil.
We are confident that they will not only navigate the pandemic, but also capture the major opportunities we will have once the crisis is over. Finally, returning to the U. S, we have the financial power and capability to build our development pipeline in 2021 and beyond. Later, Chris will talk about the very successful refinancing that we just completed. As the environment stabilizes, we are finding opportunities for development.
In the U. S, Outback new restaurants and relocations, along with new Fleming's and our stronghold markets will be the priority. In addition, we'll be building a few Aussie Grill test units. Internationally, we'll continue to expand our great business in Brazil and they're able to fund their development. In summary, we are off to a terrific start.
We are making significant progress against key initiatives to enhance the customer experience, simplify operations and optimize our cost structure. The learnings developed through the pandemic have put us in an even better position to capture these opportunities to drive total shareholder return. I can assure you, we will not rest on our success and will be aggressively pushing forward. We are confident we will merge a better, stronger operations focused company. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Chris.
Thanks, Dave, and good morning, everyone. I would like to start by providing a recap of our financial performance for the fiscal Q1 of 2021. Q1 U. S. Comp sales finished up 3.3%.
This result reflected a significant improvement from the down 12.9% through 7 weeks of Q1 that we discussed on our February earnings call. This improvement was driven by a combination of an improvement in our recent trends as well as the lapping of the pandemic in March 2020. Moving into Q2, traditional 1 year comp sales calculations will be less instructive as we lap the pandemic. Although we will continue to provide this 1 year view, we will also share both a 2 year comp sales perspective as well as average weekly sales to capture a more complete picture of our performance. On a 2 year basis as compared to 2019, Q1 comp sales were down 7.3%.
2 year comp sales improved significantly as we moved into March. In addition, average weekly sales per restaurant increased from approximately $62,000 in January to $75,000 in March. There are 3 primary factors driving that improvement. 1st, we are benefiting from several sales levers that are in place throughout our portfolio such as the impact of the new Outback menu and our introduction of Tender Shack. Also the investment in and growth of our off premises business is among the most important of these levers.
Over the course of Q1, we saw relatively consistent weekly off premises sales volumes even as in restaurant sales returned as dining rooms reopened. We started and ended the quarter averaging roughly $23,000 per restaurant per week in off premises sales. Off premises represented 35% of our U. S. Sales in Q1, which is only down 2% from Q4.
This occasion is proving to be highly incremental and will remain a key part of our growth strategy moving forward. 2nd, we ended the quarter with 100 percent of our domestic company owned restaurants open within restaurant dining. This is up from 85% at year end. We have also seen an easing of capacity restrictions while continuing to adhere to state and local rules, which vary across our portfolio. 3rd, the latest round of government stimulus has been a catalyst for sales increases.
We saw a large increase in weekly sales volumes over the final 2 weeks of Q1 after the stimulus was distributed. Importantly, we have seen this momentum carry forward into the 2nd quarter. Through the 1st 4 weeks of Q2, our 2 year U. S. Comp sales has been plus 12.6% and in the U.
S. We have continued to average $75,000 a week in sales per restaurant. Now turning to our brands. Outback Q1 comp sales were up 4.1 and Carrabba's comp sales were up 8.9%. On a 2 year basis, Outback and Carrabba's were down 5.8% and 0.6% respectively.
The 2 year sales results at both brands were ahead of the major competitive benchmarks. As has been the case since the onset of the pandemic, these brands relied heavily on our strong off premises business. Total Q1 off premises sales were 38% of revenues at Outback and 42% of revenue at Carrabba's. At Bonefish Grill, comp sales were down 2.9% in Q1 and down 16.3% on a 2 year basis. The in restaurant experience and bar centric culture of Bonefish has been impacted more by capacity restrictions than our other casual dining brands.
Despite this, we have built an impressive off premises business at Bonefish and it represented 25% of their sales in Q1. Fleming's comps were down 2.3% in Q1 and down 15% on a 2 year basis. Given their large California presence, 17% of Fleming's locations were closed for in restaurant dining until mid March. We are pleased with their ability to drive sales despite this significant headwind. As it relates to other aspects of our Q1 performance, total revenues decreased 2% versus last year to $987,000,000 GAAP diluted earnings per share for the quarter was $0.63 versus $0.44 of diluted loss per share in 2020.
