Hi everyone, it's Simeon Gutman, Morgan Stanley's hardline, broadline, and food retail analyst. It is my pleasure to welcome Grocery Outlet, represented by Jason Potter, President and CEO. I want to point you to Grocery Outlet's 8-K for safe harbor language. I'm also going to read our Morgan Stanley disclosure for important disclosures. Please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. Grocery Outlet is now a turnaround story in a way of re-engineering growth, value proposition engineered by Jason. I will start by asking maybe to level set. You put a press release out this morning to talk about the context of it, and then we will get into our discussion. Thank you.
Thanks, Simeon. Well, good morning everyone. Yes, good afternoon. Yes, we put out an 8-K this morning. One of the things that had transpired at our last earnings call, I think it was the first couple of days in November, was obviously this disruption in SNAP benefits. SNAP is a significant part of our business, about 9% of our sales. And at the time, we really didn't know how to forecast what that might have meant for the quarter.
And so what we had told all the folks we met with was, "Look, if this doesn't sort of unwind itself or sort of revert to a normative state in a few days, we'll likely put out an 8-K and clarify what happened with the business." And so for Grocery Outlet, I'm not sure anyone else has released any information yet, but we thought it was important at this stage of our turnaround to be as transparent of where we are in the business as possible. And so we thought it was appropriate to share that information with the market this morning. Kind of the details of that, what we experienced in November was about an 8% decline in SNAP sales. We saw also about a half a point decel in our non-SNAP sales. So that's the rationale for sending out that information.
When looking at SNAP, clearly a lot of our customers are under pressure. We service a lower-income demographic, and the value that the business provides is important for those families to stretch their budgets. The folks on SNAP, and I guess when we looked at the month that has been November, traffic remained positive for us, so we continued to generate positive traffic. The business has had most of the year, units per transaction have been down year on year, but the month-to-month, month-on-month trend into November was basically about what it had been, so fairly stable. What we did see was the AUR drop in a more significant way.
And so our assumption, or I guess our assessment of it, has been that with AUR down that much in November, that the folks that, as those benefits came back, we could see it in the business. They're really trying to stretch their budget. And so they're trading down into lower-priced items or smaller sizes. And that obviously had an impact on the business in November for the quarter.
Pardon my ignorance if you've stated that in the press release, but have you had enough time post the resumption of benefits to see a normalized trend?
No, I think it's early in December. Typically, what happens with SNAP is when that money is received, it's usually spent within a 10-day period, something like that. Typically, what we would see in the business is first of the month, some kind of spike in SNAP sales, and then it would decel as the month progressed. It doesn't mean we didn't get SNAP sales later in the month, but specifically in November, we saw very negative SNAP sales in the first half and very positive in the back half. All of that netting, though, to a reduction in our comps.
Okay. So backtracking first, thank you for being part of the conference.
Of course.
2025 has been an eventful year for food retail, for the company, and I think for you personally.
For sure.
Can you talk about what's been the biggest surprises, good, bad, indifferent?
Yeah. Nothing necessarily that was a surprise. I think if there's anything that kind of two things, we would have expected, or I would have expected, given the positioning of the business, to be more receptive to a more challenging consumer environment. We haven't sort of seen that in our comps, although we continue to have positive traffic. That's sort of a counterpoint, but that's probably been the biggest surprise. I think I had a very good opportunity with the board to spend time with them and time with IOs and folks in the business before I began my time at Grocery Outlet in February. So nothing necessarily surprising, but I do think that that might have been one of the things that would have thought the business would have been a little more responsive.
Now, where that kind of goes is really to a lot of the work we've done this year, and that's really trying to understand from the consumer, being consumer-centric, what's maybe changed in the business, what do they care about, what's important to them, and really, our Refresh program, what we're doing is we're changing the experience in the stores. I don't know how many of you I've spoken with or if you've been on some of the calls, but we've got a group of pilot stores where we're really shifting and addressing the experience based on what the customers are telling us, and we talk to core customers, we talk to occasionals and obviously lapsed customers and some folks that are in target groups that we think are important.
And there were several elements that came out of that work that we've implemented in our pilot group that we're getting very favorable results on. And so one is that this business, the unique sourcing model, we derive a very large value on a basket of goods against just about anybody. Something in the neighborhood of 15%-20% against discount and 35%-40% against conventional. We do a basket sort of comparison. The company spent time getting KVIs right over the last year. We feel we're in a good position there. But when it comes to the in-store experience, I felt and through the work we've done with consumer that we're not telling our story in a way that's, I guess, modern for the customer today.
