Welcome to the BJ's Restaurants fourth quarter 2008 fiscal results conference call. (Operator Instructions). This conference is being recorded today, Thursday, February 12, 2009. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Jerry Deitchle, President and CEO. Please go ahead sir.

Thanks, Operator and hello, everybody. I am Jerry Deitchle with BJ's Restaurants and welcome to our fourth quarter 2008 investor conference call, which we are also broadcasting live over the Internet. And after the market closed today, we released our financial results for the fourth quarter of 2008 that ended on December 30, 2008. And if you haven't seen our press release yet today, you can see it on our website at www.bjsrestaurants.com. Joining me on the call today is Greg Levin, our Executive VP and CFO; Greg Lynds, our Executive VP and Chief Development Officer; and Dianne Scott, our Director of Corporate Relations. The agenda for our call today will be as follows: First, I'll provide a brief business and operational overview for the fourth quarter and full year of 2008 and also briefly comment on our expansion plans and our key sales building initiatives for the coming year. Then Greg Lynds will comment on the status of our restaurant development pipeline. And then Greg Levin will wrap up our comments with respect to his analysis of our consolidated income statement, our summary balance sheet and our liquidity position as of the end of the fourth quarter. And then after that, we'll be happy to take your questions. We're going to get our call started right after Dianne provides our standard and cautionary disclosure with respect to forward-looking statements. Dianne?

Our comments on the conference call today will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of the company to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and that undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. Our forward-looking statements speak only as of today's date, February 12, 2009. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, or to make any other forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, unless required to do so by the Securities Laws. Investors are referred to the full discussion of risks and uncertainties associated with forward-looking statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Thanks, Dianne. Now on to the details of our conference call today. In spite of some of the toughest operating conditions for retail and restaurant companies that I have seen in my 35-year business career, our leadership team here at BJ's was very, very pleased that our business was able to maintain its forward momentum during the fourth quarter and full year of 2008 and continue to build additional market share in the estimated $90 billion casual dining segment of the restaurant industry. We believe that our restaurant operators, our brewery operators and infrastructure support team did an outstanding job of moving BJ's forward during 2008, despite the difficult operating environment and we always want to thank all of our colleagues at the company for all of their hard work and their contributions to our successful growth this past year. As we all know, most of the consumer businesses continue to feel the impact of the current recession. While our business is certainly not immune to the pressures of the recession, we do believe that BJ's continues to perform relatively well, when compared to most of our similarly-situated casual dining competitors in terms of size, scope of operations, available resources, and geographical concentration. Our fundamental shorter-term objective at BJ's is to keep out working and outperforming most of our peers during these tough times and simultaneously, continue to prudently invest in the overall quality and differentiation of the BJ's concept, as well as continue to invest in the strength of our restaurant support and growth infrastructure. By doing so, we believe that BJ's can be a high quality early recovery opportunity for even more consumers and investors when the current recession cycle eventually begins to bottom out. Moving to our financial results for the fourth quarter of 2008 when compared…

Thanks, Jerry. Good afternoon, everyone. Jerry just mentioned our 2008 new restaurant development growth targets were achieved. For 2008, we opened 15 successful new restaurants and achieved our targeted growth in total restaurant operating weeks for the year. In the fourth quarter, we opened three restaurants. We opened Tacoma, Washington on October 13th, and Chula Vista, California and Newark, California both opened on November 10th. Geographically, during 2008 we opened five restaurants in our home court state of California, three restaurants in Texas and Arizona region. We opened our first restaurant in the state of Washington in the cities of Tacoma and Tukwila. We also opened our first restaurant in the state of Louisiana in Baton Rouge, it is on a freestanding out parcel path within the new lifestyle wing of the Mall of the Louisiana. Additionally, we continue to infill Ohio Valley region in Florida. Within the Ohio Valley region we opened restaurants in Cincinnati, Louisville and Indianapolis. And our fourth restaurant in the state of Florida opened in Kissimmee, a suburb of Orlando. We now have a strong base of restaurants from coast to coast and we are well positioned to build our brand in our core western state, Texas, the Ohio Valley, Florida and also mainly other strategic East Coast markets as time goes on. Looking forward into 2009 and 2010, we believe the softening commercial real estate market represents an even better opportunity for BJ's to continue to securing prime locations favorable to these economics. Our new restaurant development strategy continues to focus on acquiring AAA quality location, mature densely populated trade areas with premier cotenants to create maximum synergy in terms of guest traffic and our brand positioning. Over the last several months, our real estate campaign completed a detailed evaluation of the potential restaurant…

