Good afternoon. My name is Krista, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to The Cheesecake Factory Q4 and fiscal year 2023 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, again, press star one. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Etienne Marcus, Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Etienne, you may begin your call.
Good afternoon, and welcome to our Q4 fiscal 2023 earnings call. On the call with me today are David Overton, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Matt Clark, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. David Gordon, our President, is serving on jury duty and is unable to join us on today's call. Before we begin, let me quickly remind you that during this call, items will be discussed that are not based on historical fact and are considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could be materially different from those stated or implied in forward-looking statements as a result of the factors detailed in today's press release, which is available on our website at investors.thecheesecakefactory.com, and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
All forward-looking statements made on this call speak only as of today's date, and the company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements. In addition, during this conference call, when discussing comparable sales, we will be referring to comparable sales on an operating week basis, unless specifically stated otherwise. We will also be presenting results on an adjusted basis, which exclude impairment of assets and lease terminations and acquisition related expenses. An explanation of our use of non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures appear in our press release in our website as previously described.
David Overton will begin today's call with some opening remarks, then Matt will provide a business update, review our Q4 results in detail, and finish up with some commentary on our outlook for the Q1 and full year 2024, before opening the call up to questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to David Overton.
Thank you, Etienne. We finished the year on a strong note with continued improvement across many facets of our business, resulting in solid financial performance, including revenues in line with expectations and better than anticipated profit margins. Q4 revenues were $877 million, led by comparable sales at the Cheesecake Factory restaurants, up 2.5% versus the prior year and 14% versus 2019. Once again, meaningfully outpacing the casual dining industry and demonstrating the strength and consistency of our brand. To this point, Cheesecake Factory restaurants delivered the highest average weekly sales in the company's history in the last week of the Q4 . Our top-line performance is a reflection of our steadfast focus on menu innovation, maintaining the contemporary design and decor of our restaurants, and delivering exceptional food quality, service, and hospitality.
Further, building on the outstanding execution delivered by our operations team, we exceeded our expectations in labor productivity, food efficiency, and wage management, contributing towards restaurant-level profit margin of 16.1% at the Cheesecake Factory, not only exceeding our projections, but also surpassing Q4 2019 margin levels. On the development front, we successfully opened 9 new restaurants during the Q4 , including 3 Cheesecake Factories, 3 North Italia, and 3 FRC restaurants. Additionally, 2 Cheesecake Factory restaurants opened internationally under licensing agreements, 1 in China and our first location in Thailand. Subsequent to quarter end, we opened a North Italia restaurant in Houston, a Flower Child in the Dallas market, and 1 Cheesecake Factory restaurant internationally under a licensing agreement in Mexico. Lastly, this morning, we opened our newest Culinary Dropout in Atlanta.
We are looking to build on this momentum, and while the development conditions have not been fully normalized, we are aiming to further accelerate our unit growth. At this time, we're planning to open as many as 22 new restaurants in 2024, including as many as 3-4 Cheesecake Factory, 6-7 North Italia, 6-7 Flower Child, and 6-7 FRC restaurants. As we look ahead, we remain intently focused on leveraging our competitive strength, the scale of our business, our differentiated brands, and the best-in-class operators to drive additional shareholder value and market share gains. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Matt.
Thank you, David. Let me first provide a high-level recap of our Q4 results versus our expectations I outlined last quarter. Total revenues of $877 million finished essentially at the midpoint of the range we provided. Adjusted net income margin of 4.5% exceeded the 4.25% guidance we provided.
... and we returned $22.9 million to our shareholders in the form of dividends and stock repurchases. For the year, we delivered total revenues of $3.44 billion, a 6.7% increase over 2022, after excluding the impact of the additional week in fiscal 2022. Adjusted earnings per share of $2.69, a significant improvement over fiscal 2022 and above 2019 adjusted EPS. Now, turning to some specific details around the quarter. Q4 total sales at The Cheesecake Factory restaurants were $658 million, with comparable sales up 2.5% versus the prior year and 14% versus 2019. A slight increase from the Q3. Importantly, the improvement was driven by better traffic and menu mix as year-over-year menu pricing declined.