We've traditionally used some general terms, Bargain Bliss, and typically use elsewhere pricing in our stores, but not anything very specific. We have a more explicit execution in these stores. We're doing basket comparisons, we're calling out KVI pricing, we've done a lot of, I'll call it value communication throughout the stores, and we think that that's been a very helpful component of getting those stores' sales moving, and we're seeing perception pops in value in those locations. The other piece that our customers have talked to us about is, "Look, I'm busy, and I would really appreciate a store that's a little easier to navigate.
Help me understand and predict where I can find things." And so, not to bore everyone with the details, but we did change, and this is important in a retail selling environment, the merchandising in the stores, co-locating produce and meat, which probably doesn't sound like anything revolutionary to anyone here, but as the business evolved, things were added in the stores in ways that didn't necessarily create an intuitive navigation. And so, some of those changes we made. We're seeing very nice pop in sales. We've also created a flow in the store that's more predictable and adding core items to make sure that we're addressing the basket needs that customers have. And so, part of that navigation is also, "Look, you need to do a better job on in-stock.
I can't trust you to be consistent, and I'm looking for certain items every single time I come to your store." And so we also implemented a series of tools, systems, procedures against the fresh departments and some in grocery that are helping our stores in those pilot groups execute at a much higher level, more consistently. And all of that is contributing to nice mid-single-digit increases in sales. And so that surprise of why isn't the business responding to the environment, I think has a lot to do with our own execution. And frankly, the exciting thing for us as we go forward into next year is we intend on rolling that out in a big way across the business. Something like north of 150 stores we'll touch next year. And I'm excited about the structural change that'll bring for comps, obviously.
Stepping back for a second on health of consumer, which you've touched on and gave some insight, you think that inflation is just catching up to the consumer's basket, not inside the grocery walls, and that could be part of the response, and is there trade down? Can you trade down inside your store too?
We saw that in November. We saw some signs of trade down. That's the first time we've sort of been able to see something that would tell us that that's happening. And so when units per transaction are stable and AUR drops and we did a little bit of the underlying work, we can see some trade down. Not in a massive way, but enough that it hurts. Beyond that, the health of the customer, clearly the lower-income folks have been under pressure for some time. And when I've talked to some of them and we can reflect on other experiences, I mean, I've had some discount experience elsewhere. People may also tend to consolidate purchases when they're under a lot of pressure. A lot of our customers come to the stores on public transit. They're taking the bus.
If they have a car, they're really thinking about what the price of fuel might be. And so there is that kind of rub that although the market might be attractive for us at this point, the combination of getting the store conditions right, executing right, and there are other considerations, I think, are at play for us.
Yeah. So you mentioned a couple of the changes. The analyst community have been seeing what the fall looks like. Customers in some of your stores, you can tell it's better. Can you, taking your temperature on ranking order, like the things that are most important, is it flow? Is it getting the right assortment? I know you've used some national data to reassort in some categories.
There are definitely, like if you kind of chunk this out, there are components that we could do, and we are rolling out across the entirety of the network probably a little earlier than there's a magic of doing things together. When you change something in a significant way in the stores, there's some disruption, and so you want to make sure you maximize the output of that. Clearly, we're getting a nice lift on the systems, tools, and processes around fresh. We got a very nice lift on co-locating those departments, so I'll just give one example. The first day we moved, so I don't know how much folks know about the stores, but at the front of our stores, typically what you'll find is some refrigerated spot boxes, what they're called, and you'll see a four-foot spot box of seafood.
And this is probably one of the clearest examples I can give. The first day we moved the seafood to the back of the store where the rest of the proteins are. So you think of beef, chicken, pork, deli, frozen meat, and we put the seafood back with the rest, the sales jumped 100%. And the location where the seafood is is the highest traffic in the store, one of the most footsteps by it. But by co-locating those departments together, what the customers told us immediately was, "You have more selection. This is great. You've added selection into the store." In fact, we didn't. We had actually less SKUs, but their perception and the way that people shop was just much more convenient for them. And so as they were thinking about proteins, they do that as one thing.
