Katie Scherping - Chief Financial Officer Dennis B. Mullen - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Eric C. Houseman – President and Chief Operating Officer Susan Lintonsmith - Chief Marketing Officer Brat Mandicar with Quebec Capital Market

Thomason Wade with Pacifial Research Joseph Barsley of Bank of America Matthew DiFrisco – Oppenheimer & Co

Good day and welcome to the Red Robin Gourmet Burgers Incorporated first quarter 2009 financial results conference call. At this time all participants have been placed in a listen only mode and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host Ms. Katie Scherping, Chief Financial Officer of Red Robin. Please go ahead.

Thanks Gwen. Before I get started I need to remind everyone that part of today’s discussion particularly but not limited to our outlook and development expectations will include forward-looking statements. These statements will include but not be limited to references to our margins, new restaurant openings or NROs, trends, costs and administrative expenses and other expectations. Also these statements are based on what we expect as of this conference call and we undertake no obligation to update these statements to reflect events or circumstances that might arise after this call. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and therefore investors should not place undue reliance on them. We refer all of you to our 10-K and our 10-Q filings with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact our future operating results and financial conditions. We plan to file our 10-Q for the fiscal first quarter of 2009 by the close of business tomorrow. I also want to inform our listeners that we will make some references to non-GAAP financial measures today during our call. You will find supplemental data in our press release on schedules one and two which reconcile our non-GAAP measures to our GAAP results. Now, I’d like to turn the call over to Denny Mullen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Thanks Katie and thanks everyone for joining us today, we also have with us Eric Houseman, our President, Chief Operating Officer and Susan Lintonsmith, our Chief Marketing Officer. Eric will provide detail on first quarter results and an update on our operations initiatives, and Susan will share what our marketing team has been doing to drive guest traffic and retention. Then Katie will review in detail our most recent financial results and discuss our business outlook. First, I’ll start with a quick review of our fiscal first quarter 2009 results compared to a year ago. Total revenues increased 6.0% to $270.8 million while company-owned comparable sales decreased 8.1% compared to the first quarter of last year. As we said during our last earnings call, we expected that the year-over-year sales comparisons would be difficult for the first quarter of the year as we lapped over our most successful quarter of 2008, which included national cable advertising that began in early February last year. As you know, we did not have nation cable television advertising in the first quarter of this year. Restaurant-level operating profit decreased 1.7% to $47.1 million or 17.7% of revenue compared to 19.1% a year ago. Adjusted or non-GAAP diluted earnings per share for the 2009 first quarter were $0.47 compared to $0.43 in the first quarter a year ago, an increase of 9.3%. And finally in the first quarter of this year, we opened a total of nine new Red Robin restaurants, seven company-owned and two franchised locations, ending the quarter with 298 company-owned and 130 franchise locations for a total of 428 Red Robin locations across North America. We are on target to open additional seven to eight company-owned restaurants in 2009 for a total of 14 to 15 restaurants all of which will be…

Thanks Danny, good afternoon everyone. In the first quarter of 2009, our comp store sales decreased of 8.1% which is driven by a 10.2% decrease in guest counts partially offset by a 2.1% increase in average check. We expected the first quarter of 2009 to be the most difficult comparison of 2009 as we went up against our strongest quarter last year. In the first quarter a year ago, our comp store sales were up 3.9% driven by a 0.4% lower guest count that was more than offset by a 4.3% higher price and mix. In addition to the tough year-over-year comparison and the fact that we did not have the benefit of TV in Q1 of this year as we had for most of the first quarter of last year, we continue to operate in a very difficult economic environment where we are contending with very aggressive discounting and promotions for many casual dining chains. During the first four weeks of the second quarter, our comp store sales were down 11.1% versus being up 0.5% in the first four weeks of the second quarter a year ago. Please note that the year-ago four week period has two weeks of national cable advertising, so we are cycling through that media spend that we had in 2008 in addition to facing a more intense competitive landscape this year. Susan will talk about some of the marketing strategies that we have deployed in Q1 and what we have planned for Q2. You will recall a restaurant enters our comparable base five full quarters after it opens. Our first quarter had 244 company-owned comparable restaurants out of the 298 total company owned restaurants. Average weekly sales for the restaurants in our comp base were $58,079 during the first quarter of 2009 compared to…

