All right, we ready to rock? All right, can everyone hear me? Perfect. Okay. Good morning, everyone. I'm Andrew Charles, TD's Restaurants Analyst, and I want to welcome everyone to the 10th Annual Future of the Consumer Conference. We're thrilled to have everyone here today and excited to kick it off with Sweetgreen. Sweetgreen features nearly 300 U.S. restaurants and has a mission to build healthier communities by connecting people to real food. This is primarily through salads, warm bowls, plates, and most recently, wraps. Representing the company today are going to be CFO, Jamie McConnell, Chief Commercial Officer, Zip Allen, and Head of Investor Relations, Anthony Wiginton. Thank you guys so much for joining us today and thank you as well for helping us kick off the conference.
I want to kick off, just kind of a look backwards that you guys have been vocal that you haven't been satisfied with your same -store sales trends since 1Q 2025. You've identified numerous initiatives you're working on to now improve sales trends, and obviously had a favorable update on your conference call about the path ahead. Maybe just to look backwards, what have you diagnosed to be the key challenges, and how have you used that to inform your priorities and initiatives in 2026?
I'd say we're about two quarters into our transformation plan, and Jason, our Chief Operating Officer, is about a year in. It turns out that when you go into a restaurant, people want a good experience and delicious food, and those are all the things that we've been focused on. Jason has been working on One Best Way, which is really setting the standards across the fleet. He's also making sure that we're cooking our food at the appropriate cook times, making sure our chicken is delicious and yummy, and then also leaning into hospitality and throughput. There's been a lot of work being done around throughput. It used to be that one person would take you down the line, but now it's more of that assembly line moving people down the line.
That's really what we've been focused on this year is really leaning into operations. Still a long way to go. We're working on our menu price architecture that goes live in Q2. I don't know if there's anything else you would add.
Yeah, I would say that.
Menu innovations. Yeah.
When we look at what are the barriers to a consumer choosing Sweetgreen first, the number one barrier is our price-value perceptions.
Yes.
We've identified that at the top of the year, you've seen us start to really make investments in that, both through our menu innovation and also through our loyalty and CRM program. Things like pricing of the Wraps and expanding the use occasions, through price points starting at $10.95, going up to $13.95. Our loyalty program really getting personalized with how we think about that value.
Awesome. Let's talk a little about the Wraps. They launched just over a month ago or so. Raise of hands, anyone had the wraps so far?
Delicious.
All right. More opportunity. I love it.
There's one.
There we go. Thank you. In the pilot for the Wraps, were there specific operational metrics you monitored that gave you confidence that Wraps did not present any complexities?
I want to back up a second and just talk about the strategy with Wraps.
Sure.
The strategy with Wraps is really about getting more customers to visit us for more occasions. When you think about Sweetgreen, everything comes in a bowl or a plate, and it requires a fork. When we looked at the consumer needs across the category, and we looked at where we had a right to win with our ingredient quality, with our healthier and quality standards of our food, we saw an opportunity to make that more portable for a consumer. That's the first place. Obviously when we look at introducing a new category like Wraps, there's operational complexity that we need to really take into account. Our stage-gate process, which you've heard John talk about a lot over the last year, has really been instrumental in how we validated Wraps as a category.
Very early in the development process, we actually went into a restaurant and did an ops shakedown. What is an ops shakedown? That meant that we all got in there from a cross-functional perspective, and we looked at things like, where are we going to put the tortilla press? Is that going to be at the beginning of the line, or is that going to be at the end of the line? We had a product principle that the first bite had to be the best bite. How do you actually execute that? That means that you need to experiment with mixing and cutting. We had a lot of internal debate and a lot of just runs down the line of like, okay, how many wraps can we get in in a 15-minute period when we change some of these variables?