Thanks, Greg. We continue to believe that BJ's four-wall economics are very sound. They support a continued steady pace of new restaurant expansion. Now, the hallmark of our development program, as Greg mentioned, has been AAA quality locations in mature densely populated trade areas with premier cotenants that create maximum consumer synergy. We strongly believe that delivering a high quality ROI on each of our new restaurant serves our long-term interest better than opening a bunch of new restaurants just for the sake of maintaining a certain growth rate particularly during a recession. There is certainly not any lack of sites in general to support our longer-term growth but there are less high quality sites available in the trade areas where we want to develop during the next couple of years, as Greg outlined, that will best leverage our supply chain and our field supervision infrastructure. So if we have to choose between quality and quantity in a restaurant expansion plan during a recession, we're always going to choose quality. We can only grow as much as the operating environment will allow and it's important to grow with quality because that facilitates dependability and predictability which are two pretty important considerations for investing in restaurants. Additionally, based on our current plans and expectations, we should be able to finance our new restaurant expansion, and in fact, our entire capital expenditure plan for the upcoming year, primarily with internally generated cash from operations and committed landlord construction contributions. We believe that's a very favorable position to be in. And now, I'm going to turn the call over to Greg Levin, our CFO for his comments on the quarter. Greg?

Thanks Jerry. Let me I apologize everyone, I have a problem with a bad cold and cough here and I'm going to do my best to get through these prepared remarks but not coughing in your ear too much. As Jerry previously noted our total revenues for BJ's fourth quarter of 2008 increased to 16.5% to approximately $99.3 million from $85.2 million in the prior year's comparable quarter. The increase was the result of approximately 20.5% more operating weeks, offset by a 3.4% decrease in our weekly sales average. The operating week increase is due to the 15 new restaurants that we opened this year and a full quarter of operating weeks from the four restaurants we opened in the fourth quarter of last year. As Jerry mentioned, our aggregate comparable restaurant sales for the fourth quarter decreased approximately 0.7%, which is pretty impressive, since not only did Halloween fall on a Friday in the fourth quarter, but we also lost New Year's Eve and Day was flipped into the first quarter of 2009, as Jerry mentioned the concentration of restaurants that we have here in California, Arizona, and Florida. While we do get out our monthly comparable restaurant sales, I would like to note that normalizing for the shift in the holidays, our comparable restaurant sales within the fourth quarter was fairly consistent from week-to-week. We did notice a decrease in our large-party business, primarily due to the size of the parties being smaller in previous years and really not due to the actual number of reservations we take. Additionally, those smaller parties tended to choose one of our lower price buffet options, and ordered less alcohol than they had in the past. As we have previously mentioned the softness in our overall comparable restaurant sales is primarily isolated…

