I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Michelle Shen, IR Director. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Ashley. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining Yum China's second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. On today's call are our CEO, Ms. Joey Wat, and our CFO, Mr. Andy Yeung. Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that our earnings call and investor materials contain forward-looking statements which are subject to future events and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements should be considered in conjunction with the cautionary statements in our earnings release and the risk factors included in our filings with the SEC. This call also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures. You should carefully consider the comparable GAAP measures. Reconciliation of non-GAAP and GAAP measures is included in our earnings release. You can find a webcast of this call and a PowerPoint presentation on our IR website.
Now, I would like to turn the call over to Joey Wat, CEO of Yum China. Joey?
Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm delighted to report outstanding performance in the second quarter, both top line and bottom line. Our results are a testament to our resilient and anti-fragile business, which allow us to capture upside in good times and protect downside in bad times. From the back office to the front line, our teams are doing a great job. During the quarter, we reached new heights on multiple fronts. First, sales performance. Total revenue of $2.65 billion set a new record for second quarter, especially given the exchange rate. System sales grew 32%, and same-store sales grew 15% year-over-year. We observed strong demand around holidays. Trading for the May 1st Labor Day holidays was vibrant. However, demand actually softened afterwards, with a dip in customer traffic.
We adjust limberly with attractive campaigns and regained sales momentum in June. On June 1st, Children's Day, we hit a record 8.5 million transactions. That's equivalent to a transaction every minute in every location across our 13,000+ store portfolio in a single day. Thanks to our amazing operation team, robust end-to-end digitization and agile supply chain, we flexibly handled the spike in demand during campaign without compromising quality and customer service. The results demonstrate our brand equity and ability to connect with customers with delicious, innovative food and compelling value for money. Second, store expansion. In the first six months this year, we opened 665 net new stores, setting a new record. We continue to see vast opportunities across all regions and city tiers in China. KFC continued its aggressive expansion, hitting 9,500 stores in over 1,900 cities.
Notably, Shanghai became our first city to reach 500 KFC stores. Our 500th store is in the Shanghai Library, Shanghai Tusuban. As part of our Book Kingdom program for kids, it features a dedicated reading area to promote the love of reading to children. It's also one of our 36 Angel Restaurants of KFC China. The restaurant offers a warm, inclusive space for employees and customers with special needs. This showcases our commitment to positive social impact in the communities we serve. Pizza Hut opened a record 169 net new stores in the first half of the year, supported by strengthened fundamentals through the revitalization program. Healthy new store payback give us confidence for accelerated growth. In addition, Pizza Hut reached 3,000 stores in China, a milestone that few casual dining restaurant chains can claim.
Our 3,000th store is in Qinhuangdao, a popular holiday destination in northern China. This resort-themed store boasts a beautiful patio with stunning sea view. In addition, it was built with eco-friendly materials and an intelligent energy management, management system. Third is profitability. Our operating profit for the first half of 2023 has already exceeded the entire year of 2022. This achievement reflects our ability to capture sales and rebase our cost structure. Our rent, first half was below 9%. This is the best ratio, ratio in the past decade. Let's talk about KFC. Our value platform generated amazing sales results. First, Crazy Thursday, the famous Crazy Thursday, continue to be a tremendous draw, driving 50% more sales than other weekdays. Second, Sunday Buy More Save More energized Sunday sales. We captured a home consumption with our juicy whole chicken, meat chicken.
We sold 22 million of this product in the first half, and more than double it sales year-over-year. Third, our weekday value combos, OK Sanjian Tao , are gaining popularity. We added a new sizzling roasted chicken fried burger to enrich our entry price point offerings. For just $3, customers love the new weekday value combos. Delicious and innovative food continues to delight our customer at KFC. In the second quarter, we introduced the Quesadilla, a creative twist on pizza that utilized our existing ingredients. We used the wrap from our Dragon Twister, Lao Beijing Ji Rou Juan, to make the thin crust and popcorn chicken, Jī Mǐ Huā, as the topping. This fun, innovative, limited time offer generated strong sales. We see great potential for more Quesadilla variations in the future. KCOFFEE sales grew 50% with 47 million cups sold in the second quarter.
Our iced sparkling Americano with zesty lemon is the perfect drink to beat the summer heat. We use our soda fountain machine to make this sparkling drink without additional investment in the store. It has become KCOFFEE's best ever limited time offering. Let's talk about our marketing campaigns. Connecting with families and children is an important part of strengthening our brand affinity. Around Children's Day, we partnered with Sanrio and sold nearly $3 million meal sets with adorable toys such as Hello Kitty. This campaign contribute to our overwhelming success on Children's Day. Of course, these popular toys also work very well for adults as well. Pizza Hut. Let's move to Pizza Hut. We continuously innovate to offer better products at great value. Our new launch in May has been a big success and strong sales driver.