Q4 On-Premise incident rates remained above 2019 levels and by the same amount as in the Q3, demonstrating stability even as we continue lapping the heightened spending from the last year. Off-Premise sales totaled 22% of sales for the Q4 , in line with the full year percentage of sales. Total sales for North Italia were $67.2 million, with Q4 comparable sales increasing 7% from the prior year, and 34% versus 2019, resulting in annualized AUVs of $7.9 million. Restaurant-level profit margin for the adjusted mature North Italia locations was 15.8%, up 330 basis points from the previous quarter. The margin improvement was supported by a 3.7% menu price increase in October.
Other FRC sales totaled $70.9 million, and sales per operating week were $138,500. Flower Child sales totaled $30.4 million, and sales per operating week were $75,500. External bakery sales were $16.6 million during the Q4 of fiscal 2023. Now, moving to year-over-year expense variance commentary. In the Q4 , we continued to realize measurable year-over-year improvement across several key line items in the P&L. Specifically, cost of sales decreased 170 basis points, primarily driven by higher menu pricing than commodity inflation. Labor decreased 50 basis points, supported by pricing leverage and improved staffing levels, partially offset by lapping lower medical insurance expenses. Other operating expenses increased 20 basis points, driven by higher marketing costs, which includes the rewards program.
G&A decreased 10 basis points, and depreciation decreased 20 basis points as a % of sales. Pre-opening costs were $9.6 million in the quarter, compared to $7.8 million in the prior year period. We opened 9 restaurants during the Q4 versus 8 restaurants in the Q4 of 2022. Higher pre-opening costs for the quarter was driven by the 1 more opening, delays in opening dates, and the mix of concepts. In the Q4 , we recorded a net expense of $35.6 million, primarily related to impairment of assets and lease terminations expense, and FRC acquisition-related expenses. Q4 GAAP diluted net income per share was $0.26. Adjusted diluted net income per share was $0.80. Now turning to our balance sheet and capital allocation.
The company ended the quarter with total available liquidity of approximately $293 million, including a cash balance of about $56 million and approximately $236.5 million available on a revolving credit facility. Total debt outstanding was unchanged at $475 million in principal. CapEx totaled approximately $52 million during the Q4 for new unit development and maintenance. During the quarter, we completed approximately $9.8 million in share repurchases and returned $13.1 million to shareholders via our dividend. Before I move to our outlook, let me provide a brief update on our Cheesecake Rewards program. Early demand continues to exceed our internal expectations, and we remain encouraged by the level of member activity and engagement we are seeing.
As we've said previously, we are taking a very deliberate approach as we develop the program, and therefore, do not anticipate seeing a measurable impact to sales for at least the first year or so. We are continuing to test acquisition tactics and activation campaigns to better understand the key elements that are resonating with rewards members and most effectively increasing membership enrollment, engagement, and driving frequency. Now, let me turn to our outlook. While we will not be providing specific comparable sales and earnings guidance, we will provide our updated thoughts on our underlying assumptions for Q1 2024 and full year 2024. For Q1 2024, assuming no material operating or consumer disruptions, we anticipate total revenues to be between $875 million and $895 million.
This essentially assumes a continuation of Q4 trends, as well as the impact from the inclement weather quarter to date. Next, at this time, we expect effective commodity inflation of low single digits for Q1 as our broad market basket continues to stabilize. We are modeling net total labor inflation of mid-single digits when factoring the latest trends in wage rates and minimum wage increases, as well as other components of labor. G&A is estimated to be between $57 million and $58 million. Depreciation is estimated to be between approximately $24 million and $25 million. Based on these assumptions, we would anticipate net income margin to be about 3.5% at the midpoint of the sales range. This includes higher pre-opening expense than the prior year period to support our planned restaurant openings, which we expect to be approximately $6 million.
Now, for the full year. Based on similar assumptions and no material operating or consumer disruptions, we would anticipate total revenues for fiscal 2024 to be approximately $3.6 billion. For sensitivity purposes, we are using a range of ±1%. We currently estimate total inflation across our commodity baskets, labor, and other operating expenses to be in the low to mid-single digit range and fairly consistent across the quarters. We are estimating G&A to be about flat year over year as a % of sales, and depreciation to be about $100 million for the year. And given our unit growth expectations, we are estimating pre-opening expenses to be approximately $28 million, which includes support for some early 2025 openings. As we have said previously, our goal is to effectively offset inflation with menu pricing to support our margin objectives.