We had a lot of learnings going into market test, and then when we went into market test, we went in with three Wraps, the Chicken Caesar, the Chicken Jalapeño Ranch, and then the Club. With the Club, that one was really interesting. We had started and tested with a chicken salad, which was operationally actually very complex. It meant that we had a lot of prep in the restaurant. We needed to make the chicken salad every day. It was great from a cost perspective, but the consumer wasn't really giving us credit for the level of prep that we had. What you see in our national launch, as of about a month ago, we actually changed that and optimized that to just include our roasted chicken.
A lot of operational learning went into that to make sure that we could execute at scale and leveraging our stage-gate process to measure what would happen into the restaurants as well as what the impact to consumers would be.
Yep. How should we think about, you also did introduce a new one, the Korean BBQ as well. Should we think about this as a limited time offering, that there's future opportunity as you do seasonal offerings to do future LTOs, or is this kind of a new variety you're going to keep?
Oh, with the Korean BBQ?
Yeah, with Korean BBQ. Yeah.
We tested with three flavor profiles, and what we found is that the Classic Chicken Caesar, for any of you that have had that is my personal favorite Wrap. It is just that perfect combination. It has that great fresh lemon squeeze in that which consumers give us a lot of credit for. It is done with that Sweetgreen wink, that Sweetgreen way. The Chicken Jalapeño Ranch, that really meets that bigger eating occasion. It's a rice forward, more of a burrito competitor. You can think about it that way. The Club, that really brings together a lot of different flavors. Why we went with the Korean BBQ was we do see an opportunity for us to introduce LTOs and limited time flavors, and bring that cravability to our menu through a vehicle like Wraps.
When we looked at the flavor profile going into launch, there was an opportunity for us to just extend that flavor profile and get into that cravability, more grubby, saucy, more satisfying flavor.
Awesome. I'm curious, if we tie it together, what does the loyalty program data tell you about the wraps customer? Are they substituting salads and other entrees, or are they new and lapsed customers returning to the brand?
I would say it's both. When we look at our customer data, and we looked at this really carefully. We tested wraps in market for over 60 days before we made the call on whether or not we would launch them nationally. What we were looking for was incrementality. Incrementality on the top line and incrementality on the bottom line. From a top-line perspective, what we found was that wraps, yes, in the beginning, you were seeing consumers trade into wraps as they were noticing them on our menu boards. What you actually found was that it was increasing their frequency and compressing their visitation. They were coming to us more often for more occasions.
The other thing that we saw was when we put a little bit of media against it in the market test, and we're seeing this in spades now that we are in from a national perspective, is we're seeing incremental traffic. We're seeing new customers come into the brand, and we saw that in our market test. We tested in about 70 restaurants across three markets. New York, Midwest, and L.A. to give us a wide swath of what consumer behavior could look like. The last thing I'll say is that we're seeing a higher attachment rate with wraps. They are more portable, they are a different occasion, so drinks, beverages, sides, et cetera. We are seeing behavior that is maybe bucking some of the patterns that we see in our base business. Higher incidence on the weekends, higher incidence in afternoon day parts.
Great. Then can you compare a little more about, since you launched them national on May 6th, compare what you're seeing with more advertising around the platform relative to what you saw in the initial pilot. What have been the surprises that you've seen?
I would say on social media, for any of you that have looked at our TikTok or seen some of the virality of Wraps, that has been really intentional in the way that we thought about that campaign. This was our first and biggest really social first campaign. We partnered with influencers on a macro level, on a micro level, on a nano level, to really make sure that we got that trial and awareness. What we're seeing is that our social share of voice, now that we seeded with influencers, there's two things that are happening. One is you're seeing organic pickup, and the organic conversation around Sweetgreen pickup, and that's leading to a higher share of voice on social.
I would say that's really what has been driving a lot of the interest around Wraps, and particularly that Chicken Caesar wrap is doing really well for us.
Get it with the blackened chicken. I think it's even better when you do it that way.
I don't know.
I know.
I'm a hot sauce girl.
Interesting. All right. I'll give it a try. Okay. You talked a little about this, just on the topic of menu innovation, talk about the efforts in place to expand sides. Ripple Fries were something that were tried one year ago, it was deemed too operationally complex, but it seems like an opportunity for you guys to build ticket. What other opportunities are there on the sides?
