Okay. Good morning everyone, and welcome to the 2023 ICR conference. It's great to be back here in person in Orlando. I'm Christopher Carril, RBC Capital Markets restaurants analyst. I'm pleased this morning to introduce Jack in the Box. Jack in the Box owns and franchises restaurants under both the Jack in the Box and Del Taco banners. For a quick background, as of the end of the company's fiscal 2022, the Jack in the Box brand had approximately 2,200 locations across 21 states. The Jack brand is known for its wide-ranging menu featuring items such as the Buttery Jack and Tiny Tacos, among many others, as well as the brand's unique marketing. The Del Taco brand, which the company acquired last year, has approximately 600 locations across 15 states.
With that, I'd like to introduce CEO, Darin Harris, who joined the company in 2020, and has since focused the company's efforts around technology, unit economics, and accelerating unit growth among other key growth driving areas. With that, Darin.
Thank you, Chris.
Thank you.
Good morning. It's great to be here in person at ICR 2023 and have the opportunity to personally connect. I know we have meetings set up with many of you this afternoon, we're looking forward to having those meetings and communicating our story. We have a lot to update you on today and not a lot of time, let's just get right into it. Note, our disclosure statement, for those of you tuning in for today's presentation, will be available immediately following this presentation on our investor relations webpage. We have two main goals today. First is to talk about the fundamentals of our business and how our strategy is performing, the strength that we're seeing in those fundamentals.
Next is to offer updates on areas of interest to the investment community, such as refranchising, technology investments that we are making in the brand, better visibility into G&A, as well as acquisition benefits and synergies that we're experiencing. I believe these areas will certainly, you know, fuel our conversations this afternoon and the remainder of the conference. Let's start with a quick business overview of our brands, as well as some accomplishments that'll illustrate the strength and the performance of our fundamentals. We're a 70-year-old brand that many would say is the best burger joint known for tacos. At both of our brands, we sell a tremendous amount of tacos.
We're either the number one or number two QSR burger brand in nine of our top 12 markets. We truly believe that we have the opportunity to gain both share and penetration in many of our other markets and get to the same level. Franchisees are a key partner in our business strategy, and they're a critical part of us becoming asset light, remaining asset light, and on average have 19 restaurants per franchisee. Del Taco has been around for 55 years and is a West Coast icon known for its better Mex QSR brand positioning and is now the number two Mexican QSR. Del Taco complements Jack in the Box in our strategy because we believe both brands have tremendous opportunity for growth and part of the reason why we made the acquisition was this tremendous fit.
A keynote is that both brands have begun to significantly increase the number of development agreements in our pipeline that will also lead to that future growth. When developing our strategy, we knew the critical path to value creation was as follows: Both Jack and Del have a similar strategy map. We have very similar structures. For today, what we're gonna cover is primarily Jack in the Box, and we'll update you more on the Del Taco strategy in the future. We create value by investing in our culture and serving our people and our franchisees well, so that they'll in turn serve our guests. Next, we focus on innovation, which is fundamental to Jack's history. Leveraging data and digital transformation for growth and profitability, growing and expanding our reach, and scaling our infrastructure to grow beyond Jack.
Our strategy is anchored in people, technology, and processes that support guests and franchisees. The pillars of our strategy you see on the screen right now are about building brand loyalty. It's about driving operations excellence that enables us to drive guest satisfaction and keep our guests coming back. If we focus on growing restaurant profits, we can increase operating margin, and as a result, franchisees will want to open more restaurants and help us expand our reach. As you see, our first pillar, building brand loyalty, is focused on enhancing the guest experience with our crave brand positioning. Accelerating product innovation, something Jack has always been known for in its history. We wanna continue our digital transformation, and lastly, scale our restaurant reimage program. As a result of these initiatives, we have consistently delivered one and two-year same-store sales growth and AUV growth.
Our fundamentals continue to be strong while we have additional opportunities in 2023 for growth, whether it's digital, whether it's pricing power, improved hours of operation, opening more dining rooms up, and lastly, improving our operational performance through speed and service improvements. In addition to these things, we are becoming a very formidable digital competitor and making the necessary investments to continue this growth. We've gone from less than 1% of digital sales to now over 10%. As the chart from our friends at Baird shows, our opportunity potential in this area is large when it's compared to our peers. By building our MarTech stack with multiple e-commerce avenues, we can capture data on our guests and continue to communicate more effectively and efficiently with them.