Over half of the menu items are either new or upgraded from a year ago. Pizza is our biggest category, accounting for over 1/3 of sales. We continue to fortify our pizza expert image by upgrading existing products and introducing new toppings. Apart from our signature Super Supreme, Tao Ji, Zi Zhuan, and Durian, Liu Lian pizzas, we introduced new pizzas like Bolognese pizza with beef, it's the Rou Jia Mo pizza. It's a familiar taste because of spaghetti, and it has become a customer favorite, especially among children. Of course, we use quite a bit existing ingredients to simplify the store operation and to keep the ingredients fresh as well. In addition, many customers are trading up to stuffed crust pizza, Juǎn Biān pizza, which accounts for nearly 40% pizza sales.
Most recently, we launched pineapple and cream stuffed crust, Nǎi Xiāng Bōluó Juǎn Biān, to complement our other stuffed crust choices of cheese and sausage. Pizza Hut has been sharpening its value proposition and customer engagement. Our value platform, Screaming Wednesday, successfully drove sales and traffic growth. Every Wednesday, we offer different meal choices from pizza, steak, rice, and pasta to appetizers at attractive price of $3-$5. There are choices for one-person meals and for social gatherings. We continue our collaboration with Genshin Impact, Genshin, for the second year. This campaign significantly boost sales and attract many young customers. We sold more than 2 million meal sets with themed accessories, tripling last year's numbers. This wildly popular campaign helped us recruit over 1 million new members. Lavazza. Let's switch gears to Lavazza. Lavazza continues to make good strides forward.
In July, we crossed the 100 store milestone. In addition to the coffee shop business, we sell Lavazza coffee beans and capsules to premium hotels, restaurants, and other channels. Recently, Lavazza also start supplying coffee beans to Pizza Hut to upgrade the coffee at Pizza Hut. I'm happy with the progress we have made and excited about the growth opportunity. Digital. On to digital. Our digital ecosystem plays a crucial role in recruiting and engaging members, driving their activities, and unlocking sales performance and potential for us. Our loyalty programs now exceed 445 million members. Member sales increased to 66%, setting a new record. Our super app had a major update earlier this year, offering our customers a better digital experience. We introduced interesting member exclusive perks to tickle our customers, such as app exclusive new product pre-sales and lucky draws utilizing member points.
In addition, we have been working with third-party online platform to expand our reach. For example, prepaid discount vouchers, Yifuquan, have been gaining popularity on short video platforms. By offering geographically specific deals, we effectively attract new members and increase spending of existing customers. Our end-to-end digitization unleashed great potential of our restaurant general manager, RGM. Our store management team sharing initiative, it is progressing well at KFC and Pizza Hut. Select RGM, for the first time in our history, can now manage multiple stores. Our AI-enabled systems have streamlined administrative work to help relieve our RGMs of repetitive tasks. By further integrating our store management system, we enhance the visibility of store operations and cross data, cross-store data analytics. These digital tools empower our RGM to manage multiple stores more effectively while upholding operating standards.
This will be a driver for future store cost management, and also address our bottleneck of new store openings. We are looking for more progress going forward. Summer peak season. As we speak, we have entered our summer peak trading season. We are ready to capture summer holiday traffic with eye-catching menu items backed up by a rock-solid operation. At KFC, we have brought back our crowd-pleasing fried chicken taco with a new ingredient, bullfrog, Niuwa taco. It does not translate well, but trust us, it's a delicacy for our customer in China. At Pizza Hut, we have extended our popular durian pizzas with a new product, durian coconut lava pizza, Baojiang durian pizza. To handle increased demand in the summer peak season, we are ramping up crew resources, securing supplies, and staying vigilant with multiple scenario planning.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Andy.
Thank you, Joey. Hello, everyone. Let me now share with you our second quarter performance. I'm delighted to report a robust performance in the second quarter. We achieved record revenues of $2.65 billion, representing 25% year-over-year growth. Operating profit of $257 million also reached a record level, more than tripling that of the prior year. We accelerated new store openings. We opened 542 new stores, resulting in net new store growth of 422, setting a new second quarter record. Even though same-store sales remained below 2019 levels, we saw a 25% growth in revenues and 26% growth in operating profit in the second quarter compared to the pre-pandemic levels in 2019. We accomplished all this while operating in a challenging and volatile environment.
An uptick of COVID infections started in late April. Consumers continued to be value conscious. Sales materially weakened after the May 1st holiday. Leveraging our multiple scenario planning, we swiftly responded by launching attractive offers to drive sales. Our sales subsequently improved in June. To provide more context, in the second quarter last year, multiple cities were under lockdown. We are lapping last year of stringent measures and temporary relief. With that, let's go through the financials. Foreign exchange had a negative impact of approximately 6% in the quarter. Second quarter total revenue were $2.65 billion in reported currency, a 25% year-over-year increase. In constant currency, total revenue grew 32%. System sales increased 32% year-over-year in constant currency. The strong growth was mainly from same-store sales growth of 15%.