Assuming we achieve this goal, input costs and consumer trends remain consistent, and there are no other material exogenous factors, we would expect full-year net income margin of approximately 4.25% at the revenue level I provided. With regard to development, as David Overton highlighted earlier, we plan to open as many as 22 new restaurants this year across a portfolio of concepts, with approximately three quarters of the openings occurring in the H2 of the year. And we would anticipate approximately $180 million-$200 million in CapEx to support this year's and some of next year's unit development, as well as required maintenance on our restaurants. In closing, our business remains healthy, with top-line trends substantially stabilizing, improving profit margins, normalizing input costs, and solid operational execution.
We are looking to build on this momentum and believe we are poised to once again generate our historically consistent operational and financial results, and to make meaningful additional steps in 2024 towards our longer-term goals in the key areas of value creation, growing restaurant comparable sales, expanding restaurant operating margins, and accelerating accretive unit growth. With that said, we'll take your questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. We also ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up, and for any additional questions, please requeue. Your first question comes from the line of Brian Harbour from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. Good afternoon. Matt, could you just maybe comment on kind of the updated annual guidance compared to what you laid out last quarter? Is this more just about kind of recent weather trends or anything else changed within your view?
Hey, Brian, this is Matt. Certainly. I would say nothing has changed. Obviously, there was a lot of challenging weather in the first part of the year. You've seen it in the industry numbers. I can tell you that we're still performing equal or better than the gap to the industry that we hit in the Q4 . You know, there's 10.5 months to go for the year. We want to put out numbers that we feel very good about, and we feel good about, about this. And it would represent, you know, a meaningful improvement in restaurant level margins going into this year. It represents continuation of overall positive comparable sales.
If you think about the Q1 only, you know, I think what the math is really in the industry around January, which is, you know, a little bit of tougher comps, too, and is probably. It's probably 1.5%-2% of impact on the quarter in total revenues. You know, the good news is we are able to see that very clearly. We're able to parse out the weather impacts. We've seen very good, stable trends in February. So, you know, we feel good about the overall guidance. We feel like it's prudent to be, you know, sitting in a range that we feel good about this early in the year.
Okay, great. Could you also, maybe comment on the labor side? You, you've seen some favorability, you know, year-over-year, although more so on the food cost side. But is there opportunity to drive better labor leverage as you think about 2024 from productivity or anything like that?
Sure. Sure, Brian, this is Matt again. I think that, you know, one of the harbingers of labor productivity is retention. And, you know, we continue to see quarter after quarter after quarter last year of improvements in that key metric, both at the hourly and at the manager levels. And we saw tremendous results in January and so far this year. That, for sure, is going to lead itself towards productivity, right? We run the most complicated restaurants in the business. The more tenure that we have, the more efficient our teams will be, the less overtime there is, the less training there is. So we feel very good. I believe we saw some pretty good productivity gains in the Q4 , and we are expecting that to be able to continue into the remainder of 2024 as well.
Your next question comes from the line of Mary Hodes from Baird. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. I just want to clarify, one, how you're running maybe quarter to date. Is the full quarter to date period running near that level seen in Q4, or is that the level that you bounced back to in February after you saw some unfavorable weather in January? Just trying to better understand what you're anticipating for the H2 of the quarter here.
Sure, Mary, this is Matt. I, I think, you know, we're not giving specific quarter-to-date metrics, but the impact in January is, like I said, 1.5%-2% on the total quarter. But what we've been able to do is really see that that was isolated to some specific events. And so when we take that into consideration and what our sort of normalized trends are, it's the combination of those two that give us the full quarter outlook. Hopefully, that answers the question.
Yep, that's helpful. Thank you. And then, on one more on the Cheesecake Factory business. Could you break out the check and traffic components for the backward-looking quarter for Q4? And then I guess I was maybe just wondering if you could walk us through your thoughts on how you're thinking about, the components heading into 2024. I think you previously talked about around 4% pricing, and just wondering if that anything has changed and maybe what you're focused on in terms of driving traffic for 2024.
Sure. I think this is an important question and kind of relates a little bit to even Brian's question. I mean, for us, things only got better, right, last year, quarter to quarter. So in Q4, the traffic was flat, which represented a 1% improvement over the Q3 metrics and was clearly ahead of the industry. The negative mix was still there, but it got better. It was negative 4.9 versus a 6.1 in the Q3, so about 1.2% better. As we anticipated, that negative mix would continue into Q4, Q1, and part of Q2, really stabilizing in the back half of the year. And so that met our expectations and the guidance that we provided.