Thanks, Greg. I'm going to take one more minute before we open up the call for questions and just reiterate our confidence in BJ's longer-term ability to continue to build market share in the casual dining segment. In our view, casual dining is still a very attractive place to be in the restaurant industry. We don't think the billions and billions of dollars of annual casual dining sales are going to disappear anytime soon. Depending on current pressures and the macro environment, casual dining sales may not grow in the aggregate as fast as they have in past years, and they might even know a little bit, but it's still a much highly fragmented segment that's populated with thousands of restaurants that in our view have gradually felt a gravitational pull downward over the years in terms of their overall quality, their points of differentiation, their overall energy level, their approachability, their relevance and frankly their overall value for the money. And we believe that all of those factors play to the strength of the BJ's restaurant concept. We also agree with the recent comment that I read that was made by Harry Balzer, who is a chief restaurant industry analyst at the NPD Group. When he said and I quote, 'The growth of restaurant companies in 2009 will be for market share. Even if the average number of meals that Americans eat out annually is down from 207 in 2007 to 205 in 2008, it's about getting a larger share of those 205 meals. People aren't cutting out eating and there are 800 or so other meals in a year that are prepared at home as a result of potential market for food service is nowhere near saturation'. So at BJ's we are going to stay committed to our longer-term strategy to drive our comp sets and business forward and we are going to do as much as we can to position our business to really capitalize when the current economic cycle eventually begins to turn around. Until that time we are going to do our absolute best to control what we can control in order to do our best to drive sales and to do our best to become even more productive and efficient in our overall execution. So that concludes our remarks and at this time we are going to open up the call for your questions. If we don’t have time to get everybody's questions today we will stay on as long as we possibly can. We are in California and you can call our offices after the call. We'd be happy to take the question. Okay, operator go ahead.

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Jeff Farmer with Jefferies & Company. Jeff Farmer - Jefferies & Company: Great. Thank you. Going back to the center sales in the first seven weeks of the quarter. Do you control for that, I believe the new year shift, would you still be looking at positive comps for the first seven weeks of the quarter?

We probably would. I would tell you that to your point there Jeff we did have a strong first week in January because of that New Year shift. Since that time it's probably come back down to what we have experienced for 2008 maybe slightly better than that, but there is no doubt that that our first week has helped us. Jeff Farmer - Jefferies & Company: Okay. And then I guess this might be for Greg, but as it relates to the 9 to 11 planned unit openings in '09, what does it look like in terms of new versus existing retail developments and has it mattered in recent years in terms of being in established retail developments versus brand new sort of the greener developments?

Yes. For 2009, I'm looking at our list here; everything is really in kind of a mature densely populated area with no real co-tenancy risk and that's been our strategy going forward. Our strategy back from really 2005 has been dense mature areas and existing centers. So, I don't know, Jerry, do you have anything to add?

No. I would agree with that as I look at the potential list of openings for this year. I really only see one out of the 9 to 11 that might be characterized as somewhat of a new project, although it's in a very, very densely populated trade area. The vast majority of them are in established projects either additions or remodels, very densely populated retail trade areas with proven levels of retail sales and that's why we selected these to move forward. Jeff Farmer - Jefferies & Company: Okay. That's helpful. Then, as it relates to development past '09, is it safe to assume that it's probably too early in 2010 to start reaccelerating this. You are probably set through the current '09 run rate in terms of absolute unit development?

Jeff, I don't think we've really targeted a specific number of new restaurants for 2010 yet. As you know in this business you have to build your pipelines anywhere from 18 months to 24 months in advance. Clearly Greg and his team are working on putting together a very robust pipeline for our ultimate decision making here as we move throughout this year. But, it's too early to really hone in on a specific number of new restaurants or targeted level of operating we brought. But, I think it is important to say that everything else being equal based on what we know about the overall economy as of this moment, we would intend to continue to open additional new restaurants next year. But, we're going to have to see exactly how many and when they're going to open here as kind of we move throughout the year, but we are moving ahead and putting together a very solid pipeline for our decision making later this year. Jeff Farmer - Jefferies & Company: Okay. And then just one more final question. Greg, did you say that the '09 share count you expected that to be 27 to 28 million?

It's probably somewhere in that 27 million range. Jeff Farmer - Jefferies & Company: Thank you, guys.

Okay, Jeff.

Thank you, sir. And our next question comes from the line of Greg Ruedy with Stephens Inc. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good afternoon. Greg, I think you mentioned that about a third of the system now is still less than two years old. You mentioned on aggregate they are meeting expectations. Maybe you could talk to some specific units or areas where you have market share and average weekly sales ramp opportunities?