The remaining growth can be roughly split equally between new unit contribution and the lapping of last year's temporary closures. Dine-in sales rebounded significantly year-over-year, while delivery continued to grow. By brand, KFC same-store sales grew 15% year-over-year. Same-store traffic grew 21%, ticket average decreased 5%. It was driven by successful traffic-driving promotions, the lapping of large community purchasing orders, and the decrease in delivery mix. Delivery has higher ticket average than dine-in. Pizza Hut same-store sales grew 13% year-over-year. Same-store traffic grew 27%, ticket average decreased 11%. It was driven by successful promotional activities and the lapping of community purchasing orders. Lower mix of delivery, which has a lower ticket average than dine-in at Pizza Hut, partially offset the ticket average decrease. Restaurant margin was 16.1%, 400 basis points higher than the prior year.
Occupancy and order improved significantly year-over-year. This was primarily due to operating leverage derived from higher sales and ongoing benefit of cost structure rebasing efforts. These were partially offset by lapping last year's austerity measures, increased promotional activities, and wage inflation. Let me now go through the key items. Cost of sales was 30.7%, 20 basis points lower than the prior year. We kept our cost sales, our cost of sales low, despite increased promotional activities to drive traffic. Our supply chain team's hard work and innovative use of affordable ingredients contributed to the favorable commodity pricing. Cost of labor was 26.4%, 70 basis points lower than the prior year. This was driven by operating leverage from sales growth, lower rider costs due to lower delivery sales mix, and benefit from store management's sharing initiatives.
This more than offset wage inflation, the lapping of austerity measures, and temporary relief last year. Occupancy and order was 26.8%, 310 basis points lower than the prior year. Rental expense and depreciation improved year-over-year. Operating leverage from higher sales, store portfolio optimization, and more favorable new store rental terms, all contributed to the improvement. This was offset by lapping austerity measures and higher rental relief last year. G&A expenses increased 15% year-over-year in constant currency, mainly from high-performance-based incentive accrual and mere increases. Operating profit was $257 million, more than triple year-over-year. Our effective tax rate was 24.7%. We continue to expect our full year effective tax rate to be around 30%. Net income was $197 million, increasing 138% in reported currency.
Diluted EPS was $0.47, increasing 135% in reported currency. We generated $417 million in operating cash flow and $264 million in free cash flow. We returned $160 million to shareholders in cash dividends and share repurchases. At the end of the second quarter, we had around $3 billion in cash and short-term investments, and another $1.2 billion in long-term bank deposits and notes to benefit from better interest rates. Now, let's turn to our outlook for the third quarter. Driving sales remain our top priority. As Joey mentioned earlier, we are stepping up promotional activities and have planned attractive offers with great food at compelling values. We are also lining up exciting marketing campaigns and resources to support those initiatives to capture peak summer holiday sales.
In term of store openings, with healthy store economics and a robust store pipeline, we are confident to achieve 1,100-1,300 net new stores in the full year. Our team has put tremendous effort into developing multiple store formats, lowering CapEx, and securing more favorable lease terms. We opened 655 net new stores in the first half of 2023. Our new stores have maintained a healthy payback of two years for KFC and three years for Pizza Hut. This give us confidence to expand across different city tiers and regions. Regarding margins, our store network expansion and our cost structure rebasing efforts over the past few years, position us well to capture both sales and drive operational leverage since the reopening.
With 40% of our current store open after 2019, we are opening an average of one new store every five hours. Our store portfolio is well suited to operating efficiently in the evolving market conditions. We expect our efforts on efficiency improvement and cost structure rebasing to continue to benefit profitably in the long term. When we look at last year's record third quarter restaurant margin, set a relatively high benchmark due to our sales-boosting measures and $30 million of temporary relief in the prior year. We also expect some more hiring to normalize and wage inflation of low to mid-single digits in the second half. Now, despite macro uncertainty and volatilities in the near term, our multiple scenario planning capabilities and agility position us well to capture opportunities in good times and manage the downsides in bad times.
We continue to focus on driving sales, improving operational efficiency, and investing in digital and supply chain for long-term growth. Before I conclude, I would like to highlight our upcoming Yum China Investor Day, to be held in September in Xi'an, China. Joey, myself, along with our leadership team, including KFC and Pizza Hut brand managers, will share updates on our strategic priorities. We have also planned food tasting during visit to our restaurants, logistics center, and digital center. Through this event, investors and analysts can gain firsthand insights into the market and our business, so we look forward to hosting you in Xi'an. With that, I will pass you back to Michelle. Michelle?
Thank you, Andy. If you are interested in attending our Investor Day in person, please reach out to the investor relations team. Now, we will open the call for questions. In order to give more people the chance to ask questions, please limit your questions to one at a time. Ashley, please start the Q&A.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Michelle Cheng with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, Joey, Andy, congrats again for the very strong results. My question is about the promotion and the competition. As you mentioned, the market is still very promotional, and also we hear some smaller players are actually coming back. So on the one side, can you discuss or share with us your observation on the competition side? And more specifically on the margin, we still see the food cost margin managed pretty well. And particularly, can you talk about Pizza Hut? Since we have been working on this value reposition for many years, but it looks like in this quarter, the food cost control is pretty decent.