The way that the customer thinks about when they're purchasing, there's decisions about, "Well, what proteins am I going to build my meals around?" They want to see that together. The example I was giving this morning to some of the other folks was, if you go to a car dealership, and probably the best example I can give is the number one selling truck in America is a Ford F-150. If you go to any Ford dealership, they don't merchandise the trucks with the vans and the sedans. They sit separately on the lot. So you have your whole selection of F-150s together. You look at vans and sedans and Mustangs. They typically park those vehicles in one location so people can. Someone that's buying a car, they have very specific needs. They're looking for those needs. They do that as one thing.
And so maybe that's a bit of a stretch as an example, but that's basically what we did. Again, nothing revolutionary there, but as the business evolved, it wasn't ever necessarily considered. And so being a great buying organization and letting the IOs merchandise the stores, there was sort of an evolution that happened. But by stepping back and really looking at what does the customer want, what are they asking us to deliver, and then putting that as one package together, we think that's powerful. But so to answer your question, getting the fresh inventory right, co-locating those really big bump, putting core items up and down the aisles, making sure those are in stock in the way that we merchandise them, big pop. And then as you go, there's other components we think are important.
Some of the marketing changes are more difficult to tell from a sales standpoint, but when we measure perception, we're seeing an increase in value perception. And so we think that that's more of a leading indicator than a lagging. We saw the immediate sales impact on things like seafood, but clearly, if you do a better job communicating who you are and what the value prop is, you're going to get that's future sales. One example of this and telling the story in a better way is I talked about this this morning with some folks. I was in a store with an IO the day before Thanksgiving, and one of his regulars, his name's Benny, came up to him and said, "Look," she had a big smile on her face. She was beaming. "Look what I got for $50.
I got all my Thanksgiving for $50." And she just wanted to tell him how much that meant to her and thanked him. And it was regular course for him, and she's a regular customer. But that's some of the work we need to do. That's hard to tell early what that refresh is going to do for us. But what we're going to do is the fun part of what we've done is we didn't do any marketing around those changes. The lifts we're getting are really about the customer that's in the store. And so what we've seen so far is basket increase in those stores, now traffic in those stores, and then we'll be able to layer in marketing and stronger communication around what the offering is and what the value prop is.
We're going to use examples like that to help customers really understand what we're all about.
It started with two stores. I guess it started with one, but you have to go. Is it still two?
Yeah. We've got more like six or seven stores now complete. Last week, November was not the most fun we've had in a while. Comps were not so strong, but those stores definitely are punching far beyond what the rest of the business is, and even the early days of the next cohort of stores, we're seeing really good results. It's an exciting thing to see what happens when you really change something in a store. We'll have nearly 20 done by the end of the year, and then our intent is to continue to roll that out at a pace we think that the IO community can absorb. One of the pieces of learning we've had is because the way that the business worked, we brought something like 100,000 SKUs could change in a year.
So, stores would bring product in, comes in, it's out, it's in a different location, it's changing all the time. There didn't necessarily need to be a tremendous amount of discipline on how to put products where in a store. And so, some of that learning has been, and this is a conversation I was having with Benny, the IO in Petaluma, was: "Look, we had some bad habits, and it's been something I've had to work on." But Benny was very excited about going through that experience, learning what happened, and then for us, making sure that we're supporting our IOs in the right kinds of ways with training materials and support so that as we execute this, it's sticky. And so, a little bit of story about where we are, but yeah, some very good results early.
The spread is holding above average, even if November was a little slower. There shouldn't be any problem scaling. These stores are far enough from each other in different communities. There isn't a diminishing marginal return here from doing this.
No, not at all. This is scalable. We're not gated by demand. I think the IOs that we've brought quite a number through the stores now, and we've had some of our IOs actually telling the story behind what has happened. I think on the last earnings call, or maybe I can't remember which one it was, that we maybe actually called out one of the stores that were part of this. And the IO there, her name's Chandra, she's a wonderful person. She says you were getting phone calls every day for days and days from our IO saying, "Are those the numbers? Is that what's happening?" And so part of what we're doing is celebrating those things, taking the learnings, and letting our IOs tell the story behind what's happening to their businesses. And obviously, IOs get lots of feedback.
When you're in a store, customers are telling you all day long how you're doing. Now, some of them will engage directly, and they'll tell you those things, and others don't. But the folks that are in those stores shopping today, tons of favorable feedback. And so people like Chandra telling the story about what the customers are saying, what the changes mean to her and her family and for the store's success is pretty powerful.