Then, you know, obviously, pricing came down as we exited that one-time extra pricing we did in the prior year, December. So on a weighted average, the Q4 pricing was 7.3% for Cheesecake, which was down from 9.5% in the Q3. So, you know, our comps were slightly better, but really with a lot less pricing as the other metrics improved. When we think about the balance of 2024, as I just noted, we do anticipate that the negative mix will continue, but it really stabilized Q3 to Q4. So with that sort of underlying stability, you know, we do believe that we can maintain that low single-digit positive comps, absent the January weather events for the balance of the year.
Your next question comes from the line of Katherine Griffin from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you. I wanted to maybe just unpack the negative mix in the quarter. Just curious, kind of where you're seeing that show up. I know in the past you've talked about, you know, not really seeing much in the way of, you know, like active check management or less alcohol attached. Just curious if you can help us understand, you know, where you saw the source of negative mix and how that plays into your, you know, expectations in terms of the cadence throughout the year.
Sure, Katherine, this is Matt. You know, what we saw is, you know, in 2021 and 2022 was significantly outsized purchasing behaviors. I think this has been pretty well documented. And so the preponderance of the mix negativity is really associated with kind of what we consider to be a return to normal. I would say we are still running slightly above 2019 levels. So it's actually pretty historically relevant. It was the same basic proportion to 2019 in both Q3 and Q4, so it's stable. We saw really that shift happen materially in the middle of Q2, and then the back half of last year.
So we would anticipate continuing to run in this negative 4-5 range for the Q1, maybe 3-4 negative in the Q2, and then, you know, hard to say for sure, but relatively stable in the back half of the year. So we've seen very stable consumer behavior over the past 6-9 months. It's just slightly different than it was the year before, when we saw some outsized purchasing behaviors.
Okay, that's helpful. And then I think on the last call, I mean, yeah, you've, you've been pretty clear about kind of laying out the expectations for, for comp, but just on pricing, I think, yeah, in the past, the expectation was, like, 1.5%-2%. Is that still kind of what you're thinking in terms of, you know, the environment you're seeing?
Yeah, we'll look at that, obviously, multiple times a year and adjust as necessary. I think as a placeholder for everybody, using 4% for the year at this point in time is a pretty good estimate, and that could, you know, change. It could go down if costs get even better, but right now, that's sort of a good placeholder.
Your next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Bernstein from Barclays Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, this is Anisha Dadon for Jeffrey Bernstein. I wanted to ask how you're thinking about recapturing restaurant margins, and as we think to 2024, what are you embedding for the restaurant margin?
Yeah, we made great progress in 2023 on that trajectory, and then actually in Q4, Cheesecake Factory, specifically, restaurant-level margins exceeded 2019. So we feel pretty good about accomplishing the goal that we had set out there. The... You know, there's still seasonality, so you're gonna see differences in Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4 from each other, but overall, we feel like we have the trajectory right now to continue to expand restaurant-level margins in 2024 by 50-75 basis points, so predominantly driven by productivity and efficiency gains, so, and a little bit of lapping some outsized commodities inflation, particularly in the H1 of the year. So we feel like that would be great progress.
That would really put us back on the footing that we had pre-pandemic across both Cheesecake Factory and the total company.
Great. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Aisling Grueninger from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon, guys. My question is kind of a follow-up on Brian's. The revenue guidance for the quarter on the last earnings call, I believe you guided it slightly higher to $3.7 billion at the high end of the range. I was just wondering your thoughts on guiding it slightly lower. Are you just kind of baking in a little more conservatism with this new guide because, you know, with the tough macro environment? Thanks.
Sure. This is Matt. You know, I would say, look, so the midpoint probably came down about 1-1.5%. A piece of that is certainly just the January component. And I would just say, look, we have 10.5 months to go. We feel the business is on a great pace. Everything's going well. There are things that sometimes we can't control. For example, timing of openings. You know, obviously, the last couple of years, outside of our control, there's been a pretty big impact. We thought it was really prudent this time to maybe take a little bit more conservatism at the outset and just put numbers up that would be achievable even with some disruption.
No, that's great. That makes, that makes perfect sense. My second question is, I'm sure one of your favorites. It's on the California FAST Act legislation. Even though it's primarily intended to impact QSR, there'll be some spillover into wage inflation across the board in California. I was just wanting to know your updated thoughts on the impact to Cheesecake Factory specifically, and what your thoughts around pricing is, and just any way to combat any kind of inflation you're seeing. Thanks.