Thanks Eric, as most of you know we used national cable TV in 2007 and 2008 to drive brand awareness and understanding especially in our newer markets. In 2009, we decided to capitalize on the brand awareness gains and focus our marketing dollars on more targeted traffic driving and retention initiatives including a robust online digital media plan, targeted direct mail with coupons promotions, and local restaurant initiatives. Based on this more targeted focus, restaurant contributions to our national advertising fund were reduced in 2009 to 0.25 % of our national revenue from 1.5 % in 2008. The 2009 marketing plan is based on driving traffic by supporting product news. We started off the year celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Red Robin brand by highlighting some of our long time Red Robin favorites including our royal Red Robin burger which has a fried egg on top, and our famous towering onion rings. Our Feb. March promotion which included our innovated and spicy Burning Love Burger and Southwest Ancho Chicken Salad, both featuring both our new jalapeno coins. To drive incremental traffic we supported the Burning Love Burger with a targeted direct mail piece in mid February that communicated the fun ingredients, a bottomless steak fries and limited time only call to action. The mailing supported all our company owned locations targeting approximately 5000 households within a 3 mile radius of each restaurant, offering a $3.00 off incentive to try the new burger. The Burning Love Burger incentive achieved a redemptions rate of more than 8%. Which is significantly higher than what is typical for these type of mailings. We also had a strong internet media program from February through early April that included banner heads, a 15 seconds online video supporting the Burning Love Burger. Given the success of…

Thanks Susan, first of all, if you haven’t already seen our news release on the quarter’s results you can find it on our websites at redrobin.com in the investor relations section. The fiscal first quarter of 2009 was a 16-week period ending April 19th . Compared to the fiscal 1st quarter last year, total revenues including restaurant sales and franchise royalties increased 6% to $270.8 million. Restaurant sales grew 6.3% to $266.6 million and consisted of $221.2 million in sales from our comp restaurant, $12.5 million in sales from the 2008 acquired restaurants, and about $32.9 million in sales from our non-comparable restaurants. As Eric mentioned, the 15 franchise restaurants acquired in second quarter of 2008 have not been included in our comp-store sales metrics yet. Franchise royalties and fees decreased 10.4% in the first quarter to $4.2 million and exclude the $517,000 in royalty’s contribution from the 2008 acquired restaurant. The 98 comp restaurants in the US franchise system reported a 7.2% decrease in same-store sales while the 18 comp restaurants in the Canadian franchise system reported a 0.8% increase in same-store sales for the first quarter. Our restaurant level operating profit margin was 17.7% which compares to the 19.1% that we reported in the 1st quarter of 2008. The 140 basis point margin decrease was driven by 80 basis points of higher costs of sales, 40 basis points of higher labor costs, 30 basis points of stock compensation expense related to the restaurant team member stock options that were tendered, and 70 basis points of higher occupancy costs. These higher costs were partially offset by 80 basis points of lower operating costs. Now I would like to go through our food costs in a fair amount of since some of Red Robin’s trends might be different from what…

Thanks Jenny. I would like to leave you with a few thoughts before we go to the Q&A portion of our call. We fully appreciate the challenges we face and we’re confident we have the right strategy to meet them head on and emerge even stronger as and when the operating environment improves. To go to the top line, we will continue to focus on targeted marketing strategies to drive incremental traffic and frequency and we will make a connection with our guests through our great gourmet burgers, superior service while we invest in our team members that make it happen and continue to manage control of cost at both the restaurant and at corporate level. We expect to generate significant free cash flow this year and will continue to pay down debt as reflected in our recent actions further strengthening our balance sheet. In closing, I am very thankful to be working with such a dedicated team. With that operator, we are ready for questions.

Thank you, if you would like to ask a question at this time please press star 1 on your touch tone phone. After you connect your speaker phone please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again that is star 1 if you do have a question we’ll go first to Matthew DiFrisco with Oppenheimer & Co. Matthew DiFrisco – Oppenheimer & Company: I just, can you quantify or what do you estimate how much of these comp lag par se the Malcolm math number that just came out would you say is quantifiable due to the offer of the cable advertising?

You cut out the last part of your question Matt. Can you repeat that? Matthew DiFrisco – Oppenheimer & Company: Sure, Censure Sales your current trends that you are doing now like around 10% or so what Malcolm master supported of better than down five or better down than 4.5 is, can you tell us how much of that difference is due to the cable advertising, the lack of during the year?

That’s pretty difficult for us to quantify specifically we know we had two weeks last year during these first four weeks of the quarter that we were on advertising, again with the residual from the first quarter advertising as well and we were up quite a bit year over a year even last year, when we do a two year trend for our own business for, you know looking year over a year on two year trend we are still running above the nap track average through the first quarter. Matthew DiFrisco – Oppenheimer & Company: And then I guess have you seen a change of your consumer, I know you’ve talked tins and twins before used before but looking through the unemployment data it looks like the teenage unemployment level is rising and could be pretty bad this summer, what do you see in this, is there anything a strategy you are kind of get that team into your store if they are not trafficking other, may be your neighboring retailers.

Matt we haven’t seen any other discernible difference and our active guest chat is almost unchanged. Matthew DiFrisco – Oppenheimer & Company: Okay, thank you.