Adjusted diluted earnings per share was $0.72 versus $0.14 of adjusted diluted earnings per share last year. Adjusted operating income for the quarter was $91,000,000 This result exceeded our adjusted operating income from 2019 of $89,000,000 We achieved this level of operating income on $141,000,000 less revenue than 2019. Adjusted operating income margin was 9.2% in Q1 versus 2.7% in 2020 and 7.8% in 2019. This improvement relative to 2020 is driven by our ongoing efforts to drive efficiency into our business through simplification. In terms of our Q1 adjusted performance by cost category, COGS was 170 basis points favorable year over year, driven primarily by waste reduction and increases in check average following the rollout of the new Outback menu.
As we indicated last call, our commodities are largely locked for 2021 and we expect little to no inflation for the year. The labor line was 300 basis points favorable year over year. Similar to COGS, we also benefited from simplification efforts. This showed up in a reduction in food prep hours. We are also finding efficiencies in off premises labor as that business continues to grow.
In addition, we are lapping relief payments to our hourly employees from 2020. Operating expenses were 160 basis points favorable due primarily to a $19,000,000 reduction in domestic marketing expense year over year. In addition, we had favorability in areas such as R and M and utilities. This favorability was offset by increases in to go supplies and third party delivery fees related to the growth in off premises. On the G and A front, Q1 was down $3,300,000 from last year net of adjustments.
This includes the ongoing benefit of cost savings initiatives that we have detailed on prior calls. We remain on track to achieve $15,000,000 of cost savings in 2021 and reaffirm that our G and A expense should be between $225,000,000 $230,000,000 for the full year. Overall, we were pleased with our Q1 results and importantly, it keeps us on track for our long term margin commitments we laid out for investors last quarter. On the franchise front, as California reopens, we are seeing improved sales performance from our 46 locations in the state. Over the last several weeks, our California market has been comping positive on a 2 year basis.
We will be collecting on deferred royalty amounts as that business recovers. Our non California franchise locations, both domestically and internationally continue to perform well and we are collecting royalties from these locations. Turning to our capital structure, we recently completed a refinancing of our credit facility and added a new $300,000,000 bond into our stack. The credit facility is a 5 year $1,000,000,000 facility with a $200,000,000 term loan A and a $800,000,000 revolver. The facility carries an interest rate of LIBOR plus 2.50 and the rate will decrease as we pay down debt.
The bond matures in 2029 and carries an interest rate of 5.8%. These moves have diversified our capital structure, staggered debt maturities, ensured ample liquidity and secured our balance sheet for the foreseeable future. Moving forward, we will continue to pay down debt with all excess free cash flow until we are at or below our targeted leverage ratio of 3 times net debt to EBITDAR. As our EBITDA continues to improve, we are confident that we can make significant progress towards achieving our objective in 22. Once we reach our targeted ratio, we will evaluate further debt pay down or other uses of cash to enhance shareholder value.
Turning to Q2, as I discussed, we have seen significant domestic sales momentum to start the Q2. In addition, we maintain a high degree of visibility in our margin improvement journey. Given this, we have provided guidance for the 2nd quarter. We expect Q2 total revenues to be at least $1,030,000,000 This outcome for total revenues assumes a weekly average sales volume of approximately $72,000 in the U. S.
For the remaining 9 weeks of the quarter and a weekly average sales volume of 30 $5,000 over the last few weeks of the quarter in Brazil. The U. S. Volume assumption for the balance of the quarter is a slight decrease from current volumes on the assumption that there will be some resumption of traditional seasonality as we get into the summer months. Should this seasonality not materialize, there will be upside to this outlook.
We expect EBITDA to
be at least
$130,000,000 consistent with our Q1 EBITDA total. The primary reason we do not expect a higher EBITDA flow through on sales increases between Q1 and Q2 is driven by the short term COVID specific challenges we face in Brazil. Also, as Dino mentioned, there have been staffing challenges within the industry here in the U. S, but any costs associated with hiring have been built into our Q2 guidance. We expect our U.