Sure. Well, I think it's still to be determined. I don't know that I can give you a great new perspective. We're obviously well aware. We're reading and seeing dynamics play out on a regular basis. You know, the government in California continues to even modify the FAST Act and carve out even more different types of restaurants that may not have to comply with that. So it, you know, it is definitely an uncertain situation. As we noted before, you know, given our pay circumstances, we're very competitive in the marketplace already. Many of the California QSR urban locations are already paying $19-$20.
You know, we believe that's partly why they agreed to do it in the first place, and so those options already exist for most of the people we're recruiting, and certainly all of our tipped positions make much more than that. You know, we feel like we have sufficient pricing power in California if need be. We're a tremendous value for guests here with our portion sizes and great service. So, you know, I think we can defend our California margins however that needs to be. Lots to be determined, but certainly, we don't believe that it's gonna be the same impact in full service as it is in the QSR realm.
Your next question comes from the line of Brian Vaccaro from Raymond James. Please go ahead.
... Hi. Thanks, and good evening. Matt, can we just circle back on the Q4 Cheesecake comps? Can you help us with the mix component specifically, how much of that negative mix is due to the off-premise mix coming down versus actual sort of changes in order behavior in store, sort of the beverage and app incidents? And if you adjust for the off-premise or isolate for off-premise, what did dine-in traffic look like in the Q4 , year-on-year?
So on the mix, Brian, this is Matt. Most of that is purchase behavior, maybe as much as 1% on the off-premise mix, right? But I think it's important to think about it more sequentially than year-over-year. So that was the same mix that we saw in the Q3. And, you know, we knew that there was going to be this because we had seen, you know, throughout the 2023 calendar year, people buying just one less drink than they did in 2022 and 2021. But they're still also importantly buying as much, if not a little bit more than in 2019. I think it's just sort of more of a return to normal behaviors in that regard.
So that was well within our expectations, and I think baked in appropriately to all of our expectations going forward. With respect to the on-premise, I don't think it's changed much. I mean, certainly traffic overall at flat, we feel good about year-over-year. I think that, in fact, the off-premise percent versus prior year was about the same, you know, is really close. So, you know, I don't have the data in front of me, but that would just basically substantiate that year-over-year on-premise traffic was basically flat as well.
Okay. All right, great. That's helpful. And sorry, if I missed it earlier, the pricing, can you level set, what do you have in the menu right now? And I believe you lap 3.25% sometime soon. What do you intend to replace it with? Maybe just level set us where effective pricing could be here in the Q1 and how you're thinking about that.
Yeah, we're going to be at about 4.5 for the quarter, with a little bit of the weighting coming in to higher. But we would anticipate for the year about 4%. So a little bit higher in the Q1, but kind of 4% for the year.
Brian, this is Etienne. We're dropping off 3.5%, replacing that with a 2.5% price increase here in the middle of the quarter.
Your next question comes from Lauren Silberman from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. I wanted to ask about the Q4 . Can you just give a little bit more color on the cadence of trends throughout the quarter, and if there's any way to quantify the benefit from the holiday shift as we think through underlying trends?
Sure. Lauren, this is Matt. It was a really strong quarter from start to finish, to be honest. I mean, we saw pretty consistent comps month to month. And I would say interestingly, you know, the holiday shift wasn't too material. Maybe it was 50 basis points, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't a big driver. But interestingly, December was the strongest overall month, and it had much less pricing because we dropped off that 3%. So the underlying business, I think, just got better and better. But you know, the operators were in full control throughout the quarter, driving sales, managing costs. It was very predictable, and you know, overall, right on track.
Great, very helpful. And then just a question on restaurant margin. Nice improvement this quarter. You spoke to the 50-75 basis points of expansion this year. Is that fairly consistent in terms of year-over-year expansion throughout the year? Are there any moving pieces per quarter we should be thinking about? Thank you.
Yeah, I mean, give or take 25 basis points, because anything can happen. I think it's fairly consistent. You know, there's not... I mean, we saw last year pretty stable overall. So, you know, relatively speaking, we would think that would be true as well.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Jim Sanderson from Northc oast Research. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks for the question. I wanted to go back to the unit growth plan for 2024. Are there any closures baked into that that would reduce the benefit of that new unit growth in 2024?
We do have two relocations, Jim. This is Matt, in that. So I think on a net basis, that would be, you know, impacted in terms of the revenue contribution. You know, we believe those will be pretty seamless. Essentially, they're very similar trade areas with some lease expirations that we're just moving sites.