We see a huge opportunity for not just sides, but you think about desserts, beverages, other attachments. That is really what Wraps as a category opens up for us. Beyond that, there are new occasions that we can open up. When you think about where our peaks are in our business, lunch and dinner day parts, snacking day parts. Fries was the right strategy, just really difficult for us to execute. We are going back to our stage-gate innovation process, where we've got a whole pipeline of development around sides, beverages, desserts, that are currently in development, going to be in test soon, as we look at expanding some of those occasions.
That's great. Zip, talk to us about operations, a big focus under Jason and Project One Best Way. Is there a way you can frame up what portion of restaurants are meeting your standards today relative to six and 12 months ago?
I would say he's about one year into Project One Best Way, and so I would say two-thirds are meeting our standards. However, I'd say step one was getting the operational standards across the fleet, and then really step two, we're starting to raise that bar and layer in some of the hospitality components, the throughput. I would say we're still early innings in operations. We're happy with the progress we've seen so far, but there's still a lot of work to be done.
Very good. Where is the lowest hanging fruit operationally? Is it throughput, order accuracy, ingredient availability, or something else?
I would say throughput and hospitality, really making sure that when our customers come into our restaurants, that they're greeted, there's eyes on them, and they're smiling. They're asking them if they've been to Sweetgreen before, have they tried the Harvest Bowl? Really leaning into the hospitality component is something that we're focused on.
Okay. Is there a way to think about the same store sales differential at stores that are meeting the operational standards compared to those that are still in process?
Yeah. There is a gap, and there's also a gap with labor, if we have a full staff of labor during that peak hour. That's really where we're seeing the gaps.
Okay.
In same store sales.
Okay. Is part of Project One Best Way, have you seen a notable difference from instead of having someone take the bowl down the line, and they pass it off, is that a key unlock that you guys have found within the Project One Best Way?
Yeah. I would say that we're doing a really good job right now on our digital line, but now it's like, how do we focus on the front line? Because 40% of our guests do come in. That's a focus that we have right now, is really making sure we have those planned and positioned during the peak hours. We have that assembly line bringing them down the line.
Okay. Great. In the middle of last year, you implemented some portion sizing investments. Have you seen anything that tells you the guest is noticing these?
Yeah. I would say, one of our number one complaints or one of our top complaints was that portion size. Consumers were telling us that they didn't feel like we were giving them enough. Jason and the team, and from a food quality standpoint, we really looked at how do we make sure that we are being generous with our portions and meeting the guests where their expectation is. We made that investment last year. We did go out with a campaign to tell consumers about that at the end of last year, where we highlighted the realness of our protein, the fact that it is antibiotic-free chicken, and the opportunity to highlight the protein grammage that you get in a variety of our bowls. We have eight bowls that are over 35 g of protein right now.
What we're seeing in the consumer is that they are giving us credit for that. Complaints on portion sizing have come way down. We also updated our app and our experience to be able to show our consumer what the macros is in each one of the ingredients, in each one of the menu items. We are getting credit for that.
Okay. Very good. If we take a step back, the younger consumer, since you have a fast-changing consumer cohort that you guys obviously have a lot of exposure to, how have you seen the health of that younger consumer evolve over the last few months?
I'd say it's really encouraging. When you think about Sweetgreen as a brand and where we have the most relevance, it is with that millennial consumer. That is where the brand started 20 years ago, and that consumer has grown up with us. We see a huge opportunity to reach a new audience and reach a younger demographic. I don't necessarily think about it in age cohorts. I think about it as lifestyle or life stage, where we need to be recruiting those folks that are coming out of school, that are just getting started on their adult life, and have Sweetgreen be a part of that habit.
With product introductions like Wraps, with what we've been doing from a social first campaign messaging, with what we've been doing with our loyalty program and our one-to-one marketing, we are seeing that younger consumer and our relevance with that younger consumer start to gain traction.