Yes. I'm thinking about your question a little bit here, Greg. When I look at that and we talk about it in aggregate, we mentioned before with all of our children we have found that outperformed others. When we look at California in general in that pipe list and they did really well, but as I think about some of the areas out towards you, our Baton Rouge restaurant is doing extremely well. San Antonio, we're very, very pleased with. I think there's opportunity like in Temple, Texas. It' not disappointing as for those opportunity to bring that up. There is also a couple of other opportunities up in the Ohio Valley to bring those up a little bit, but Polaris does extremely well for us, very proud of that restaurant. In Florida, we got a couple of restaurants that do extremely well for us and others I think with the economic condition that Florida have opportunity over time, but we don't have a restaurant that disappoints us in that point. Jerry, I don't have.

Well, the only other thing that I would say is that restaurant sales for emerging national concept like BJ's are really a function of awareness, trial and usage, the ATU formula if you will. When we open up in our California trade areas and most of our Texas trade areas where we already have high levels of awareness, we get higher levels of trial and then we are able to convert that trial to regular usage on a pretty predictable pattern. It's the opportunities in our newer markets, particularly Florida and Ohio Valley where we've opened up with very satisfactory volumes, but over time, awareness and trial will drive ultimate usage and it takes time for new concepts without national advertising umbrellas and national awareness to really build their reputations and get into the dining patterns or the dining location, if you will, of consumers in the trade areas. So I think I would say that Florida, Ohio, our newer markets probably have the most upside opportunity over time. Our restaurants in California are solid from day one and they spend, notwithstanding some of the press and media reports that we hear about the wonderful state of California. California is still a very, very attractive state for BJ's to open up restaurants in. We only have 44 restaurants in the state. We are clearly underpenetrated in the state. There are 36 million people that live in California. We have noticed and I mentioned in my comments earlier in our call today, we have seen over the past six months several franchisees of some of the very menu mass market casual dining concepts have decided to close several restaurants in California which is a tremendous benefit to us. It's our home court. So for those that might think that opening new restaurants in California might not be the best idea for our business, I would suggest that every data point that we have suggests otherwise and we are going to continue to play to the strengths of our home court.

Looks like the majority of the '09 openings will be California and Texas. So, are there things in specific trade areas or unique things going on in the pipeline that is precluding you from opening in Florida and the Midwest this year?

Not at all, actually we are trying to focus our development specifically targeted into trade areas where we can get maximum awareness trial and usage which are a function right now of our California and our Texas development plans at this moment. We do have potential sites that we are working on for the next 18 months in central Florida and in Ohio, but right now we have chosen to really focus hard in the areas where we can achieve maximum awareness trial and usage and achieve maximum leverage of our field supervision organization or supply chain and our restaurant management talent.

Okay. Last one and I'll pass it on. Multiple casual dining operators will mention that their customer service scores are all-time highs. From a service standpoint and excluding your deployment of the quality fast tool sets and the aesthetics within your box, what is it about the guest server interaction at BJ's that differentiates you versus those other bar and grill or mass market operations? Thanks.

That's a great question, Greg. We also track guest surveys and opinions with respect to food quality, service quality, facilities quality, overall intent to revisit the restaurant. We've been tracking those in our databases over the past four years that I've been involved with the concept and we have seen a gradual increase in the overall top box ratings of yes related to our BJ's attributes and it's very, very hard to try to pick certain attributes of the concept and say well, this favorable rating is due specifically to this factor or this attribute. It's very, very difficult. You really have to take the concept as a whole, where it was, a very, very good concept four years ago when you consider all of the investments and improvements that we made in our operational tool sets, in the overall quality of our execution, in raising the overall positioning of the business from kind of being on the fence, half mass market, half premium casual moving it more clearly up into the premium casual range. I think all of those factors have correctively acted in a synergistic way to improve overall guest ratings for us. It's very, very hard to isolate what we could have done with or without certain of those attributes because they're all working together to really drive our business forward. Next question?

