I'm Peter Saleh, restaurant and food distribution analyst at BTIG. Joining me this morning is the team from Shake Shack to tell us more about the brand's journey to bring their delicious burgers, fries, shakes to every corner of the globe. Following the initial debut in New York City in 2004, the company has expanded to over 430 locations system-wide, including 285 in the U.S. and over 145 international locations. Despite all the pandemic-related challenges, including labor, construction, permitting delays, higher costs, the brand is on pace to operate about 80% more units versus in 2023 versus pre-pandemic. Please join me in welcoming Randy Garutti, Chief Executive Officer, Katherine Fogerty, Chief Financial Officer.
Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Welcome back in person to ICR. We're happy to be here with you. We just reported this morning a little pre-release, a really strong fourth quarter and a strong exit to the fourth quarter. You wanna know everything you need to know about Shake Shack, it's the fact that we're all here together, this time last year, we weren't. So much of our trends in our business, whether urban, suburban, everything we break up, are based on that. When we kick off, we always like to give a little bit of a texture of what feels different about Shake Shack. We're gonna play a little video here, give you some of the highlights of the year, whether it's food, Shack openings around the world, which we continue to grow globally quite a bit. We'll talk more about that.
Just the feeling that is the special thing that is Shake Shack. We'll watch this for a couple of minutes and get back at it.
Shake Shack has always created this mission of stand for something good. We're trying to create these incredible enlightening experiences for our teams. No matter where you start, it is us being on your side. That's what enlightened hospitality is about.
Holding my breath when I'm ready to go. I can fall right in when I'm ready to go. I found what I want and I know that we're on. I can go the distance, yeah, when I'm ready. Whoa, oh. Here we go now. Here we go now. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go now. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go now. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go now.
Shake Shack is turning up the heat.
Hot Ones is a viral sensation through YouTube.
This is Hot Ones and Shake Shack bringing the heat, teaming up to create four limited food items inspired by Hot Ones.
This is the spiciest item to date for Shake Shack. That's what I need under my Hall of Fame plaque. You know, like, those kinds of accolades.
They could sail to see the highest mountain. Harder love at deepest seas. No one's ever seen, no one's ever seen, ever seen a love like this. They could see the world with living wishes. Where it's once more than anything. No one's ever seen, no one's ever seen, ever seen a love like this. Nobody's ever seen it. Nobody's ever seen a love. Nobody's ever seen a love like this, a love like this. We have searched the whole world. For the world and all around it. Didn't know what we were looking for, till we found it. They could sail to see the highest mountain. Harder love at deepest seas. No one's ever seen, no one's ever seen, ever seen a love-
Needless to say, we've got a lot going on in 2022, and we've got a lot coming. I wanna take a step back just real quick, and as we think about what continues to differentiate Shake Shack from everybody else in what we're doing. We're trying to continue to do what other companies are unwilling and unable to do. Our brand has never been stronger, and you'll see this around the world. We'll share a little bit about what we're up to. We continue to feel like there's something about this Shake Shack brand that resonates globally in this country and everywhere we go. Our culture remains strong. Our people are what we focus on, and we'll talk more about that.
This leadership team, I've been here 2023 years, we've been able to combine an incredible team who's been with us for decades and some who have just joined, and a strength around that leadership table has built what we believe is the right team to continue to move this forward. Our menu is dynamic. You saw there some of the tasty things that we're doing. We got some that we have done. We've got even more coming. The growth ahead is robust. We just finished a year where we opened more Shacks than ever in total, we expect this coming year will be really strong. Much growth ahead, so much to do. Before we get into more of that, I'm gonna give it to Katie to give you some results of the strong fourth quarter and for the year.
Great. We had a really strong close to the year. Fourth quarter Shack-level operating profit margins exceeded our expectations, and we're really proud of the results that our teams put together here. We're gonna be going through more details when we report earnings on February 16th. Today, this morning, we updated our guidance for the fourth quarter. We expect Shack sales of $229.9 million, licensing revenue of $8.6 million, for total revenue of $238.5 million. We opened 35 new Shacks across our system in the quarter. This is the most we've ever opened up in a quarter, 22 of which were company operated and 13 were licensed. Our average weekly sales were strong at $76,000 and Same-Shack sales grew 5.1%.
We expect to generate Shack-level operating profit margins of approximately 19% of Shack sales. This is one of the strongest margin results that we've had post-COVID. It's something that we're really excited about. For the year, we opened 69 Shacks last year across our entire system. We grew our base by 19% to 436 Shacks. 36 were company-operated, and we exceeded our expectations in license with 33 openings. The total impact of the year was muted due to the backweighted nature of these openings, but these are really solid, great additions to our portfolio and will be really accretive through 2023. We reached $900 million in total revenues and $1.4 billion in system-wide sales.