Can you also share with us how should we think about this pricing strategy and also further savings on the food cost? Thank you.
Michelle, thank you. I'll talk about the promotion competition, and Andy will handle the margin question. Customers are very, are very value-conscious for sure, but at the same time, it's not enough if we just focus on promotion. It has to be promotion, fun promotion, and good food. Our focus is to focus on few very effective promotion platform. What are the famous one? Crazy Thursday is very, very fun. It's user-generated content these days. Of course, the food there is good, so we have some new food like spring roll. Not only normal spring roll, but skinny spring roll. When the spring roll are smaller, they actually taste better. You can try it with our KFC spring roll on Crazy Thursday. Then Pizza Hut is focusing on Screaming Wednesday.
Again, you know, very powerful message, very simple message, but with great food and great offer, in, from steak to pizza. Taco Bell focus on Taco Tuesday. Not only just random promotion, but very focused promotion, and we keep doing it again and again, and again. It takes time to build, to have the effect, because little do people remember, Crazy Thursday start from back to 2018. By now is a very familiar mechanism, and that worked beautifully. Of course, we continue to build new promotional platform. KFC, the new one will be Buy More, Save More on Sunday, and that has a clear product focus called the Whole Chicken. During normal times, the chicken sell for $39, but on Sunday weekend, it sell for $29. It's not only promotion, but great food.
I think what people don't also necessarily correlate, how we differentiate from our competitors in driving this promotion. We have the unique advantage of having our own very effective, powerful, agile, and nimble supply chain. Because without the supply chain capability to source, to innovate, and to deliver all these very affordable ingredients, it's almost impossible to support this kind of promotion on a sustainable basis. Last but not least, operation team. J une 1st, Children's Day, we achieved 8.5 million transaction a day. That's huge number of transaction! The fact that our operation team can handle that is amazing.
Well, for people who are running the restaurant in operation, we would be able to appreciate how difficult it is to be able to handle the peak and the spike. The IT system, it did not go down. We can continue to push our system in terms of the stability and efficiency. That all come together. It's not just marketing promotion, it's the pricing, it's the digital, it's the operation. While many competitors can probably replicate the marketing campaign, but the operation, the suppression digital, these are the real top core capability, very difficult to replicate. I'll pause here and move on to margin question.
Okay, thanks, Joey. In the same quarter, improvement in term margins, I think obviously, the number one driver is, you know, the operational leverage from higher sales. Also, if you look at, you know, the overall margin improvement, we continue to benefit, you know, from our portfolio optimizations over the past few years. As I mentioned earlier, you know, if you look at our portfolio, currently, you know, 40% of our store are open after 2019, and they're very much geared to our, you know, working efficiently in our current operating environment. Also, we continue to benefit from the cost structure rebasing that we initiated over the past couple years. Those are key driver for margin improvement.
I think, you know, we position us well for the long term to operate efficiently. Certainly, if you look at, you know, particularly on, you know, cost of sales, I think, overall, if you look at commodity price, pricing in the, in the same quarter, was, you know, slightly favorable, with, you know, overall commodity inflations being favorable. You know, the chicken price, chicken price, in the second quarter, actually, we continue to experience an upward trend. You know, given, you know, the stock price and also our contract, we expect that, you know, to probably extend into the third quarter. I think, for both brands, you know, they managed their fill outs very well over the past two years.
Generally, we're balancing to expand, you know, the, you know, the, the pricing range so that we can, you know, continue to expand our addressable customer base. Balancing, you know, commodity price and also the value proposition to consumer. We generally try to return some of the savings to our consumer. So if you look at, you know, cost of labor, you know, it also improves 70 basis points in the quarter. Again, like, it's driven by the cost structure rebasing that we have. Then also, as Joey mentioned, we have the store management sharing initiative that continue to help us run our store efficiently. That's more than offset, you know, the, the low single digit labor inflation in the second quarter we experienced.
Then, you know, if you look at O&O, as mentioned, you know, biggest improvement over the past few years, we continue to structurally change, you know, our rental contract. Not only we have more variable components of that rental term, but also overall lease, our rent as a % of revenue at, you know, decade levels, like best in the decade. So I think we're structurally changing from benefit and also in health depreciations, and also as we work down, you know, our capital investment per store, that's also very sustainable, I think. Then, you know, look at, you know, our initiative in energy savings and also, you know, also we benefit from our investment in technology so that our AMP also is seeing some leverage.