Thank you, sir. And our next question comes from the line of Matt DiFrisco with Oppenheimer Capital. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Greg Levin, can you give us a little update on what you might be doing right now with or what's ahead for '09 as far as the contracts with brewers in markets like Texas and outside of California where you might have greater advantage or move some more of your brews over in the capacity onto those lower cost basis, larger batch brewers?

Yes. We are continuing to move that forward somewhere to the point of getting close to maybe 55% towards the end of this year. What we found right now is while we can get it produced at a lower price with the large contract brewers, because of their efficiencies you lose a little bit in the transportation cost. Right now, the contract brewers that we're using for large contract brewing are out there really out on the East Coast. They are shipping some of our primary beer flavors into California. So, net-net, we're expecting our deliver beer cost to our restaurants for at least 2009 to be flat. But as we continue to grow, we should be able to continue to leverage the large contract brewers and bring down that number.

This is Jerry. It's fascinating that in that particular part of our business when you look at the total delivered cost per kg of beer in our restaurants, 25% to 30% of that total delivered cost represents transportation and freight cost. The raw ingredients, the direct labor, the direct overhead, are much lower, the cost, the elements are taken separately. So as Greg mentioned, we do have our larger contract brewing operations in Texas, in the Midwest and on the East Coast. And as we continue to expand that way, we'll obviously get some leverage on transportation of freight cost. We're also working very, very hard with not only the independent freight companies, but also with our principal food service distributors to work on ways where we can cross dock and where we can get some backhauls and get some benefits with respect to freight costs in advance of building more restaurants further east and further north.

Understand. And then I guess, Jerry, just want a comment on your commentary with respect to the world ahead, maybe the game changing a little bit more, the sharing taking than just sort of a rising tide, not necessarily for trying to swoop the guy out of the kitchen, but to compete against peers, is there a desire to maybe do a broader marketing campaign or anything in given that your growth seems to be heavily back filling, which might provide the opportunity for better leverage to do regional, more local advertising whether on radio or TV?

Well, that's an excellent question. I think in the short run, we would not intend to increase our media advertising to really drive overall awareness and trial. We're running at about 1% of sales. And to your point, probably the only market where we have a chance of becoming semi-media efficient, well, that would be on radio would be here in Southern California. Our best bet in driving market share is to pick AAA locations and operate at the highest level of operational excellence and that's how you build your reputation and credibility with consumers, and to maintain the overall points of quality and differentiation than to play to the strengths of those differentiations as we continue to grow our business. And, frankly, we're up against our competitors as I mentioned in my previous comments. There are thousands and thousands of varied menu mass market casual dining concepts that frankly have kind of lost their warranty with consumers in many respects. So, we're going to start off by always focusing on AAA locations and AAA operational execution and then over time, as we cluster to develop and that's one thought that we've had in the back of our minds as we continue to fill in California and Texas. At some point, we might want to have the flexibility to increase media spending a little bit. But often by being in this business for over 30 years, being 15 years in fast food and 15 years in casual dining, frankly I worry a little bit about over reliance on media advertising rates to drive overall awareness and trial and convert it to predictable usage in your restaurant. We are always going to focus on quality and differentiation, great locations and great execution.

Okay. And then I just have a last question. Actually on the occupancy deleverage, it looks as though you degraded on the comp side throughout the year, yet the rate or level of degradation of that relative cost to sales hasn't really accelerated as much. Is that reflective of deleverage or is that a reflection more expensive location or it maybe just something in the market where your occupancy you are willing to take on a little bit of a higher occupancy rent? I'm just curious why that hasn't been more sensitive to the movement on the topline, but more or so a by product it seems like a growth of some sort?