As we've learned so much over the last couple years about our guests, done our brand positioning work, we know there are plenty of opportunities to communicate in an efficient manner. Digital gives us the ability to do that. We built a very strong leadership team in Ryan Ostrom and Doug Cook, both our CMO and our CIO, who come from very strong backgrounds in digital at KFC and at Sonic and Pizza Hut. Their experience in collaborative leadership puts us in a great place to really continue this sales momentum. Let me shift to operations real quick. We focus on building the capability of our people and franchisees through enhancing our training. We needed to really bolster this area of our business and increase our training ability. We also do it with a consultative approach.
We've elevated the expectations and the standards that we require our franchisees to have in their restaurants. We've also focused on simplifying our operations and menu using new equipment, technology, and processes. Let me share the key accomplishments the enhanced training has brought to our business. We've enabled our team members and our management to move from being certified at 3.5% starting at 2022 to now 87.9%, and it's led to better operations. Ultimately, the outcome is a better guest experience and more consistent operational outcomes, which we see lead to top-line performance. Not only top-line performance, our guest satisfaction metrics are alert, which is a key correlation metric to sales growth, is at an all-time low, which is tremendous. Our speed has improved and will continue to improve throughout 2023.
In addition, our team is focused on staffing our restaurants and getting dining rooms open. We see tremendous growth and progress already, but just we still have tremendous upside in this area of our business. Our company-owned restaurants are now at 23.9 hours per day, which is greater than pre-pandemic levels. We know that with the benchmarks that we've been doing and the strategies that we've implemented, our franchisees can benefit from that approach and also do a better job of staffing their restaurants. Let me shift to our next pillar, growing restaurant profits, which is an area of particular interest for this management team. We invested in a op services team that does nothing on a daily basis but focus on how do we deliver better margins at the restaurant level through financial fundamentals.
We made it clear that we won't do it without we do not wanna impact the guest experience. It's about how do we get better at people, process, and technology. We have a center of excellence in addition to this that's focused around a pricing discipline that Jack has never had. This gives us a tremendous opportunity to be more strategic, surgical, and competitive in our pricing opportunities. We also know that as part of our strategy, we have to capture the synergies as a result of the acquisition we made with Del Taco, and we'll do that in 2023 and beyond. We have a clear strategy and a line of sight into at least 200 basis points of improvement or $55,000 per restaurant in savings.
None of these initiatives, like I mentioned, will impact the guest experience, just cost savings and efficiency. All of these are accomplished with equipment, technology, and improved processes. Our team has been really focused on things. I mentioned some examples of equipment with a HydroRinse or a cheese pump. All these are things that we put into a funnel that will continue to always create a discipline about improving the overall restaurant operating margin. Lastly, the all-important strategic pillar, which we know to drive really strong shareholder value, is to grow and expand our reach. Two years ago, we started with an empty pipeline. Since then, we have been focused on lead indicators of signing development commitments for future restaurant growth and getting sites in the pipeline. In the last three quarters alone, we've approved more sites than we did in the prior three years.
Lastly, we will continue to focus on value engineering and opening new restaurant or flexible restaurant prototypes, so we can reach our guests where they want us to be. Together, both Jack and Del Taco cover a wide geographic area in 25 states, and we've mapped out all our markets, and we know where we want to grow, which leads to plenty of potential, as many of you know, for both brands to expand not only in our existing markets, but nationwide. Since 2021, both brands have been building a pipeline, a very strong pipeline by signing development commitments. At Jack in the Box, we signed 267 restaurant commitments, and at Del Taco, 79. On a side note, you'll see the pictures of two of our newest prototypes.