So all that contributes to O&O improvement. I think that's how we look at it. In term of like the outlook, I think, as we mentioned, commodity prices generally are favorable, with exception perhaps with chicken price in next quarter. In term of labor cost inflations, I think we're looking at low to mid single-digit, you know, in the second half this year. Again, o ne thing I want to, again, emphasize a little bit, is that last year was a special situation. Obviously, we received about $30 million of one-time relief due to the COVID situation last year. Then we also have some auxiliary programs. That's it. Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Brian Bittner with Oppenheimer and Company. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I just wanna ask about the sales trends. Andy, you mentioned that May saw a step back in demand trends, then you regained momentum in June. Can you just add some context here? Could you perhaps talk about where your underlying trends are versus 2019, or anything else regarding, you know, perhaps the consumer environment in China that you're witnessing right now, just to help us all get on the same page with, with modeling sales moving forward?
Okay. Brian, thanks for the question. I think, you know, as we mentioned, you know, we are pretty early still in the, you know, reopening. You know, this is the second quarter since the reopening. We're going to probably going to continue to see some volatility and, and, and whatnot. Obviously, in the decline in or, like, the softening in demand in May had to do with a couple things, right? One, we've seen an uptick, you know, in COVID, you know, at the end of April, starting at the end of April. The other one is obviously, you perhaps seen the, you know, some of the economic data, and it indicated that, you know, the macroeconomic situation is still, you know, markedly challenging.
So consumer, you know, obviously have experienced three-year COVID and would likely want to take some time to regain, you know, some of the confidence. That's what we're seeing right now. A s we mentioned, you know, we have multiple scenario planning, as always. We take quick actions as we see, you know, the change in consumer behavior. We have very strong product offering and successful campaign, and that, you know, as we mentioned, revitalize, you know, the sales momentum in June.
I think, again, you know, like, I think in the near term, it's gonna be some volatility and uncertainty, but I think we are well positioned, to capture, you know, the opportunity when it will emerge, and then able to respond quickly, should, you know, the, situation become a little bit more challenging.
Brian, thank you. Let me, let me give an overall picture of the business that might help understand the sales trend right now as well. Overall, I would strongly suggest our investor and analyst to really look at the business with a fresh pair of eyes, because the business is a rather different business now compared to pre-pandemic. We might not be too obvious enough, but 40% of our current store did not exist before pandemic. The same store sales really only apply to a bit more than half of our business now, because 40% of the stores are new.
Even for the portfolio that exists before 2019, the business is very different, too, because the management team has taken the opportunity in the last few years pandemic to prune the portfolio, particularly those stores with less desirable economics. Overall, the portfolio is better. Even for the stores that have survived the pruning process, you bet the economics are much better with lower rent, et cetera, et cetera. The big historical problem that we use the pandemic time to sort them out as much as possible. On top of that, we have rebased the cost structure. We have completed the end-to-end digitization and also digitalization of the entire supply chain process.
The business is more resilient, more nimble, and with better cost structure for the entire company, but also for the store economic for each store. It's very different. The system sales growth is quite good, and same as the profitability, and that's what we wanted. Going forward, in terms of outlook, Andy talked about Q2, Q3. Obviously, we're gonna focus on sales. We are going to focus on growth. We're gonna focus on opening more stores and then continue to focus on delicious and innovative food that really work for customers. In the longer term, the macro, in the short term, you know, it's hard to predict from month to month basis.
you know, China GDP has slowed down, to, to growing probably at twice as fast as other developed countries. It's not too bad, isn't it? Then it's an amazing big market, and we still serve 2 billion customers a year. Certain regional growth, like in the middle of China, is very nice. The growth is very good, and there, therefore, we are able to open stores, very fast, particularly in these, what we call, new breadbasket. What does that mean to KFC Pizza Hut? KFC, you can see from our, speed of store opening in the last few years, we are opening a lot of stores, and we are reaching 9,500 stores in China alone for KFC, and Shanghai alone is 500 cities.
We are not only just opening stores in lower tier cities, we are actually opening stores in all tier cities. We are utilizing franchising. We are utilizing different channels, such as some channels are newly found opportunities, such as university and hospital and high-speed railway service station. It works. Pizza Hut is really ready to accelerate the growth after a few years of turnaround. The margin is good, and it surpassed 3,000 store mark for casual dining, which is quite difficult to get to in terms of scale, in terms of casual dining. You know, the smaller brands are also developing and, you know, Lavazza just reached a 100 store milestone and also start to sell coffee beans in retail.
Going forward, we are committed, we are optimistic, and therefore you can see our net new store opening this year is still at the, at the, at the rate that is record for our business in the last 36 years. Thank you, Brian.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Vicky Liu with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Joey and Andy. My question is on margin as well. If we combine first half this year with second half last year, and actually, it would imply a full quarter margin of a close to 17% at the restaurant level. I remember many years ago, we talk about the long-term normalized restaurant margin of 70%. I know we no longer talk about long-term market, but long-term target, the market usually will still look at the 17% as a reference. Now we are almost there. How much upside are we going to see from here? In particular, as Andy mentioned previously, starting from Q3, we are going to see pretty high lapping for margins.
Is it fair to say that from now on, the low-hanging fruits from cost rebasing is no longer that strong, and the majority of the margin expansion will come from the same-store sales or sales leveraging in the future? Thank you.