Just a couple of things there, Matt. When I look at just purely the occupancy side of that, we've operating occupancy. The occupancy line has not moved that much over the last year or so. We spent some of it in the neighborhood of about $10,500 to $10,600 a week just on candidate, what I call operating occupancy side. Where we have seen the movement on that is one, we raised the quality in our restaurants and a lot of what we call the guest touch point the better China, silverware, plate wear, et cetera in regards to that. So that's one of the reasons that number has gone up to that standpoint. The other side of it was the marketing. As marketing move closer to 1% this last two quarters, we moved marketing a little bit above the 1% range in regards to that number. So, those are kind of the two primary drivers. The operating occupancy hasn't been quite as much for the on-site -- just the occupancy side hasn't quite as much as more of our deliberate decisions to really increase the guest touch points. We think over time that's how you're going to build sales. Quite frankly, as we put all these things in, we weren't expecting to go into the kind of the recessionary environment that we are in. That being said, I think it can really differentiates us from the other players out there and I don’t think we would ever take that back.

And the other thing too that I would add onto that, Matt, is when you rollout all of these sales building initiatives, and all of these platforms, online ordering curbside cashiering, call-ahead seating, third-party delivery and so forth, you've got to communicate with your customers periodically and tell them that you’ve got these services in. And these services will take a little bit of time to build their productivity over time. So, initially, we made the decision we're going to have to spend a little bit of media marketing dollars to make sure that everybody knows that we have these and over time as they begin to build and consumers begin to feel confident that their credible services and they can rely on them, then perhaps we can take the foot off our media marketing and get back to something that’s a little less than 1% of sales.

Okay. So just to conclude that, I guess, if we were to look forward not backwards, then 2009 would be more along the line of a 1% not necessarily the degree of de-leverage or the sort of in excess of 1% in 3Q and 4Q?

Yes. I think that would be right if I understand what you are getting at. I would still go with my general commentary that I made in my prepared remarks that operating occupancy are going to be in that mid 21% range.

Perfect.

Okay. Matt DiFrisco - Oppenheimer & Co.: Thank you.

Thank you, sir. And our next question comes from the line of Sharon Zackfia with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon.

Hey, Sharon.

Greg, I think I have your cold. A couple of questions. I guess as California looks like it's firming a little bit for you, how much of a tailwind does that give you going into 2009, because you have some of those really easy comparisons now in California. And then, secondarily, we're starting to hear some kind of rumors that Texas is starting to weaken some across the restaurant space. Are you seeing any of that?

Yes. A couple of things. I love the comment that you have a easier comparison to go. I think if you talk to folks in other casual dining companies based on probably same out for a year and a half to two years that it should get better next year because we're going over easier comparisons. That being said, what I think we are seeing here is a little bit of what you talked about where I think if you looked at 2008, we had a little bit higher dispersion in regards to comp sale. So the Texas restaurant doing some pretty nice comp sales, kind of offsetting some of the California restaurants to get BJ's more or less factor a flatter type number. I think as we go into 2009, you're going to see the California numbers as I had talked about in Q4, and those areas probably being a lot less negative in comp, but the fact of the matter is Texas has been almost high single digits if not double digits, the comp rests for almost three or four years now and we are starting to see those come down a little bit. So I think in essence, you are going to see comp sales to semi retail like what we saw this year in 2008, but the dispersion is going to be less.

Okay. And then, secondarily, Greg if you kind of go through some of the different parameters you gave us for restaurant contribution margin, it sounded as if you were expecting to hold that more or less with what you saw in 2008.

Yeah, I think, we have the ability to hold those restaurant level margins. I would tend to hope, that I mean we hope not a strategy here, but I think we have the ability with the slowdown to get some of the newer restaurant to get a little bit more productive. So depending on where comp sales come in, I think we might have an opportunity to expand margins a little bit but again a lot of that is driven by comp sales.

What kind of comp do you need to see expansion year-over-year. Just given the difference and you will have less new restaurant penalty this year than you saw in 2008.