Very good.
We've had our Sweetgreen food trucks passing out free wraps at all the college campuses, so that's been fun to see.
That's great. Okay. Just on the loyalty program, can you talk about where you are with the evolution of it? You guys revamped it not terribly long ago. What have you learned from that and as you look forward, what other opportunities do you see ahead for the loyalty program?
We revamped the loyalty program a little over a year ago, so we lapped that in April. What we're seeing is two things. One, moving to a points-based program does give us a lot more flexibility to deliver a more personalized experience from a consumer perspective. We've got a great head of digital growth on the team that has really started to unlock the power of that data. A couple of things that we've been doing. I mentioned price value perceptions and how we have a lot of work to do on changing those perceptions with consumers. Those don't change overnight, and so that takes a really targeted, consistent approach to messaging. We launched our Craving of the Month program at the top of the year, really to experiment with how we can compress that consumer behavior. How can we drive back those lapsed customers?
How can we recruit customers into our loyalty program? With Craving of the Month, we've seen that that has resurrected customers that we haven't seen in over 90 days. It has a compressed frequency with customers that are within our current existing active user base. We want to make sure that we are doing that in a profitable way. As we have experimented with that month-over-month, we have continued to refine that program. Now we are using it just to really reengage lapsed customers. The other thing that we're seeing is we're driving signups into our loyalty program. Consumers want the ability to get that benefit on that first transaction. When we look at our cost of acquisition versus the lifetime or annual value of that customer, there's an investment that we're making to get that cost of acquisition.
We've had, since the beginning of the year, this $5 off on your first order that has been really driving signups for us and driving interest in the program. The last thing is we have started, as of this week, you'll see our loyalty program include things like Wraps into the program. Giving the customer the opportunity to leverage the loyalty program and get credit. A $3 credit is going into the reward structure. We're starting to experiment with how we can drive that frequency even faster.
Yep. Let's talk a little about value. You guys obviously are known for customized bowls, great ingredients, strong portion sizing. I think about Wraps, obviously, it's a lower price point, still great value for the money, et cetera. The $12 Craving of the Month, I guess I'm curious as we look forward here, what would you need to see to say that, hey, you have strong value perceptions, you get credit for obviously the value you offer. We might see the sun setting of something like that versus continuing to offer great customized portioning, combined with Wraps, obviously at a great price point as well.
Yeah. With Craving of the Month, what we see is there's an opportunity for us to just right-size that program. That works really well from a lapsed customer standpoint. As far as perceptions, we are measuring that with our brand health tracking. We are measuring that not just with our consumers, but we are measuring that versus the category because we know that that is one of the key drivers of visitation in the category. When we look at our price-value architecture overall, there's an opportunity for us to be more clear in our pricing. Jamie talked about our focus on the frontline, and one of the key menu items that really drives that value perceptions is our Create Your Own menu item.
That is about 25% of our new customer transactions, right now it's not as great of an experience as it could be for the customer. It's not super clear for the customer what is included in Create Your Own. You got to pay extra for the protein right now, it can feel like a nickel-and-diming experience. Jamie and John have talked about this from an earnings perspective. We are getting into test on that menu price architecture, both addressing that transparency on our Create Your Own pricing. As of this quarter, we're going to be in test with that. Also looking at how we can drive really smart entry prices onto the menu with our chef-crafted bowls.
Yeah. Let's talk a little bit more about the rearchitecting pricing ladder. We're going to see something later this month. How can we think about how this looks different to what's in place today? I guess, is the goal here to provide more transparency on pricing? Is it to reduce the pricing of the base for Create Your Own? I'm kind of curious about the vision you have for this.
Yeah. You want to go first?
No, you go first. Yeah.