Thanks, Liu. Thank you for the questions. It's a wonderful questions, you know. It's also wonderful questions, as you mentioned, the issue to deal with, right? After the reopening, after all this restructuring, cost structure rebasing that we have performed over the past few years, after, you know, as we mentioned, you know, our portfolio change, entirely different, almost entirely different, store portfolio. We are now, you know, at obviously, at multi-year, right now, I think five, at least five years, if not all-time high in terms of margin. We're operating very efficiently at this point. You know, as mentioned, even, you know, despite the near term, you know, volatility and challenges in the market, we are operating very efficiently.
I think, you know, a couple things that I want to mention. You know, if you look at the cost structure rebasing, as we mentioned, those are very fundamental change in terms of how we operate our, our, our, our restaurant, and also, you know, the cost structure itself. Now, in term of, you know, 17%, and margin, I'm glad that, you know, when you mentioned, you know, over the past four quarter, you average out, it's more there. We don't give guidance on, on margins, but, we just do it sometimes, right? We did mention it over the past, you know, year or two, but, you know, I think we continue to focus on, on doing that.
We're pretty confident, in term of, you know, our cost, you know, structural rebasing with that. We're pretty confident that, you know, our new per- new store performance, our new store economics, at multi-year, I guess, you know, the offering and investing multi-year, level. That give us confidence in how our portfolio moving forward as we open more store. We look forward to, to that, you know, improvement continuing. However, as we always mentioned, you know, we generally, you know, look at cost of sales, and we try to maintain that stability there. The reason why we do that is because, you know, we obviously have a very innovative team that can help us to mitigate some of the volatilities, know, in commodity prices.
We also use efficiently our product that we have over the years. Fully utilizing the resources like whole chicken, you know, beef, and then also our supply chain is tremendous. Ability to actually lock in long-term contract, for example, coffee bean over the last two years, for a very long time, we were able to long-term lock down a three-year contract. However, we always, you know, being very cautious about pricing and price increase, because the reason is that we want to make sure that our consumer continue to benefit from cost saving and also enjoy, enjoy great value from our food. We generally try to keep fuel as, relatively stable. Still, still, you know, I think we have initiative continue to improve labor productivity improvement.
As you mentioned, we have the, you know, the store management sharing initiative and continue to invest in technologies and, you know, enable our team member to work more efficiently in the restaurant. We have got to also look at, you know, the ongoing labor inflation. It's a fight in our industry, right? We always have to, you know, deal with, you know, labor cost inflation over time. We generally also try to keep that relatively stable. Now, as mentioned, O&O have improved over the years and, not only in the last couple years, but, you know, even over the past five years, 10 years. As we mentioned, we are at, you know, pretty, pretty efficient level, but we see continued room for, for improvement. That's generally how we look at, you know, the overall margin.
Obviously, the, you know, the next quarter or so, there was some anomaly on a year-over-year basis because of last year's temporary leave and study program. Overall, I think our trajectory is the right trajectory.
Thanks, Martin.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Anne Ling with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hey. Hi, thank you very much for taking my call. I have, first of all, the question also on the restaurant margins there. With like, you know, Pizza Hut, you know, improving, and success in the restructuring, what would be the normalized restaurant margin would be over time? Can it be like, you know, without like, you know, naming like figure, can it be as high as like, you know, KFC's, like, you know, 18% plus, you know? And if that's the case, you know, what are the drivers? Is it more on the scale of the whole network, or is it more on like, you know, driving the sales per store for further normalization?
Joey last time mentioned that, you know, in the previous call that, you would love to see further increase in the delivery or takeaway business for the Pizza Hut side. Any strategy that we can facilitate this? Thank you.
... Yeah. Hi, Anne. Yeah, thank you for the questions. You know, regarding Pizza Hut, we're very happy to see that, you know, the real realization program, have achieved, you know, very strong results, you know, over the past last, you know, last 2 quarters already. We continue to see very strong traffic, you know, growth, continue to see, you know, strong, you know, sales, growth. As Joey mentioned, you know, there's fantastic products that are coming out from Pizza Hut. Also, Pizza, over the past few years, as we have kept pricing, you know, stable, have continued to improve its value proposition to consumer. The value is great.
You look at the brand, we sit resonating really well with consumer as well, and especially, with some of the campaign, Genshin and other, that really, you know, connect with our new customer. I think, you know, it's wonderful that they make this transformation because, I think, you know, expand the pricing range, improve the value proposition, you know, it continue to drive, you know, the addressable market, right? Now we're at 3,000 store level. you know, obviously, it have great opportunity to grow, into more store. In, in fact, if you look at, you know, the store opening, the store opening right now, is, you know, at record level.
If you look at, you know, in the quarter alone, we probably opened more restaurant than, you know, like the last couple of years combined. I think that's tremendous progress. I think, you know, we continue to hope to see, you know, KFC, more network expansion, especially driven by satellite store and, you know, smaller store format, and then continue to build, you know, that value positions. Then also, you know, as they have done in the last couple quarter, continue to improve, you know, their margins and over time. When you say normalize, I think, you know, normalize, you know, I think right now the margins are even higher than 2019. I don't know, you know, when we, we consider to be not normalized.