At Jack in the Box, this is a drive-through only location that just opened in Oklahoma. The Fresh Flex Del Taco prototype is located here in Orlando off of I Drive, and both are outperforming our expectations from a sales standpoint. We're excited for the first time to be able to talk about net unit growth in 2023. The first time I think at Jack in the Box, if you look, we haven't had a tremendous amount of growth, net unit growth, for the last 10 years. We guided to 25-30 gross openings and 8-12 for Del Taco. We see this as a transformational year to where the growth engine starts to really pick up some speed. We're also excited to be entering some new markets in 2023.
We will open Jack in the Box in Salt Lake City and Louisville, as well as Del Taco in Tampa. Before I move on to the next section, here's the bottom line. Over the last two and a half years, we've been doing a lot of heavy lifting, and it's starting to show up in our fundamentals and our results, and now it's the time for us to simplify our story to the investment community and really put results on the scoreboard. Let me shift our focus to some topics of particular interest and areas where we can hopefully provide more clarity and communication and get that off to a solid start in 2023. One of the key questions I get asked often, is refranchising accretive, and what is the expected pace?
What kind of technology investments are you making, what are the priorities for 2023 and beyond? What clarity can you provide related to G&A for 2023 and into the future? What synergy benefits might you achieve as a result of the Del Taco acquisition? Let me start with refranchising and the Del Taco refranchising and be clear. Long term, we want this business to be asset light. We know that reduces business volatility. It also enhances growth. Medium term, as a result of refranchising, we'll add incremental development and continue on, you know, the last pillar of our strategy, which is expand our reach.
The short term, with all the headwinds we had from inflation, we wanna be careful with and preserve EBITDA, but also get the benefit of, you know, recapturing some of that margin that we lost over the last 12 to 18 months. The way I would describe it, we're in a very favorable position to really pace and sequence our refranchising strategy.
You know, initially, we wanted to go very quickly, now with the headwinds we've faced with inflation, we decided to pull back and just say, "Let's pace and sequence this, preserve EBITDA, but still get to our long-term strategy of asset light." You see we've put on the board that we will focus on selling 120 restaurants over the next three years and become about 70%, roughly 70%, asset light model for the Del Taco business. We hope this really helps provide a helpful outlook where we strike the balance between doing accretive transactions while also preserving EBITDA and maximizing earnings potential, particularly in 2023. One particular note, recently, we sold 16 Del Taco restaurants to a Jack in the Box franchisee, in addition, he signed a large restaurant development commitment. Is it accretive?
These are absolutely accretive transaction. Here's how share buybacks via these proceeds lead to immediate accretion, especially as we work towards our eventual goal of being asset-light. As you can see, there are puts and takes on the income statement as a result of refranchising. The payoff is EPS accretion. We will achieve this through share repurchases with incremental proceeds. More importantly, future growth from development agreements and potential multiple expansion from becoming an asset-light business model. Next, let me move on to technology investments. Why are we making investments, and what have we been doing? Well, first of all, in 2022, which is Doug's first year with the organization, we really needed to focus on the challenges we were having with technology and stabilize our business operations.
We have some very old technology in our current restaurants. We needed to really understand what were the challenges. Next, we want to get to modernization. That starts in 2023, and rebuild our foundation, and this will continue into 2024. Next, we want to get to the point where we get to do what Jack does well, which is innovate. We've made increased investments to stabilize our core technology platforms that result in reduced monthly help desk challenges, improved system stability, and stabilized restaurant payments. We have a very strong IT leadership team. We've rebuilt their capabilities over the last year. This included really focusing on developing a multi-year technology roadmap that is focused on three primary areas. From the corporate standpoint, rebuilding a new enterprise system. Second, restaurant-level technology.
This year we're building and enhancing our capability so that we can roll out new POS systems in 2024 and finish it by the end of 2024. We're building all that capability. We're testing three different platforms today. We're very quickly coming and narrowing that to one final platform to roll out into next year. Lastly, we've been building our MarTech stack with digital and going through that digital transformation, which will lead to top-line performance. We see the corporate efficiency from our systems. We think the restaurant-level technology will help us drive more efficient operations and drive cost out. From a top-line standpoint, the investment in digital MarTech stack will benefit our business.
