Jay D. Johns
Analyst · Key Bank. Your line is now open
Yes, this is Jay. From the IHOP side. Look, we did not hit the target we wanted to hit last year, we had, as we talked about on the last call, we had macroeconomic factors of supply chain, and the supply chain kept moving to different items, we actually took positions to try to help ourselves get these restaurants open later in the year. But new pieces of equipment, new things started coming into play, that you couldn't open a restaurant without it. So they started pushing into the next year. And I think as we developed our guidance this year, while it sounds like we're not on target, long term, we still feel confident over the five years of where we can get the openings to. But we're trying to be responsible here also, the macroeconomic factors have not completely gone away. Supply chain has not proven to move at the same rate that it was before timelines are getting extended, compared to pre pandemic. And one of the big things that keeps happening is that local municipalities are just taking longer and longer to approve plans, et cetera. So one of the things that we've done is, since the pandemic, we have started to get our franchisees to pivot toward doing retrofits of previously other restaurants. We’re very successful doing this, we've got about 600 of them in our system. We've done this for years and years. And that's how we're combating the kind of the economic factors of cost so much to build a building with inflation right now is, if you just retrofit an existing space, it's actually much more beneficial. It's usually much faster to get the permitting approved. But we're trying to be responsible doesn't mean we don't potentially have upside on this. But we also have not gotten the proof yet, that the issues we had last year have resolved themselves. So we've already opened 10 of the restaurants that we expected last year, in the first couple of months this year. So we're feeling very confident with all the work we're doing and building the pipeline, developing the pipeline, that we're still long term going to hit the goals that we were looking for, but it may get stretched out a little differently than what we originally anticipated.