I think, I think you're having the right trajectory, for sure.
I think, the ultimate question for Pizza Hut is not necessarily only about margin. Our goal for Pizza Hut going forward, after turnaround, is to continue to work on its resiliency and growth. Because after turning around, that's what we want, the growth. Growth without resiliency is, is not too comfortable, isn't it? Growth, resiliency and growth. And then, of course, next step is the moat, strategic moat, right? We are very consistent with our thinking, our GM. The question is how to get there. What's, what's the key to unlock, to get the resiliency, to get more sales, to manage the investment, and to get profit in the short and long term? Well, our view of the key, which we have been working on, is the satellite store model.
O verall, we look at the result of the new store, payback, Pizza Hut moved from four years to three years, in which satellite store really deliver. These are the smaller store, focused on takeaway and delivery, which is your second question. The satellite store do the trick, and satellite store require less investment. It require a different menu because they mainly delivery and takeaway driven, and the profit is very good, and the payback is, is two years. When we put the satellite store and the other store together, the overall payback is three years. We have found the key, which is satellite store. We just need the time to build more and more and more and more from top-tier city all the way to lower-tier city. The growth story of Pizza Hut is not difficult to understand.
KFC only are in 1,900 cities in China with 9,500 stores, and Pizza Hut, we only have 3,000 stores in 700-800 cities in China. That's more than 1,000 cities in China that have Pizza Hut, does not have-- have KFC, does not have Pizza Hut. You can see why we are quite confident about the growth potential of Pizza in terms of sales, profit, resiliency. Thank you, Anne.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Sijie Lin with CICC. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Joe and Andy. I have a follow-up question on promotion and competition. We've seen that our insistence on value for money leads to very resilient sales recovery. We've also seen increasing promotion and more value combos like, OK Sanjian Tao. Do we think this is only because people are value cautious under this economic environment, or this also has relationship with more intense competition from McDonald's, from Peppertine and all other competitors? How will this impact our ticket average and sales per store? Thank you.
Thank you. Okay, Sanjian Tao is new. Right now is delivering about low single-digit in terms of sales mix. The key thing here is, well, of course, customers are very cautious. It doesn't hurt to open up the price range. What does that mean? In the past, we did not have that price at CNY 19 as a combo. When we introduced it, the most critical thing that we are looking for is incremental sales, in particular, incremental same-store sales. What not to like? It's fantastic. It's new business for us. In terms of its performance across city tier, well, people might think that it worked very well in low-tier cities. Actually, not really.
It worked better in top-tier cities, because this is more for what we call Gangxu, the functional consumption for the lunch. It worked better for the top-tier city. For lower-tier cities, actually gave us insight. We still can open more stores. We can open more stores in low-tier cities to capture that functional consumption. We are happy with that. Again, the key to unlock this, okay, Sanjian Tao, the weekend camp, is ability in supply chain, whether we can source such affordable ingredients to deliver that price point and still a reasonable profit. Our team did it. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Lillian Lou with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Thank you, Joey and Andy, for all the answers. I have a follow-up questions on same-store sales growth. Because Joey just mentioned that, our store network right now is very different from pre-COVID. When we look at the same-store sales growth compared to pre-COVID, i.e., 2019 level, in second quarter was still 10% below. If we look at more on the holistic basis, because we're adding more and more smaller stores, does that mean that actually our same-store sales growth will be below 2019th level for a longer period of time, even though our underlying operation is already kind of close to back to normal? That's more like mathematics problem, question.
Also in the operation perspective, what has been driving our same-store sales growth below normal level? In particular, is there still the traffic hub stores or in certain area or in certain tier of cities or store format? Thanks a lot.
Lillian, so let me try to clarify this. Our, you know, system sales of 25% year-over-year, our same-store growth was 15% year-over-year. Then, you know, if you adjust for, you know, the, you know, impact of temporary store closure last year, our system same-store sales growth, you know, a lot of time people use that in the industry, would be about 24%. And, you know, then... Sorry, our system growth is 32%. If you look at that, you know, our adjusted, you know, like, same-store sales growth would be close to 24% year-over-year. I think, you know, even, you know, we mentioned some of the slowing down in the May, May period.
In fact, you know, our, you know, our same-store sales growth were very well, quite strong. You know, and obviously, you know, the driver for, you know, the, the different tiers, different, slightly different, you know, as Joey Wat mentioned, the lower tier cities generally, you know, growing with faster. You know, and you mentioned about, you know, the TMT space. TMT space are really very important for us, and we continue to see a pretty robust recovery over there. You know, and if you look at the tourist locations, I think, you know, it's, it's doing, you know, it's quite well, recovered quite well. Even at the major transportation hub for domestic travel, for high-speed level and for domestic flights, they continue to improve. I think, and that trajectory is still going pretty strong.