Everybody loves that question and it's always a difficult question to answer. Really looking at 2009 the headwinds or the tailwinds, I guess that we faced this last couple of years or the headwinds that we faced in regards to commodities and labor and still not have abated a little bit. We still got it with somewhat on commodities, labor and little bit less. If energy costs stay where they are, we wouldn't see the spike that we saw in Q3 and a lot of companies cost. So, I think you get back on what was a 2 percentage range or you could start to have maybe maintain your margins if not extend your margins where the prior years you neared somewhere in the 3.5% to 4% range.

What I would also add to that Sharon that the real key to driving improvements in restaurant margins would be an increase or a flattening of guest traffic. That's really the key. It's kind of like a reduction in the unemployment rate is the first indicator that the economy might be turning around or one of the early indicators that the economy might be starting to turnaround. Guest traffic remains negative, but for us as soon as we begin to see that flattened out or even peak up a little bit, I think you will see us with a strong ability to get our overall cash flow margins within the four walls of the restaurants back closer to 20% over time. But I think in 2009 that's going to be a pretty tough challenge. Sharon Zackfia - William Blair & Co.: Okay, well best of luck.

Thank you, ma'am. And our next question comes from the line of [Jonathan Comp] with Robert W. Baird. Please go ahead.

Yeah hi this is [Jon Comp] for David Tarantino. Just one quick question on your commodity costs. I know you said you had about 50% of your overall basket locked for 2009. Can you just give a little more color on the specific items and maybe talk about the greatest opportunities for positive or negative variances versus the 3% that you quoted?

I think it's easier to talk about may be where the pressures are going to be. Chicken is going to be a pressure point for us. We are right now in kind of a quarterly contract and we think we had a good chicken contract in 2008. So that's going to be an area of pressure and the other one would be our pizza dough. The other item, and just on hand chicken is somewhere in the 12% range of our total of food cost or cost of sales. So you can get an idea that, that impact there. That should be offset with lower cheese prices, which were priced currently on the spot market and cheese has dropped tremendously into that kind of a $15 per pound range. Our dressings we should be able to get a down a little bit and our oils, but the pressure is really on chicken and our pizza dough, that's why we are probably going to see that 3% range.

Okay great. Thanks.

Thank you, sir. And our next question comes from the line of Paul Westra with Cowen and Company. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Hi, good afternoon.

Hey, Paul.

Hi Greg. In your prepared remarks, I think you commented on your square footage or operating week growth of around 15% and also your revenue growth at the same figure. You talked about your AUVs also expecting to be down. So I just want to be clear on your, that you expect I guess, total revenue growth to be, is it going to match your operating week growth?

I think we had the opportunity first to match operating week growth.

How does that work?

Well, I guess, I understand together. I think, you are probably looking at a range in regards to our revenues of anywhere from kind of, 13 to 17. It depends on what type of comp number you are going to put in there. Maybe you are trying to absolutely pin me down. You can probably take the 15 to 16 operating weeks. You could say your WSA is going to be down 2 to 3 and there is your kind of 13. May be your WSA won't be down as much.

Okay. And then with respect to G&A, I know, I can understand the, hopefully, the full bonus accrual comes to play in '09. We always said to be true. Just wanted to, in light of that, to any other G&A leverage perspective, it is obviously through cutting your G&A growth almost to your revenue growth. Any other investments in that number where we would expect a lot of leverage in that lot.

It's really not. It's more of the fact that while we reversed $1 million we talked about in our third quarter conference call. We also didn't continue to accrue. So our bonuses that we technically didn't take through this year closer to more like a $1.5 million. I think there is nothing else currently going on in G&A, a normal number.

But I think it's also fair to say, Paul, that if you exclude the performance incentive award accruals on an absolute basis, we have planned for our G&A absolute dollars to increase at a rate less than our capacity growth rate. So there is inherent leverage there if you take out the impact of the performance incentive accruals for both years.