You're slowing store growth and more focused on existing markets. How much of a debate is the growth in general? You seem like you're getting the internal parts of the business ironed out. How important is growing at the same time as getting the internal right?
For us at this point, I think the most important thing is to get our core business working. The growth is going to be there. There's lots of space to grow. One of the things you do in a turnaround is make sure that you're as focused as you can be on the core most important priorities. That also includes where you spend your CapEx. We think next year we've already talked about this, 30-35 net new. One of the important things I think within that is we've shifted the mix to more two-thirds infill versus two-thirds in new markets. We think that's important, especially as we focus on improving our returns on invested capital. Slowing the pace also doesn't mean we're going to stop, but we can be very discerning about the real estate that we execute. We're clustering. We're taking advantage of marketing in that way.
It helps us with our people part of the business as well as distribution, and so we think that that's definitely a no-regret move. Clearly, it's painful at the beginning when you do those kinds of things, but we want to be able to get the core business in a good place, focus on that. The amount of focus we have around operations and getting this 150-store piece up and running and supporting IOs is absolutely critical for us, and so we want to minimize as much of the distraction as we can. New stores are exciting, but they take extra effort. It takes more resources, more OpEx. There's the CapEx piece, and we intend on being free cash flow positive next year. We went through a year where we did some borrowing to build our stores.
And so we think that having a prudent slowing there will help us focus and get the core business right.
On execution, especially marketing, there's been some learnings along the way. Can you talk about those and how do you adjust?
Yeah. I think we've done a number of things there, turning different marketing up and down. Through the fourth quarter, we've got more dollars, I guess, being spent through the quarter than we did in Q3. The key, I think, for us in the marketing piece is obviously you want to have it in the right channels. There's two pieces of marketing that are really key. One is to get the in-store communication sharper, more explicit. And the second is on the external side, making sure that our message is also clear. So some of the things we've done have been very effective over a long period of time, but we want to make sure that people really understand that value prop.
You have more customers saying, "Look what I got for $50." There's the savings part, but for a lot of people, it's, "What can I do with my life?" She was basically saying, "Look, I'm really happy I saved this money, but I've got money to spend now because I've been able to save so much money with the store, and you've got my needs taken care of." We'll be using a lot of those kind of proof points in our communication. We've started to do more targeting related to telling stories versus just item and price, which is important. The storytelling part of the marketing externally is going to be part of what we do.
Some of the operational changes that you've made in some perishable categories. We got to see some of the process, some order planning, tools that a business previously didn't have. So can you help us appreciate the improvement in this business?
Yeah. So in retail, I learned this early. To be a great retailer, you have to forecast. I mean, margins are very tight, so you have to forecast well, order well, fulfill well, there's planning that goes in, and schedule well. And so for many years, basically how ordering worked at Grocery Outlet in Fresh, and this is how it works still in the vast majority of stores, it's more of an estimate of what I need. And so we tend to overservice the stores. A lot of our stores get five, six-day delivery. And so there's a lot of service that goes on when you're not precise about what you need.
And so by implementing some systems related to how much space an item needs, at what price point, with a forecast based on when my truck shows up and my sales, you end up matching supply and demand at a much higher level. The product's fresher, it turns faster, and it doesn't require as much labor and kind of the other supply chain-related costs to go with that. So we have a nice opportunity in front of us to really modernize some of how the business works. As we've gotten through these systems challenges the business has had, we're getting to the tail end of that. And so a lot of what we're doing on that kind of fresh piece is helping educate our IOs on a process that helps them understand the business in a new way.
That learning in our initial groups of stores has been very positive. They're very excited about it. As time goes on, we'll be able to automate more and more of it. So this business has a lot of opportunity given what it's been through in the last couple of years on areas like shrink and sales. So doing a nice job there, we're going to get benefit on both of those fronts.
Pricing. Do you think the perception to the customer is as good as you advertise, meaning this 15%-20% versus discounters 35%-40%?
No, I don't think it is. And even when I talk to some people working in the store, so the first thing you want to do is you want to make sure that the people that work there really understand it. This is a small, subtle thing in retail. Everyone that works in the store is having a conversation every minute of the day with the customer. And so whether you're selling quality or service or price or a combination thereof, people need to know what it is that they're doing and why that's important. And so some of the work we're doing is also educating the people that work in the stores.