We grew our Same-Shack sales by 7.8%, led by strong in-traffic, in-Shack traffic growth to benefit from recent menu price increases and recovery trends that we're seeing in urban markets. Our urban Same-Shack sales grew 14% year-over-year. We expect 2022 Shack-level operating profit margins to be about 17% sequentially above last year's level. We faced deep impacts earlier in the year from the impacts of Omicron, and we've been building up our recovery. We're really excited about the exit rate of the business here. Back to you, Randy.
Where are we focused? How are we gonna do it in 2023? This is our strategic plan, these five things. First, nothing matters but our team. We spent yesterday in Orlando with our leadership team going to a bunch of Shacks. We've got to continue to invest in this team. We're gonna focus more than ever on the guest experience in every way. Most of our gains this year came from people returning to the in-restaurant experience. Our digital is strong. People are coming back to restaurants. That benefits Shake Shack. You'll hear more about our targeted development strategy and how we intend to grow.
How we're gonna keep working on improving Shack margins and continuing our momentum that you've seen and you saw in the fourth quarter, getting back to strength this year and investing with discipline more than ever. We have a fortress strong balance sheet, tons of opportunity, we're gonna keep growing it. For our people, more than ever, we are working to improve the working experience. We know across the industry, across the world, it has never been harder to hire. I've been in this industry since I was 13 years old. Never seen a harder environment, but it is getting better. With our operators yesterday, even in Orlando, they all are starting to peak up and say, "It's a little bit better." Starting to have a lot more job recs, starting to hang on to people. Things are getting better.
We see that momentum continuing into 2023. As we look at the guest experience, there's so much that we've been doing. Hot Ones, some incredible LTOs. Coming forward, we're gonna launch in this quarter, kinda mid-first quarter, a new White Truffle menu. These are the things only Shake Shack can do. You're not gonna see this in any other fast casual or fast food restaurant. These are the things we can do. This is gonna drive ticket, it's gonna drive price, and it's gonna drive frequency of getting people back in the restaurants. We've got a lot of fun lineups of food this year. We keep evolving in the digital side, testing new things, doing day part expansion, different delivery fees, really leading into the digital expansion of our business, including continued rollout kiosk. When you see that, we've talked a lot about this.
We've got all but about 60 of our Shacks that need to convert, and those will get converted through this year. By the end of this year, nearly all Shacks will be on our kiosk strategy, which has the highest margins in our company, helps us optimize labor and continue to grow in the right way. You're seeing us do exclusive events. You saw them, some in the video. This is where you gotta continue to appreciate and understand what Shake Shack's doing. We're working with Michelin star chefs like Enrique Olvera. We're doing food events. We're starting a pickleball league. We're having fun in every way, in the way that Shake Shack can only do it. When we think about development, here's how we're gonna grow. You know, you'll go back to our IPO and the story there.
We have more than 430 Shacks globally right now, 32 states, 16 countries, and we feel like we're just getting started. The key here is our format strategy and the many different ways we continue to build Shacks that we think are continuing to grow our total addressable market. Core Shacks, this is what you kinda know and love about Shake Shack. We've done this hundreds of times. This will lead our development strategy. These Shacks have strong AUVs. We generally build them for around $2 million. Some of those have been up this year. We see great opportunity to keep doing those in places all around the country and all around the world. This will be the lead. Second, we're doing more and more small formats.
This allows us to size down, to go a little bit smaller, to spend a little bit less, especially in this environment where we're spending more in places like drive-through. You'll see us do this in various food courts, different urban centers and some suburban. This allows us to go deeper in certain markets, shrink the format a little bit and still do a solid business. We really like this, you'll see more of these in Shack coming all around the country. Drive-through. Talk a lot about it. Let's talk more about it. We've got 11 open. We still feel like we are learning at a massive clip day in and day out. Okay? Most of that 11 just opened in the fourth quarter. Okay? Really strong starts. We feel great about it. What are we after? We're gonna share some new numbers today.
Here's what we're after. We believe that we're targeting an over $4 million AUV. There have been many of the current drive-throughs who are run rating higher than that. Some are below. We're learning, what is it about that site, about the layout, about that type of drive-through that's gonna drive that? They're more expensive than our core formats. We're gonna spend kinda mid $2 million on average here. Some will be in the low $2 million, some will be $3 million, some might even be more if we decide to take a site as is that we think is great. If you look at the history of Shake Shack, this is no different than how we've ever done things. Some of the best sites we've ever had will be there for decades to come because we chose to invest.
That's how we're thinking about drive-thru. This initial CapEx investment is optimized for learning. There will also be some build-to-suit opportunities where we can spend less than this and trade a little bit of a higher occupancy for a lower build-out cost to overall balance our CapEx. That's how we're thinking. We believe this operating profit should be as good or better as we look ahead. We've got a little case study here for you because we're in Orlando, and I'm sure you all are gonna run out and check this out just a couple miles away. This is why we're doing drive-thru small format in our strategy. Right here in Orlando, we just opened earlier this year Vineland Pointe. This is a drive-thru, okay? It's already running about 86K AWS. I think it's gonna continue to grow and be stronger.