Okay. And lastly, just following up on crucial marketing, I have talked about a little bit more but did you feel as though you have gotten the IRR, I mean incremental investments. Just I have a question as before about whether you maintained a little aggressive rate or you think you would pull back to normalized rate?

Well, I think we are comfortable with about 1% of sales in terms of how we can effectively deploy it. We use principally free standing inserts in the Sunday papers in our trade areas and the newspapers like Los Angeles Times and all the major newspapers you can kind of stick those freestanding inserts in the newspapers by zip codes. So you can target the zip codes around each restaurant, so that you are not flooding the Los Angeles area with lots of FSIs and costs that there isn't a restaurant in the trade area and that's a very effective way for us to do some print advertising. In terms of an ROI on the expenditure, I think the best judge of that would be our comp sales performance versus our peers. And the fact that for those companies like I mentioned in our conference call that have a significant concentration in California, Arizona and Florida like we do and you look at their comp sales performances for the fourth quarter and the full year and you look at all ours. You have to attribute some of our favorable performance through the effectiveness of the extra media investment that we decided to make. Going forward we think 1% again is about the right number for us. The types of media to redeploy, the freestanding inserts and we do some e-commerce advertising and we also do some targeted local restaurant marketing in some trade areas that are significantly under pressure and when we've certainly talked about those in the Inland Empire and Arizona and so forth. We really structure our particular promotions and media buys to have very low breakeven hurdle rates. So that we're not trying to invest marketing dollars with say an inherent 5% or 10% incremental breakeven guest count hurdle rate. We set them much lower than that. So, we believe they're lower risk and they have generated a good return. And I would also say qualitatively that during a recession it is very, very important no matter who you are to communicate with your guests even more. And to make sure that you're at the top of their minds and to make sure that they are remembering you when it comes time to spend their hard earning in casual dining bucks. And I think that that has helped us to outperform our peers that are similarly situated to us.

The other thing on that Paul, I'm just going to add on the end is, a lot of our marketing last year was done in connection with new services. And you've got to get the word out that you have these new services. If we are having online ordering, you have got to market it out there that people know that they can order from BJ's online. If we're going to introduce lunch specials you've got to get it out there and that we have lunch specials. So, some of our marketing we start thinking about it from an ROI perspective was specifically targeted at the new initiatives that we have done to drive sales, and you will see that going into 2009 as we roll out these initiatives as well to drive, so that we want to get that word of mouth out there that we have these things in place and come to BJ's to try it. So that is another big portion of our marketing spend.

Great. Thanks.

We'll take one more question. I know we've run a little over, but I'll be happy to take one more question.

Our final question comes from the line of Conrad Lyon with Global Hunter Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good afternoon. A quick question, more about California and the government that’s going on here, and marketing Solo Fridays and now threatening to layoff 20,000 people. Have you thought about trying to create a marketing program geared towards these folks, perhaps try to get a menu on a Friday or anything surrounding that?

What we have thought about is trying to put a little more resource allocation of our media against the early week activities, the Monday through Thursday period, lunch and dinner, particularly here in some of the trade areas where you've seen some heavier unemployment. For the most part on Friday, Saturday, and Sundays, all of our restaurants are on wait. So really where we've really struggled for the most part and where most casual dining companies initially struggled during a recessionary period, has been in the early week, the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, the lunch and the dinner. It's that extra occasion that in the past when times are a little bit better they might have come to you for, but now when times are a little tougher, they are only going to come on the weekend and sacrifice that early week occasion. So we are going to work a little bit harder, particularly in California on that Monday, Thursday lunch and dinner day part.

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

You are welcome.

Thank you. That's all we have for today's call and thank you all for being on the call today.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the BJ Restaurant's fourth quarter 2008 fiscal results conference call. This conference will be available for replay after 4 o'clock Pacific Standard Time today till February 19th at midnight. You may access the replay system at anytime by dialing 303-590-3030 or 800-406-7325 and entering the access code of 396-9531. Thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.