It is to address those price value perceptions, but we need to do that in a way that is going to be check neutral and margin neutral. We've done a lot of work in the background to understand what drives those perceptions with consumers. We know Create Your Own is a big anchor because that is very comparable across brands for consumers. We also know that we need to do it in a way that is going to be really smart so that we are maintaining that check average, and we are maintaining that margin on the transaction. That is really what we're trying to test in market. When we look at the overall pricing ladder of the menu, we were really intentional with the pricing that we put in place for Wraps to make sure that gave an accessible entry price.
We have flexibility to take price across the breadth of that menu offering. We're looking from a category basis, and then we're also looking at how we can invest from a menu perspective and things that will drive check-up. Attachments, beverages, sides, desserts, et cetera.
Okay. How do you plan to market it as well to tell consumers about this a little bit more? Is there a way of saying, "Starting at blank price point," or how do you envision it being communicated to guests?
We're still early days on how we're going to communicate that to guests. As you can imagine, we want to make sure that we can signal value perceptions. We want to signal the transparency. Something like protein included in the Create Your Own price point is going to be a big reason to believe that the pricing is more transparent and clearer from a consumer perspective. We'll have more to share on that later.
Great. Okay. Jamie, I want to spend some time on margins. The guidance embeds underlying improvement in the back half of this year, it sounds like you're attributing this to three factors, including reducing waste, supply chain efficiencies, and labor management. If we unpack that a bit, on the waste, it was about 140 basis points of a headwind in the first quarter. What efforts are you putting in place to mitigate this going forward?
I'd say step one has been really giving the field the visibility to the data and the waste. What's really going to unlock it is the suggestive ordering. Right now, we have about 300 Head Coaches placing orders every single day, and there's a lot of guesswork in that. How do we make sure that we can give them the exact amount of order? What unlocks that is right now we have a suggestive ordering tool, but not all of the inputs into that tool are automated. How do we get forecasted sales in there? How do we make sure the items that we're prepping are in there?
We have a task force working on that right now, and what we have found is that these systems are really integrated, so we're really trying to make sure that we get this right. This is something that we expect to launch in the beginning of Q3. As we've gone down this path, we've realized there's a lot of inputs in there where we want to make sure that when we roll it to the field, that it works. That's what we're working on right now.
Great. Okay. You talked about supply chain efficiencies as well on the call. What have you seen so far and where are there incremental opportunities on this going forward?
Yeah. I'd say there's a lot of good work going on. Really taking a category review and looking at each one of our categories to make sure that we have the best prices. For areas where we've been a little bit more local, can we have a national brand or supply chain that we can use? Really, it's just been looking at those two items to make sure that we're never compromising on the quality of our ingredients, and making sure we're getting the best prices.
Okay. On the labor front, you're undergoing a labor study. What have you learned so far and how should we think about the timeline for implementing some of these learnings?
The labor study just wrapped up, and we actually have the readout on it next week. More to share when it comes to the labor study. The goal with the labor study is not necessarily to cut labor, but to make sure we have the right labor deployed during that peak hour. Then there may be some shoulder periods where we have too much labor, really, that study should unlock that. Then making sure that we're prepping things at the right time so that labor study should unlock all of that.
Okay, great. Let's turn now to development. You talked about needing to get the sales flywheel going for stepping on the gas again in terms of new store development. Is there a certain level of same-store sales that would make you feel comfortable accelerating new restaurant growth again? Can you walk through the psyche around what you need to see before you would accelerate development?
Yeah. We just hired on Ryan Simmons as Chief Development Officer. He's, what? About a month in role.
Yeah.
I think right now, he's taking a look at the unit economics and really making sure when we have our build-out costs, that there are set build-out costs, that we're RFPing the supplies, et cetera. That's something that he's working on. When it comes to sales and margin, we really want to make sure that we're getting that two-year cash-on-cash returns that we expect of 40% or above. Until we see that, we've slowed down growth this year, and I expect to be at the same level next year as well, as we work to get our transformational plan underway.
Can you talk more about the Sweetlane, the digital drive-through you guys have? I think you have two in operation?
Yes.