S. Segment sales, profit and operating margin to be better than Q1. We expect GAAP EPS to be at least $0.54 and adjusted EPS to be at least $0.60 The only adjustment to EPS that we are currently expecting in Q2 is to our diluted share count. Under GAAP, we are not allowed to consider the share count benefit of the hedge that we entered into related to our convertible bond. We have taken that benefit into the share count used to derive adjusted EPS, which in this case is a $0.06 impact on Q2 EPS.
In Q2, we expect that adjusted diluted share count will be approximately 99,000,000 shares, but share count is highly dependent on our weighted average share price for the quarter. In our last earnings release, we provided a table that outlines expected dilution from the convert at various stock prices. We believe our Q2 guidance reflects continued optimism for our current performance in the U. S. And a cautious near term outlook on Brazil as they finish out their quarter.
Given the ongoing uncertainty related to the pandemic and the shape of the recovery, we are not going to provide an outlook beyond Q2. We do however want to reinforce our confidence in the margin framework we laid out for investors last quarter. As a reminder, that framework suggested that once sales achieved 2019 levels, our adjusted operating margin will be between 6.3% and 6.8%. This is a 150 basis points to 200 basis point improvement from 2019 levels. We have also committed to a longer term framework to achieve 7.5% operating margins as sales improve over 2019 levels.
This framework includes expansion of restaurant margins, lower depreciation expense and ongoing favorability in G and A. In summary, this was another strong quarter for Bloomin' Brands and we are well on our way to becoming a better, stronger operations focused company. And with that, we will open up the call for questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is now open for questions. Our first question is coming from Jeffrey Bernstein of Barclays. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Two questions. 1, just on the off premise side of things terms of dollar retention, because obviously that's more important than percentages here.
But I think you mentioned you started and ended the quarter at 23,000 per week. I'm just wondering, maybe where that was pre COVID and where you think that 23,000 will settle once your dining rooms are fully reopened? Just trying to gauge what you think the incremental sales could be on top of the full return of dine in? And then I had one follow-up.
Sure. Good morning, Jeff. We believe as we've made the investment in off premises carryout and delivery over the years that it's an incremental occasion. And our goal is to retain as much of that weekly volume as possible. And we've been very successful as dining room reopened to retain much of that.
And we anticipate that being an incremental occasion as the dining rooms reopen and gives us the impetus for same store sales growth. And it's one of the big reasons why we're seeing 12 0.6% sales growth versus 2019 right now. So it's an incremental occasion and our goal is to hang on to as much of it as possible.
Yes. And Jeff, just to give you more specificity on the actual numbers. So as you recall, Outback was 15% or so of sales pre COVID. Carrabba's was a little north of 20% of sales pre COVID. We didn't have off premises business to speak of at Bonefish or Fleming's.
So I think that the number on a weekly sales volume standpoint, probably in that $13,000 per store per week range, somewhere around there.
Got it. So you've got an incremental maybe $10,000 per store per week at Outback and presumably Carrabba's right now relative to pre COVID?
Yes, that's right. And we think that Carrabba's opportunity is especially meaningful.
Got you. And then my follow-up is just on the margin opportunity off of that incremental sales. I mean, if you were to see those incremental sales hold, which obviously there's some skepticism that that's fully sustainable. But if they were to hold, I'm just wondering how you think about the margin on those incremental sales. Presumably there's less apps, desserts and drinks and things like that.
You have some fees for whatever third party delivery there might be. But just trying to get a feel for what you think the incremental flow through would be or what that adds to your margin if you were to hold on to those sales? Thanks. Yes.
And you're talking specifically about off premises, correct?
We're talking specifically about off premise, yes.
Yes. So a couple of things. 1, I think it does vary a little bit by channel. But what I would say is, call it 20% of the 35% that we had this quarter in off premises mix was our to go curbside. And the curbside margin is effectively and we've talked about this before effectively as good as your in restaurant experience.
We've really got that thing wired. There's obviously less labor associated with it. But from a margin flow through standpoint, we're pretty much indifferent from a to go standpoint versus in restaurant. I would say from a 3rd party standpoint, it is a little bit lower, but it is certainly pretty good relative to expectations. I think that what we talked about a couple of years ago, there being a higher take rate, but that's for us, it's not an issue.