And by showing people very explicitly, "Here's what our pricing is on a basket of goods," either in the back room or at the front door with a cart, that's been a. You've got a few of those moments where people are going, "Wow, I knew it was good, but I didn't realize it was that good," when you really show them. And so I think that there's lots of opportunity for us as this business develops in our marketing, both internally and externally with the customer, for them to better understand the positioning. The regular in Petaluma who was giving Benny the thumbs up on the $50 Thanksgiving basket clearly understands what she's getting and was very happy with that. We just have to find ways to make sure that that's true across occasionals and some of our lapsed customers. We need to reinforce that.
Some of that happens through the merchandising and the signage and also storytelling.
We spent some time in the ketchup aisle and the barbecue sauce. And you're going to bring some more everyday items, national brands to meet the customer's needs. This will be the constant question: how does that alter or change price perception when you have to buy more every day?
Yeah. I mean, you have to be price rated on the things that people buy most often. That's just Retail 101. So I think we, like all the folks we've met with, we've used the same example, which is sort of a Heinz ketchup. So the folks at Kraft are probably happy we're using this, but we want our stores to carry that item every day. And you need to be priced at the market. And so there's a margin impact on that. But there's also a huge benefit in that what we see when people buy that item, they're also buying a much larger basket of goods, a dramatically larger basket. And so if you think of condiments as something that people have in their fridge, in their cupboard, it's a stock-up kind of thing, right? It's not something, it's not an impulse item.
People generally don't walk down the condiment aisle unless it's a different kind of sauce on things like that. So if you take mayo, mustard, ketchup, those are more or less on people's list, right? You might find a hot sauce is not, right? So that's more of an impulse. But those kinds of items you have to carry every day. And they tend to have a different margin profile, but they have a very attractive basket profile. And so one of the things our customers talk to us about were, "Look, you have a ketchup, but I don't want that one. This is the one I want, and I want you to have it consistently and make it easy for me to shop." And so by doing that, what we've seen is, first, larger baskets in those stores, and now more traffic.
And so as all brands, trust is the most important thing to build. And so by being consistent, you build trust. And you deliver day to day for me. And if you do, then I'm going to trust the brand, and I'm going to consolidate some of my basket with you as a result. And if you can't deliver that, that's great. I'll come to you for some of these other things, but maybe I don't spend as much with you.
Competitive positioning and the occasion, almost what you touched on, there doesn't seem to be a number two going after the closeout off-price grocery space. But how does the customer shop your store? Is it small basket convenience? What percentage are doing local shop?
Yeah. It's interesting. Every retail business that I've been a part of, and the biggest one is 1,500 stores, people shop in kind of missions. And so you'll typically find somewhere, or I found, somewhere between 40% and 50% of the baskets are actually $20 or less. There's actually a fair bit of, if that's my store, you have around a very small radius, you'll get a lot of people coming in for quick lunches, drinks. There's a profile of items that fall into that basket. That's profitable, and that's good, but you also want to graduate people up, kind of get your fresh shop. That's a bigger basket, typically $40-$50, a high propensity of produce and meat.
And then as you think about, and this is true for the people in the room if you do the grocery shopping, if I want to spend $150, it has all kinds of categories in it. And so this business is no different. It has a fairly large portion of convenience baskets. But part of what we're doing here is also trying to earn the fresh basket and the larger baskets with our customer. And so it's great to have those smaller ones, but there's a lot of profit to be made as you graduate up the trust sort of scale, and people aggregate their purchase with you.
State of the IOs, any surprises? First, as you've come into the business and when you were running a large chain, you've spent time with your store managers. Are you spending a different amount of time, more or less, working with the IOs?
No, I think in all retail businesses, whether it's the store manager, the franchisee, or the IO, it's the most important position in the company, the folks that are operating the stores, and so having a cadence of communication and engagement is essential, and so it's more than maybe what they're used to, but it's also important for us to engage, and so we're finding it's not necessarily different for me, but you don't want people to play fill in the blank, it's very important to be continually communicating the good news, the bad news, whatever it is, also updating people on what's happening, and so communication can be a big strength in a business, and so that's definitely something that's different. Clearly, when you have people that have their personal money at stake, their incomes, they want to understand what's happening in the business.
There's lots and lots of feedback, which is great. I don't think that's necessarily different than any business that I've been involved in. When I was a kid, I grew up in a franchise business. The franchise business that I grew up in, those folks owned the building. They owned the inventory. They really cared about the profitability, and they cared about return on their capital. I don't see this as that different. People have a profit motive. They want to know what's happening and how you can help them grow their business and grow it profitably. Whether it's a corporate chain or any other, it's a different flavor, and you have to take those flavors into account. The communication piece is key.