Okay, yeah. Talk about that prototype. Is that something you want to see more of? Is it more that this was an interesting test, but we're happy with other design formats?
Yeah.
Three. Excuse me. Thank you.
What I would say is in some of those suburban areas, so last year we went into Phoenix and Sacramento, and then we just actually launched a Sweetlane in Irvine. I think what we've seen in some of these suburban areas is people like that convenience. I think you will see that when the economics make sense.
Great. Okay. Now that Infinite Kitchen technology is owned by Wonder, how do you anticipate this will impact your plan CapEx or retrofits and inclusion in your new stores?
We still plan to open about 50% with Infinite Kitchen, and Wonder's been a great partner to us. Really, with their scale, we're hoping that it unlocks better pricing of the Infinite Kitchen going forward, but it's still a big piece of our model.
Okay. Then, you talked, as well, about another year of guiding to 50% development, including in-line. What would make you comfortable having a larger portion of development being in that, using that technology going forward? You talked about perhaps how Wonder can potentially manufacture the cost down a bit. Is there anything else that you're looking for around how you could ramp this up? As I know it's been a big aspiration of yours.
Yeah. I'd really say it's the hurdle rate. It only works in higher AUV restaurants. To the extent we think that we're going to get the higher AUV, $3 million plus, we will put an Infinite Kitchen, but it really comes down to the economics.
Yep. Very good. Okay. Zip, I probably should have led off with this, but you've been in your role almost a year now. Where are you spending most of your time, and where do you see the largest opportunities?
It's been such a pleasure to be at Sweetgreen for almost a year. You mentioned our mission at the top, and our mission is to create healthy communities by connecting people to real food, and it's just an absolute joy to get up every day and think about that when you have the high-quality food that we have, when you have the health halo that the brand has, and when that matches up with where the consumer is going and where consumers are eating. There's just a huge opportunity ahead of us. From the outside, what I saw were really three main opportunities for the brand. The first, we talked a lot about menu. Got to get beyond the bowl, and we are starting to do that with Wraps as really the first entry into a new category beyond the bowl.
Lots of opportunity for us to do things like even out our seasonality of our business. Summer tends to be, or warmer days tend to be better for Sweetgreen. How do we innovate from a menu standpoint? How do we leverage platforms like we have with plates, et cetera, to really start to get into the consumer mindset for different occasions? I'd say that's one. The second is price-value perceptions. We've got a lot of work going against price-value perceptions, both from a menu architecture and a pricing standpoint, going into this big test in Q2 here. Also on a more personalized basis, how do we leverage our customer data through our loyalty program to not just drive those price-value perceptions and drive that value for the money?
How do we tell stories about the brand that help consumers understand that what they are paying for is different at Sweetgreen than it is at maybe other competitors out there? Our food standards, our quality, our made from scratch is just a totally different model and a totally different value proposition for the consumer. How we drive that behavior on a one-to-one basis. How do we leverage loyalty as a way to incentivize, disrupt frequency patterns, win back lapsed customers, and invite new customers into a more personalized experience with the brand?
I would say the third one is brand relevance, and that's where I get really excited, with a background in marketing, where the brand has an opportunity to get back to its roots of creating culture, creating new and exciting conversational moments around food and ingredients. We're bringing back summer, in about a week's time here, and seasonality of our ingredients is a huge pillar of the Sweetgreen brand. Our culinary credentials with collaborations with chefs, and thought partners, and I guess taste makers in the category. An opportunity to just really recruit that younger generation. I'm energized, and I feel like, to Jamie's point, we're early innings, early days in this transformation.
There's still so much more work to do, but those are the three things that I see as opportunity.
That's great. It sounds like it obviously, too. On the marketing side, you know, what do you view as the best avenues, you know, for how to get the brand out there and communicate the changes? You know, is it still gonna be social-led as well as loyalty? Are there other avenues you think the brand has opportunity to participate?