We feel very good about our 3rd party margin. So definitely an opportunity to generate some pretty high flow through on these off premises sales.
Hey, Jeff, if I just want to add one thing to the skeptics out there about off premise. I mean, we have made significant investments in our digital efforts And we improved our online ordering system this quarter to make it easier, to do a lot of different things we hadn't done before. We're also making other digital investments that will enable the off premises business. So this is not a static event. This is something we're going to continue to build and grow.
And you said 20% of the 35%. Just want to clarify that's more than half of the 35%, not 20% of 30 5%.
Correct, yes. More than half of the 35%. Correct.
Great. Thank you.
Sure.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Alex Slagle of Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning and congrats. The margins I wanted to focus on, I guess labor, I mean, I have to go back 5 or 6 years to see anything this low. Just given like the tightening labor availability and the demand and capacity for dine in, I imagine this would mark a low point for some time. And can you talk about the dynamics of what kind of volumes you need to maintain this level of margin or other initiatives you have in place to balance kind of getting the service level where you want it and also maintaining these strong margins?
Yes, sure. Thanks for the question. So here's the response I gave. As you digest the Q1 results, we are in a very different world with regards to labor than we were pre pandemic. There's no question that we are running and we'll continue to run a more favorable and efficient labor model than we did in 2019.
Between the simplification efforts with the menus driving favorability, we have a reduction in prep hours. And just generally speaking, there are more efficiencies now with how we staff our restaurants. So given that Q1 sales exceeded our expectations, it's not surprising. We ran this level of favorability in labor. And in terms of kind of the trending and how we think about that, favorability could continue to a large degree in Q2.
Now as Dave indicated, we're going to have some step up in training given the volume increases, but that's all incorporated into the guidance. So we feel pretty good about where we are with labor.
The other thing I want to add is, much like our off premises business, we're making investments in our restaurants to help enable our labor costs to manage that, but also improve customer service. We're making investments in back of the house equipment and much like our digital efforts on off premises, we're making investments in technology to help our front of the house servers. So we have the scale and technology to move this forward. And as Chris said, this is a completely different environment than it was pre pandemic.
Thanks. That's helpful. I'll pass it along.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Brett Levi of MKM Partners. Please go ahead.
Just one follow-up and then a question. The follow-up is that you just mentioned front of house tech investments. Can you go a little bit more into detail in terms of magnitude of the investments? What you think you could see in terms of either productivity or savings and pacing? And then I have a follow-up.
Yes. It's a little too early to say specific numbers, Brett, as what we think the technology savings will be. We believe it will be significant. There are 2 areas. 1, the phone, customers' phone is a big part of that, so they can control the customer experience and do pay at the table or at the table, so other kind of things.
And as we do, we've got scale and technology and resources to do that. And then we've got to look at technology enablers for our servers, be it tablets or whatever it might be to help with them as they go forward. So those are the 2 things we're doing, Brett. It's in test. We're very optimistic about it, but it's a little too early to say exactly what the numbers would look like.
Yes. And I'd say, in terms of capital, we are going to deploy within our capital budget this year. We've talked about the numbers, but we're going to deploy anywhere from $20,000,000 to $30,000,000 towards IT initiatives this year.
Great. And then just going back to the macro side of it, the sales environment, can you give a little bit more clarity? We're starting to see more states going to this 100% capacity. I just saw Atlanta Sports says that their stadiums are going their outdoor stadiums are going there. So can you give a little bit more clarity or color into how you're seeing the general makeup across the country, the more and the less impacted the earlier and the later markets?
Thank you.
Yes. First of all, and I'll turn it over to Chris for some of the details. But we're seeing the benefit of it as the country opens up. People want to come back into end restaurant dining. We're keeping our off premises sales which is so great.
But we're seeing that throughout our system. We're seeing it throughout our concepts. And I'll turn it over to Chris now to talk about some more details. But it's been a good tailwind for us.