In order to get to modernization or to what I would like to get to is, which is innovation, we have to build, start with the heartbeat of the system, which is the POS investment. That'll lead to our ability to do things like digital menu boards or AI, machine learning models to recommend upsell or predict demand, and some of the automation things we're doing with robotics. We have to start with the central heartbeat of our organization, which is our POS systems. It all required initial investment. We won't do all of these tomorrow. We will keep these future investments responsible. Thanks to the leadership and infrastructure, it's now a possibility for Jack in the Box to invest into our future through technology investments. Next, let me move on to G&A.
We wanna make this a part of our efforts going forward to be proactive in our communication with elements to help your modeling, especially, you know, prior to getting to an earnings day to do this. We think this will be beneficial to you as we talk about our G&A outlook. We're providing 2023 G&A guidance of 2.3%-2.5% of system-wide sales. This includes all the investments I've already talked about today. We think this is a fair ongoing run rate. It captures the synergies and shared services that we've talked about as part of the acquisition, and we don't anticipate this G&A expense to accelerate at the same levels in 2024 that it did in 2023.
As a result of that, I want to help remind you of some of the things and changes we had in 2023. We had some one-time benefits to operating EPS in 2022 that do not reoccur in 2023. You'll see those on the screen with share-based compensation, you'll see it with the chicken settlement, and then also with some insurance adjustments. We also wanted to talk about something that will be happening in the first quarter of 2023, and that is we had a Hawaii transaction that's already reflected in our guidance in the amount of a $7.3 million benefit in Q1 of 2023. It was a former franchisee that did a deal back in 2006 that had a, you know, very large royalties. He just wanted to accelerate that payment.
The new franchisee, their royalty rate will go back to the standard of 5%. The new franchisee is also using that additional capital to put into future restaurant development by signing up for 10 new restaurants to be built. The last point that I'll make related to G&A, as you'll recall that on earnings day, we provided information related to a $0.22 impact from the POS project and the $0.08 impact from real estate asset sales on our 2023 operating EPS guide. Finally, on synergy benefits. This is an area we can provide clarity now and going forward. There are meaningful benefits associated with combining the two brands, and let me share some of those synergies. EBITDA benefit in 2023 of approximately $7 million. That was already included in our guidance.
Once it's annualized, we will achieve the $15 million synergy to EBITDA that we communicated. Some of that shows up as cost mitigation just because of the headwinds, but we've identified plenty of areas that we're executing that will drive $15 million of synergies. One of the things I wanna note is that the G&A and restaurant level margin numbers you see here are not additive. That was included in our guidance. Beyond the RLM and G&A savings, we have system-wide benefits that don't show up in EBITDA. As an example, recently, we were able to renegotiate our media contracts that will drive $8 million in benefit to both Jack in the Box and Del Taco that'll enable us to spend more dollars on working media to drive top line.
Our franchisees will benefit from supply chain savings in both 2023 and 2024. Let me summarize today's comments. Our business fundamentals are performing extremely well, and we wanted to provide additional information around areas of investor focus, specifically related to refranchising and the strong position we hold to do accretive transactions and to pace and sequence them appropriately. We wanted to give you more insight into our technology investments, specifically related to how we will stabilize, modernize, and innovate around our technology systems. G&A. Begin to proactively provide insight to you to better to create better models and make sure it's clear that we have a steady long-term earnings model. Insight into our acquisition synergies, specifically related to our path to $15 million of synergy savings. Lastly, capital allocation.
We are committed to returning capital to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends, as well as investing in high return growth projects while targeting our leverage of 4-5.5x that we've guided to in the past. Let me wrap up with two quick things that I'm extremely excited about and to report before we conclude. Jack same store sales have accelerated during the quarter and now are at mid-to-high single digits. In addition, I want you to stay tuned because we intend to have a 2023 investor day where I look forward to having our management team present. Look forward to having a chance to see and get to know many of our management team members.
Also, we'll have new finance leadership at that point in time, and also we can provide more updates on our long-term guidance and strategy. With that said, just wanna take the time to thank you. Thank you for your time and interest. It's gonna be an exciting and transformational year for Jack in the Box in 2023. Both Chris and I will be available for, you know, many meetings throughout the afternoon today and tomorrow and look forward to spending time with each one of you. Thank you.