Yeah. Social is a huge opportunity for us, and we are still very early days in that. Wraps was the first campaign that we really architected to be social first. Partnering with influencers in a completely new way for Sweetgreen, where we really invited them in to tell the story with us. We invited them in to collaborate with us, and we were intentional about the influencers that we picked so that we could get a wide breadth of consumer communities out there. There's a huge opportunity for us to get back to more of that community engagement. I go back to our mission of connecting communities to real food, how do we do that on a very local level, how do we do that on a macro level?
Next year is our 20th anniversary as a brand, so that presents a huge opportunity for us to celebrate all of the things that we've done from an ingredient and a food quality standpoint. You know, you think about something with our Wraps platform, like the tortilla. Our tortilla only has four ingredients, which is actually bananas in our category. It's flour, salt, water, and olive oil. When we were developing the tortilla and when we were developing Wraps, the tortilla became the anchor point for us to really innovate around because we could not find a tortilla that was on the food service market that didn't have a bunch of the artificial gums and binders and all the things that you just don't want in your food.
Credit to our culinary and our supply chain team, they just pushed and pushed and pushed. When I think about what the brand can do and what the future of the brand is, we have, you know, created a whole new standard for tortillas in the category, and there's so much more that we can do on that.
That's great. Jamie, I wanted to also ask, you know, last week, big hire with Cindy Olson as the new Chief Strategy Officer. She's someone the investment community's familiar with, given her time at Chipotle and IR in strategy. I know you two work closely together. Can you talk about her vision, the vision for her role at Sweetgreen? Especially given it's a newly created role as well.
Yeah. We're very excited to have Cindy on board. If you think about our transformation plan, gosh, we're two quarters in, a long way to go, really, Cindy's gonna be looking at our long-term strategy and making sure we're sizing the opportunities and really making sure that our strategy is focused on the winning things. I think that's what you'll see from Cindy, is really making sure we're sizing all the opportunities and the strategy ahead and making sure that we're focused on the right things to win.
Great. We got about two minutes left. I'll probably just unfortunately end it with some boring modeling questions.
Love it.
Let's start first, you know, sale-leaseback, you know, helped fortify your balance sheet.
Yeah.
This year will still be free cash flow negative, though. I mean, what's the path to getting closer to free cash flow neutral?
I think right now it's really the transformation plan, we're really focused on growing that top line, right? All the things that Zip talked about with menu innovation, the price value architecture, that's really our number one thing to free cash flow, really also looking at our margins, all the things that we have underway there. Really, we're hoping to drive that top line.
Yep. Talk about the pricing lever as well. You know, is this something, you know, within your 2026 guidance for margins or EBITDA that you're considering contemplating, or is that excluded from guidance?
It's excluded from guidance because right now we want to make sure that we're meeting the consumer where they are, and that's why we're excited about the menu price architecture work. Really when we think about pricing, it's really that whole value we're getting to consumer, that experience, that hospitality, and then also that price point. Right now, when we're looking at our menu price architecture, that's going in test at the end of June. Like Zip said, we're gonna have the entry price in, but then there is some elasticity on some other items that we're gonna test, and then also that Create Your Own. If that tests okay, then I think you'll see a little bit of price there, but also some of those entry price in. The goal is to meet the consumer where they are and make sure we're getting those incremental transactions.
Okay. You know, you're expecting G&A dollars to decline in 2026 relative to 2025 from support center reductions, sells spice. Should we think of kind of 2026 as a new base that we should grow G&A off of, or do you expect additional efficiencies or reduction to take place as you look out to 2027, 2028, et cetera?
Yeah. I think you will see, we expect to lever that over time, so that you should see it going down over time.
Okay. All right.
There's a lot of focus on G&A. I would say this year, obviously we guided to the underlying support center around 13%, so I think as we grow, you'll see us lever that.
Okay. Very good.
Fixed costs, yeah.
Yeah.
Very good. Thank you. All right. With only seconds left, I want to thank Jamie, Zip, and Anthony for their time and insights today, and thank you for everyone as well.
Thanks.