Obviously, international travel, flight travel is a little softer, and, and it will probably take, you know, a longer time until, you know, flight schedule got sought out. So I think, you know, in terms of our same-store sales growth, is, is, is pretty robust. I don't know if Joey, you have anything to mention.
For the existing store that opened before 2019, as Andy mentioned, the transportation hub actually coming back during the May and particularly during the holidays. By the way, that's sort of another consumer behavior right now. There's consumption during the holiday and festival amazingly well. It just, in between, it's a bit more depressed, but we have program to manage that. For tourist location, actually, it have recovered really, really well, and particularly in the tier two cities, you know, like Xi'an and whatever. These sort of tourist destination, tier two cities are doing really well, you know, back to pre-2019 level already.
To answer your other question about the holistic same-store sales, well, here, the ultimate question is how to continue to grow our same-store sales, particularly when our stores are getting smaller and smaller and smaller, particularly the newly opened one, because the smaller stores require less CapEx, and the paper is good. Well, it's not silly, but why not growing the same-store sales outside the store then? Therefore, it's rather important to continue to drive the delivery, take away, and that goes for both KFC and Pizza Hut. Therefore, I've been emphasizing on how important it is to grow the off-premise sales and the new retail. New retail is still low single digits compared to the entire Yum China sales, but the absolute number is not small, and it provides very nice, resilient, sales driver, particularly during the tough times.
Let me be a bit more specific about KFC. How do we do it outside the store? If you come to China, have opportunity, particularly during our Investor Day, you will see more and more and more our KFC store will have a window opened up, so that you don't even need to customer don't even need to go inside the store to get your coffee or ice cream or whatever snack or meal. That improved convenience helps, and you bet we are doing, we're doing it at scale at whenever we could. You will see more coffee trucks or standalone coffee. Well, the system does grow this nicely, but if we look at KFC coffee compared to last year, it only increased by 50%, which is not too bad, isn't it? The coffee truck investment is low. It's lovely.
It's so cute. In any tourist location or anywhere without a fixed location, it's okay. We only have about, you know, 200 right now, but you bet we're gonna have more. During the holiday and festival, there, there are pop-up stores. Well, actually, it's not something new. We just don't talk enough about it. We do a lot of the pop-up store during Chinese New Year, and right now it work for holiday and festival, too. It doesn't matter. Well, to a certain, it matters, but we don't want the, the size of the store to limit our same-store growth, 'cause we can go outside. You will see more and more and more breakfast kiosk around the store these days. It work both for KFC and Pizza Hut.
You know, even though it's already very convenient to pick up breakfast from our store, we further improve the convenience by bringing the breakfast to the, to the subway station, et cetera, et cetera. I hope that give you a sense about how do we drive the holistic same-store sales, despite our stores are getting smaller. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Christine Peng with UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you, management, for the presentation as well as answering most of the questions, I think investors care about. I have a very quick question regarding the capital allocation. If you look at the first half of, you know, 2023, cash, free cash flow, et cetera. Basically, all the measures suggest that the cash accumulation for the company has been very strong. As we look at the cash dividends and the share repurchases, it was not really suggesting a big, you know, pickup, compared with the pandemic period.
I was just trying to understand what's the logic, you know, behind this, and what's the future thought in terms of distributing more, you know, cash towards investors? Thank you.
Thank you, Christine. I think, you know, couple things. One is that, you know, our capital allocations, as always, is focusing on driving organic growth. You know, it's on store opening, it's on store remodeling, that generally, you know, capture more than 6% of our, you know, CapEx spending. We also look into investing, obviously, in our new brand and also digital and supply chain, to make sure that we continue to run our operations effectively, efficiently, and also accurately, so that, you know, we can deal with different uncertainty. The other one is, you know, for cash allocations, obviously, you know, we want to have a strong balance sheet, to make sure that we can deal with any contingency that may come up.
You know, occasionally, opportunistically, we look at investment, especially investment that will boost our capabilities, both in the technologies, in our store operations, and our supply chain. We're very committed to return, you know, capital to shareholder. You know, if you look at, in the quarter, we have returned, you know, more than $110 million to shareholder. The pace of, you know, share repurchase, obviously will vary, depend on number of factors, but I think, you know, we, we hold a very strong commitment, to return excessive cash to shareholder. You know, dividends, you know, as we, we have done so in the first quarter this year, we have raised dividends, you know, at the early part of this year, by almost 8%-9%.
So, so we will revisit, you know, obviously, dividend policy with our board, every quarter and every year. So, so but, you know, again, we're very glad, you know, our, our strong operating performance generate good operating cash flow, and good free cash flow, in the same quarter and the first half this year. So we'll continue, we will continue to, you know, return that excess cash to shareholder for sure. Thanks, Christine.
Thank you. That is all the time we have for questions today. I'll now hand back to Ms. Michelle Shen for closing remarks.
Thank you for joining the call today. If you have further questions, please reach out through the contact information in our earnings release and on our website.
Thank you.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.