Yes. And just to give you some perspective of and we've talked about there being more of a regional SKU to performance and that still seems to be the case. And again, it has a lot to do with the fact that a lot of these states are open up with 100% or so capacity still with social distancing and things like that, but they're generally you're able to get a little better throughput into those boxes. States like just to give you perspective, this last call it this last 4 weeks or so quarter to date, states like Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Alabama, they all have Q2 quarter to date comps in that 15% to 20% range on a 2 year basis. Florida continues to do very well, although it is a little bit regional, South Florida a little bit slower, but we've seen a rebound in Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville continue to be very strong.
And then of course you have the flip side where it's the same states we've talked about where you have a little more in terms of restrictions, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Minnesota, those have been a little behind in terms of our overall sales performance. But still even behind, they're in that either slightly down on a 2 year basis or positive in the low single digits on a 2 year basis. So we're seeing sort of a sea change across the portfolio, but there definitely is some regional bias.
And then just one last clarification. Can you give us a number in terms of where you see total capacity right now in terms of seating? And then I'll turn it to the queue.
Yes. Effective capacity, I'd say, is in that 70% to 75
percent range.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Brian Vaccaro of Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Thanks and good morning. I wanted to ask about the labor market current situation. Can you just help frame where you stand in terms of your current staffing levels versus pre COVID and how you plan to manage the current situation? I think hiring training is always a big cost for the industry. Maybe just perspective on how much higher versus normal that could run-in the near term and any other perspectives you see worth highlighting?
Good morning, Brian. Well, first of all, let me say one of the big competitive advantages we had, which was a very smart move on our company's behalf, was that we did not furlough or let anybody go during the pandemic. So that gave us a higher staffing base, a more committed employee base, higher retention and low, very low turnover. So that base is extremely important as we go forward. Now we do participate in the restaurant business and our comp store sales are up 12.6% so far this quarter.
And Chris also mentioned that you can't look at 2019 staffing levels and say that we will return to those levels given that such a different world in the pandemic. So we are staffing where we need to be. We don't have any significant problems. Our team is doing a great job addressing the opportunities. And as we go forward, the guidance, the labor cost guidance is labor costs are in our guidance and is part of our model going forward.
But I think the decision to hang on to our people, not let anybody go was crucial as we got to this
point. All right.
And a lot of moving pieces, obviously, comparing the business today versus pre COVID, the sales channels that are coming in and the different efficiencies, some of which are unique to you as you streamline the business, etcetera. But I guess the question that I had was, is there a way to frame the business today is generating AUVs that are, say, around 10% above 19% levels, Taking into consideration the reduced prep hours, the efficiencies associated with off premise, obviously less server labor, etcetera. Is there a way to frame sort of the cost per week dynamic that compared to 'nineteen for an average restaurant that you run that you would need to get back to, to comfortably run AUVs in the high single digits or 10% versus pre COVID?
Yes. I don't have an immediate answer to that in terms of cost per week. I guess what I would say, Brian, is as you think about our go forward efficiencies and our go forward margin structure, I would just fall back on the commentary we gave last quarter where we laid out a very detailed framework by category in terms of how we think this could come together and play out. But kind of to your point, one thing we did say though is that we had an opportunity to get to 7.5% operating margins as the sales environment improved over 2019 levels indicating that we do believe there is ability to further leverage the P and L as sales volumes improve. And look, we're seeing that right now obviously.
So I would say in terms of sort of a not the cost per week answer, but really just terms of framing the go forward margin opportunity with the context of the environment we see today.
Fair enough. And then I'll ask just one quick follow-up if I could. Just could you provide a quick update on Tender Shack, where the weekly volumes are trending for that business, as he moves through the Q1 quarter to date relative to the prior targets you provided? Thank you.
Sure.
We continue to do well in Tender Shack across all of our dimensions, be a financial impact to our restaurants, occasion opened back up, the sales at Tender Shack did soften a bit. We do believe that the $75,000,000 annualized sales goal is attainable, but we have some work to do on that. With the restaurants reopening, we've got to increase the brand awareness. We've got to add some potentially some additional products. We've got to look at a pickup opportunity in our restaurants and we're looking at some partnerships.
But most importantly, our sales volumes right now are above our they're profitable, they're above our the goals that we need to set, we expect to see further improvement, so far in the Tender Shack opportunity.