That's a $4.5 million plus headed towards a $5 million Shack, okay? We're running about a 20% Shack-level op profit. Just less than a mile away, we did a small format in a food court in the Orlando Premium Outlets, doing nearly $4 million at a 35% Shack-level op profit. We're getting $8.5 million of Shack burger sales in less than one mile. We think there's a lot of places around this country and this world that we can do this. This is why you're gonna see different formats coming out of Shake Shack. This drive-thru will allow us to capture different areas we may not have gone before or additional sales that we can do it. If you look at it, at the drive-thru, about half our guests are local.
Just less than a mile away, less than 15% of our guests are local. You're seeing how we're gonna capture the total addressable market and continue to grow this opportunity. These are just a few of the data pieces that we're so psyched about. This year, we'll do probably 10-15 more drive-thrus, and we think that this will be a critical part of our growth moving forward. Go check out one of our drive-thrus. It is a distinct, exciting experience that we're thrilled to grow. On the license side, I think this is one of the most undervalued, understood, and underappreciated pieces of our business. We think we'll do another 25-30 Shacks this year. We did 33 this year. We have new markets opening. We're gonna open in the Bahamas. We're gonna open in Thailand.
Next year, we intend to open in Malaysia and more. When you look at this, just take a look for a second, okay? This is a city that most people in this room have probably never heard of, Suzhou, second-tier city in China, near Shanghai. That's the line at Shake Shack in China this year. For all you hear about China, we have 32 Shacks in China, mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau. This has been one of the most rapidly growing pieces of our business. Yes, it has been massively impacted by everything you read about China, but it's gonna be a fantastic piece of our business. Much so that last week, we opened a restaurant in Wuhan. That is Shake Shack in Wuhan. Nobody in this room ever heard of Wuhan till three years ago. There's 14 million people that live in Wuhan.
There's a Shake Shack there that looks like that. The global opportunity and our brand and the way it hits around the world, wherever we go, is distinct, special, and a huge opportunity. This allows us to look like a franchise company without feeling like it here at home. It is a great part of our business that is asset light, allows us to reap strong cash returns. We will keep doing it, driving our global brand around the world. In Asia, we continue to grow. Opened four Shacks in Korea this year, another one in Japan. Much more to go. Our business in Singapore, the Philippines, and elsewhere is strong. Growth ahead, Thailand next year. As I said, we will continue to look at new markets. We're in conversations around the globe.
We actively say no 5x a day to lots of markets and lots of people who want to open Shake Shack. There's a right pace to do this, and we're doing real well. In airports, we've got 23 Shacks in airports. Obviously, they've had a strong comeback this year, and we expect that business to continue to grow. Lots of opportunities in airports. This was our first Shack ever with a bar. Go through the Denver Airport, and we're serving margaritas at the Shack. This has taught us a lot about whether we should consider more alcohol at Shacks in licensed environments or even ones that we own someday. Beer and wine's always been a fun part of Shake Shack. In roadside, we've now got four open in roadside travel plaza.
Every time you pull over to get gas on the New Jersey Turnpike or the New York Thruway or you name it, you're disappointed in what the offer is. Imagine you roll up and there's a Shake Shack there. Watch it happen. We're super excited about this. We expect to do three to five more of these this year. We've got a deal for launching more in upstate New York. We're super excited about roadside and all the different ways we can grow. We're even looking at different license opportunities like if anyone's been to the Atlantis in Bahamas, a premier huge resort, we're gonna open a Shack there later this year.
Super excited about that. It also opens up this way of thinking of could we in the future consider premier resort property opportunities that would allow us to have a licensed Shack in an area where we have a captive audience like here. We think this is a good, great part of our business. With that, I'll leave it over to Katie to talk a little bit more about improving our margins as we go.
Great. Thanks. Shake Shack has been a very profitable company since the start. These last few years have really hit us hard in terms of sales and inflationary pressures. What are we doing about it? We talk about SLOP a lot here at Shake Shack, I actually think it's a really great way to break down where our target opportunities are. What are our opportunities here to drive margin improvement? One, sales growth. Two, labor strategies and efficiencies, just getting better with the labor that we have in the Shacks. Three, improving our off-premise profitability. This is a new part of our business, and we've been making improvements to increase the profitability there. Four, strategic menu pricing and supply chain initiatives. This is not an exhaustive list.