The pipeline, does it get richer? Meaning, does it get enriched since you're going to open fewer? And then as far as operating standard, how wide of a range of best practices do you see across the board?
Yeah. I think we probably have more variability than I definitely would like to see. And so we're starting to work on measuring that variability for the customer and making sure that we're working on the right things and that you want to make sure that people are spending their time on standards that add value and eliminating the things that don't. So that's a piece of work that we have in front of us, if that answers your question?
Yeah, and pipeline? I mean, you've had a pipeline. I guess it gets a little better now.
Yeah. One of the things we've probably oriented a little bit more to is, in my experience, having folks that have a track record and have retail experience, whether it's a franchisee, store manager, or now in this case an IO, the quality of that individual is just so important. Having retail experience helps a lot. And so we've shifted a little bit in our pipeline profile of who we're trying to attract to the business. We've also shifted the way that we're compensating those people to attract them. And given the upside being an IO, again, there is a strong business case to make sure that you're bringing on the very best talent at that position that you can find. And one of the main points of an IO model is you should be able to disproportionately attract talent that maybe you don't even deserve given the opportunity.
We're orienting the business in that regard.
Gross margin is a big topic, but coming from systems implementation, that triggered a lot of gross margin variability, lack of visibility on ordering. Then there were some pricing things to mitigate it. There were some other margin stuff to mitigate it, IOs, payments, etc. We should be in the full workout phase from that in a new normal of stability.
Yeah. Margins have been more stable this year, to be sure. We have lots of opportunity in shrink even today, so we're not back to a normative state there, so I'm excited about what some of the systems work we're completing now. One of the things that's been absent for the last two years is, for our buying teams, they can't see what inventory we have in the store. So that's a pretty big disconnect in the business. You're trying to match supply chain and demand, and so we're almost ready to turn that on so that our buying group can see what's the inventory fully in the system, and so those kinds of opportunities help you navigate margin as it comes, what's coming, what the mix is, do you have the right things in the right stores, and so on, so there's some nice upside as we go forward.
There's always going to be the conversation about how much you invest or how variable things are. But it's been an uncomfortable struggle for the team for some time just given some of the lack of visibility and the connection parts of tools. We're now at the tail end of that. Earlier this year, I think systems-wise, we had something in the neighborhood of 350 fixes to either technical connections, process breakdowns, whatever they might be. We've whittled that down now to something around 100 left. And so the business continues to improve its predictability and visibility.
And the return to operating leverage, normalized growth, it seems like the store fixes are the quickest path to get there. So what's holding back from turning the green light on and doing as many as quick as possible?
Yeah. I think we had this debate internally. One of the things that's important to do is to make sure that we bring everyone with us as we make the changes. And so in the initial pilots, some of the feedback we had from IOs were, "Don't go too fast. This is a big change. We need to have support." And that was some of the learning. And so what we're doing next year is we think we're going to be able to go faster as time goes on, but we want to make sure that we're building the operations support, the training, the development, all of that work around the changes at a pace that our IOs are comfortable with and can execute so we have stickiness.
Probably the worst thing that could happen is if we typically, in my past, we might have done all the stores in one year. You're able to sometimes, in a corporate environment, you might have done something just a little bit different, but it's important to bring the people with us, and so we're pacing that in a way we think is appropriate given the situation. All of the missteps in the company, there's been trust lost, and we have a lot of trust to build with our IOs, and so we want to make sure whatever it is we're doing, we're delivering the mail and that it's sticky.
Have you shared how many is an appropriate number for the organization per year?
Yeah. We've talked about next year, we're fully planning to do north of 150 and intend to be done in the first two years. And as those rollouts happen and you dial it in, typically you go faster anyhow. It takes about five weeks to do one. And then there's both training that you're doing through that and some post-work after. So six, seven weeks in, you come out of the other side of the dip as you're tearing the store apart. And that's where you see the comp growth. It's a compelling offering for our IOs. The incomes that they're going to accrue are very significant and with a very short payback for them. So folks that have done this already are really excited about what it means for them and what it'll mean for our Grocery Outlet.
Great. Well, we'll leave it on a positive note. Appreciate you being here. Thanks for the update. Good luck through the end of the fourth quarter and into 2026.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it. Thanks.
Thanks for your attention.