All right. Thank you.
Our next question is coming from Sharon Zackfia of William Blair. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning and congratulations on a strong Q1 and an incredible April. Thank you. I guess it would be helpful to kind of get some insight into what restaurant level margins looked like for you domestically in April. And I'm wondering, I know you've talked about the shift in marketing to focus more on digital, but I'm wondering if there were any other shifts that you've done as on premises has rebounded, whether you've pulled away at all from kind of off premises marketing or made any other changes to the way you're addressing the consumer?
Yes. Hi, Sharon. Thank you for the compliment. We appreciate it. The sales growth or the digital efforts that we're doing will continue.
There is going to be post pandemic certainly a shift in digital versus network television or cable television and things like that. And we're very well prepared in making even more investments in that category. We have very good sense of what our return on investments look like from the marketing standpoint. And we're going to support our dine in business and our off premise business. We'll do both.
And we'll continue to examine the marketplace and continue to spend primarily up against our digital efforts as we move forward. Yes.
And on the restaurant level margin, we're still in the process of closing the books for April. But what I would tell you is the early read would suggest that we are on track to achieve what we talked about in the prepared remarks, which is we do expect to see improvement in margins in Q2 from Q1, driven a lot by the higher sales levels and a continuation of some of the efficiencies that we saw in Q1.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Rahul Crow of JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. This is Rahul for John Ivankoe from JPMorgan. I'm just curious to I wanted to understand better on what like if there is a way to quantify what kind of contribution in these results are from, say, temporary lag of hiring or inflation versus just because of structural better efficiency improvements? I'm just trying to get a better sense of divergence between both these items.
Yes. So I think that if you think about labor in Q1, I would say the majority of the favorability that we're seeing relative to 2019 levels is driven by the simplification efforts that we're seeing In terms of and in terms of the hiring that we may have to do or the costs in terms of hiring, the training costs, those are not prohibitive. They're not going to be a massive number in our P and L results. That's why we felt confident we could build them into the guidance and still have margin expansion in the Q2. So again, there are some increases in cost.
There are some there is some elements of sales being a little ahead of inflation, but the majority of our labor favorability that you see in Q1 is being driven by our simplification efforts.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Karen Holthouse of Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Hi, this is Karen on for Jon Tower. Another margin question for you and maybe instead of kind of working forwards, working backwards. And if you look in the quarter, you were outperforming both that 6 0.3% to 6.8% margin target and even the longer term one. And I understand some seasonality is at play. But if we start to look at that more by cost bucket, could you sort of frame it as the line items where you think you might have been overshooting in the quarter?
Well, your point is spot on. I do think that there is a seasonality of the business where Q1 will tend to over perform from a margin perspective. I don't think anything we saw in Q1 changes us from that long term framework we provided where we said, hey, look, we do believe there's 50 basis points or so of restaurant margin expansion in the long term model. I think you're going to see that in COGS, you're going to see that in labor, you're going to see that in advertising with some give back in restaurant operating expenses. So with that framework, everything really came together kind of how we said it was going to come together.
Now we just have the sales to support the hypothesis that we laid out for investors last quarter. So I think we're in pretty good shape on that front.
Yes. I think Karen too, we're making the investments in our business to continue to enhance margins and improve customer service. We talked about the digital investments. This will help us on managing waste. It will help us on the labor cost going forward, all different kind of aspects of our business.
So not only are we enjoying the margin benefits right now, we are investing behind the business to set us up for the long term to continue this kind of margin performance that we've been having.
And then one just quick question on the off premise. Can you share the just percent of sales that was off premise at Outback and Carrabba's in the Q1 and then in the April quarter to date number?
Yes. Outback was 38% of revenue and Kravos was 42% of revenue.
And what was the other question? In April?
Oh, for the quarter and
then also in the April number.
Yes, we'll get that to you. We don't have that.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Dino for closing comments.
Well, thank you for attending everybody. We appreciate your time and look forward to updating you in July on our Q2 results.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation and interest in Bloomin' Brands. You may disconnect your lines and log off the webcast at this time and have a wonderful day.