We have, you know, projects underway for all items on the P&L, including R&M and utilities. As we kind of contextualize the biggest opportunities we see here, I think SLOP is a really great way to look at it. On sales, number one, our focus is driving sales broadly, but we're specifically focused on driving sales into our own channels, which have a higher margin. Number two, on labor, we're addressing industry-wide staffing pressures that we're facing. It's impacted our sales. It's impacted our profitability. You know, working on retention to get more efficient and to have greater hours of operation and be more consistent on that side. Number three, we're continuing to make improvements on our off-premise profitability. We're driving more traffic into our own channels, which have a higher margin.
We've also passed along some of the added expenses to our third-party guests. Last, you know, we've really done a big look at packaging and, you know, coming up with ways to be more efficient, use less packaging, and reduce the cost of packaging that we have in our to-go orders. Last, we all know commodity inflationary pressures have been material. We've taken some, but not all of the price that we need to offset these pressures. We're continuing to leverage our pricing strategy and supply chain initiatives to address all of these pressures. Our last final strategic pillar here. Starting with our balance sheet, we have nearly $300 million in cash and marketable securities.
We're gonna continue to invest that in our business, in development, in digital, in things that are gonna help grow the long-term business case here. We're being disciplined in how we invest this. This is G&A. This is CapEx. We consider all investments here. It's de-development, digital, and all others. Just, you know, starting with development initiatives. At the time of the IPO, we gave some development guardrails and targets. We've historically generated very strong returns, but as we've discussed, COVID and inflationary pressures have had an impact. The good news here, though, is that our AUVs are tracking well ahead of our long-term thinking. We know as a company we need to continue to rebuild our profitability, and we really believe in the plan that we have in place. Third, build costs have been elevated.
Our 2022 class was up about 15% year-over-year. This is due to inflationary pressures and the high initial cost as we started to build drive-throughs. We're expecting build costs for 2023 to be roughly similar with 2022. We're gonna be building more drive-throughs this in 2023 than we did in 2022, but we're working on ways to be more efficient in other formats as well. Last, you know, as we've discussed, our cash-on-cash returns are tracking at or just below our long-term targets of 30%-33%. We believe that we have the right plan in place to improve our profitability, streamline our build costs, and continue to target 30%+ returns for our development. On digital.
We're taking a disciplined approach here to digital and kiosk investments as well. We've grown our digital and kiosk sales by 330% since 2019. It's now half of our sales, over half of our sales. This year you're gonna see us leverage our infrastructure investments and refine, optimize, and personalize our app, web, and kiosk channels. We're focused here on driving guest acquisition, frequency, conversion, and retention. Finally on financials. This morning, we gave you an update on financials and guidance. The summary that we posted here, this is for the fourth quarter in 2022, we've already kinda talked about it. Let's focus on 2023. This is initial guidance today.
We're not assuming any new shifts in the macro environment or any COVID disruptions in our guidance. We're gonna be updating guidance as necessary in the future. For the first quarter of 2023, we expect Shack sales of $227 million-$235 million, license revenue of $7.5 million-$8 million. This is reflecting a lot of the disruptions that we're seeing in Asia, in China in particular. There's kind of a wider band of uncertainty there. We expect Same-Shack sales to grow mid to high single digits year-over-year. Shack-level operating profit margins to expand year-over-year to 16%-18%. Just keep in mind we've historically seen first quarter margins come in sequentially from the fourth quarter.
The 2022 Shacks that we opened, a lot of them happened very late in the fourth quarter. There's probably gonna be a little bit of margin overhang there in the first quarter as well. We expect to open six-eight domestic company-operated Shacks and five-eight licensed Shacks in the quarter. Heading over to 2023, we expect to open approximately 65- 70 Shacks in total, 40 of which about will be domestic company-operated Shacks, 25- 30 are gonna be licensed. We expect G&A to be between $125 million and $130 million, depreciation of $86 million-$91 million, and pre-opening expenses of $18 million-$20 million. There we go.
With that, we'll kind of wrap it up in our last minutes here. How are we feeling? I think when you look at the fourth quarter, all the momentum's in the right direction, and you look at the kind of trends of some of the return to travel, work, events, things like this are all the right things for Shake Shack's momentum. Look, there's gonna be some structural changes. I live in New York City. We all know, most of you, many of you probably do, there's a lot of changes. It feels pretty good in New York City and a lot of urban centers right now. Our sales continue to track, continue to return. We're gonna be aggressive as we go. We're gonna build around 40 Shacks this year. Lots of different formats, as I talked about, a ton of different learnings.
We're gonna be around the world. I think we're gonna be one of the highest concept, if not the highest, in the industry in percentage unit growth. It's a huge opportunity. All of our peers that you might be looking at today probably have thousands of restaurants compared to our hundreds. The opportunity is there. It is big. It is vast. We got the right team in place to go get it. We're excited. Hopefully, we'll see some of y'all throughout the day and appreciate all your time today. Thank you. Have a good conference.