All right. Can you walk through the price mix for North Italia for the quarter as well?
Yeah, let me pull that up here. Give me a quick second. I have that. 8%. Yeah, pricing is 8%.
Pricing, all right.
I don't think we track mix the same way as, we do-
Yeah
with Cheesecake Factory, but it's slightly negative and traffic was slightly positive.
It's a net of traffic and yes, is just slightly negative.
I got you. Very good. Last question from me. I just wanted to better understand the sequential improvement store margin at North Italia. I think you called out Cheesecake, but there was a meaningful improvement there as well. Is that primarily the utilities or?
Yeah, well, we rolled out pricing in the middle of the quarter, and so in the Q4 , we were able to capture the full benefit of that. That's the predominant driver of the improvement in margins.
... Jim, essentially for North, they were one cycle behind Cheesecake Factory. And so this was kind of our last catch up there, if you will, from all of the pandemic inflation to kind of get back to a more normalized level.
Your next question comes from the line of Jon Tower from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks for taking the question. Just a couple, if I may. First, curious, so it's encouraging to see the unit growth continue to tick higher. I'm just curious, in terms of, you know, what you're seeing with landlords and developers. I know for the past several years, there's been a lot of delays in terms of getting stores opened because of things outside of your control. Has that improved at all, such that and I know your outlook for this year is three quarters or so of the development in the back half of the year, but has this kind of stickiness gotten less sticky and therefore, you know, you have greater visibility into those coming into the year than maybe years past?
Jon, this is Matt. Look, I think there's two things. One, it's, it's maybe incrementally better, right? It's definitely the long tail of, of all of this, but incrementally. But, but I think more importantly, we just took control of the situation a little bit more, right? We made a very definitive strategic move to push some of the locations into the Q1. We've opened up those restaurants already. So that just enabled us to have better predictability over the remainder of our pipeline. I think it was just an important shift for us to really reset that and understand, so that we can assure ourselves and our investors that we can get those restaurants open this year. So we feel really good about where we're sitting there.
We have a much bigger pipeline than, you know, than we're committing to, to give ourselves even more breathing room. And so I think mostly it's just that we took more definitive action to kind of realign that, slightly augmented by a better scenario.
That's great. And in terms of, you know, I'm assuming many of these stores are already concrete's poured, et cetera, you know, are you guys putting the final touches or I guess better said, of the 22 or so stores that you're targeting this year, how many of them have already got the broken ground and kind of ready to rock?
Well, we opened three already, not including the one international. I think we'll have another one this quarter that will open, and, and the preponderance of the rest of them are moving along. So we're right on track.
Okay. Then just on the marketing plans for this year, I know obviously you're spending a decent amount of time, you know, getting customer acquisition into the rewards program. But outside of that, given some of the noise that's taking place with the consumer right now, certainly in the lower income cohort, which you guys don't necessarily have great exposure to, but, you know, how are you thinking about marketing spend for 2024 or the tactics that you're using in terms of communicating with your consumers versus years past?
You know, we are centrally focused on the rewards program. That said, we did shift a little bit of the spend towards off-premise, you know, doing some promotions with delivery and Olo. And so we're focusing a little bit on that end, a little bit more than we have in the past.
Your next question comes from the line of Brian Vaccaro from Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for the quick follow-up. I just wanted to go back to the labor cost line for a second, if we could. You noted some improvements in labor productivity and wage management, and I understand the natural benefits of lower turnover, hiring and training, et cetera. But could you just elaborate on some of the other dynamics that are benefiting that line, changes you've made, et cetera? Thank you.
Yeah, Brian, this is Matt. I mean, and I think, one, fundamentally, the labor environment has just been much more stable. So with lower turnover and lower asking wages for new hires, relatively, has created an inflationary rate that has just reduced over time to even slightly below pre-pandemic, right? So that's another benefit of retention. And it's also driving, we just brought basically the overtime and training much closer to historical levels. We've also been able to take the opportunity to, as an example, bring a one-star cook up to a two-star to a three-star because of that retention, right? So the longer that we're keeping people, the more that we can train them on multiple stations, the more that they can handle, you know, the big volume of The Cheesecake Factory restaurants.
A lot of it is driven by that initial retention piece and then our ability to leverage that operationally once we're there.
We have no further questions in our queue at this time. With that, that does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.