Well then back to Brat Mandicar with Quebec Capital Market. Brat – Quebec Capital Market: Good afternoon thank you. I need to ask First of, what is this $15 schedule the payment when is that due?

The 15 million is a quarterly payment that we pay over $2.8 million in our first quarter’s schedule repayments, I think it increases to about 4.8 million in the last couple of payments in June and September so the quarterly pay down. Brat – Quebec Capital Market: Okay, and now the stakes sliders you are going to do the marketing the cable advertisement for that rule out, can you quantify how much that will be in the second quarter marketing expenditures, I mean is there something that we may be not expecting here previously.

Yeah we are planning on spending roughly 1.3 million in the media buy and approximately half of that as incremental spend half of that is coming from other, just being allocated from other resources of other things that we are directing into this. Brat – Quebec Capital Market: Okay

And it’s all on Q2. Brat – Quebec Capital Market: All in Q2, alright and that will be all in operating expenses?

Exactly yeah it’s in the marketing media spend, it’ll be absorbed in the in offerings

In GNA not offerings Brat – Quebec Capital Market: In GNA, okay and then last question, you talked about the kitchen initiative and how you are in faith to do that right now and you are encouraged by the results can you talk about specific results that qualify what the encouraging data points are.

You know Brat a lot of it is since we are in the middle of the roll outs and we are chucking, I don’t think we will really go into detail yet and doing only from the fields we are seeing a lot more efficiencies and we’ll start we’re measuring it when all its all in effects come in June 15 with the new menu roll-up. Brat – Quebec Capital Market: Alright thank you very much.

We’ll go next to Nicole Miller with Piper Jaffray Nicole Miller – Piper Jaffray: Thanks good afternoon, I just want to better understand if this slider of marketing is the same period over a year and then I believe in your first quarter you have your, I’m not sure if its labeled G or at MIG conference but, can you tell us if this kind of settlement from your partners on this field and would there be an opportunity for you to go back on T.V advertising in an economic recovery.

Nicole this is Susan I’ll answer the first part of your question. We had during Q-2 five weeks of television in 2008 and we’ll have three weeks this year, it was more front loaded last year part of the quarter and it was you know blinking so we are on one week of next week, what we are doing this year is three solid weeks in a row on a national cable

Last year it was Bradley Nicole, this year the three weeks will be totally focused on sliders

And sliders last year was on February March and this year sliders will be on Q-2 and then on the menu from June 4

Nicole in terms of your franchise leadership question we got some of the highest reviews scores from the leadership seminar in terms of Take home value, we did well make the connection in the as well as our leadership platform in breakouts there, obviously with the economic financing environment its making it very difficult for Franchise East to grow, however I think its still a great testament even during those tough economic times as we know there is not a lot of lending going on, that our franchise partners will deal with 5 to 6 and still have new units in the piper so I think that speaks to the confidence that they have long time in the brand.

Thank you and just to be clear in those three weeks of T.V fund the year was at the TV in the bar cards

We have many commemorators this time, we are seeking knowledge, we are rolling out this campaign and we’ll make decisions as we go forward Nicole Nicole Miller – Piper Jaffray: Thank you very much

Thank you.

Next we have Thomas with Morgan Keegan Thomas – Morgan Keegan: Thanks, hey guys, just wanted to also follow up on the addition to the TV program in Q2, I thought I remembered you guys testing some products to specific promotion at the end of last year and I just be curious kind of what you think is changed or what you think makes you feel more comfortable about rolling something out now at this point that’s a little more products specific

One of the things that’s different this time is that we know that sliders is something that was very successful, very popular last year, we have gotten so many guest comments, when are you bringing your stakes sliders back, so we know this is news worthy and instead of doing it in a local market, this is going to be like I said national awareness and that it was probably a down economic time for one of the markets that we selected in Q-4 of last year so that, that didn’t help, this time we think that with the product news in the whole, thing of them coming back, this is a great time to go back on with the, with product focus in a real fun TV sport just to let people know how you want them in the back of their…

And Jest was local that we did back in the year winter Thomas – Morgan Keegan: Okay great, thank you.

We’ll go next to Steven Ray of JP Morgan Steven Ray – JP Morgan: Hi thanks, it appears as if the competition of burgers is specifically becoming a lot more aggressive with price point and discounting of sandwiches and burgers, and so I’d be curious how you can start unpacking your business if you’ve seen a notice of change in trends when with the competition becomes more aggressive.

We’ll we definitely noticed that there are is a lot of discounting out there and one of the things we don’t want to do, I cant speculate and say if they are discounting current guests or truly driving in incremental guests but I can say that when we have targeted a prospects we then offer to try our new product with the products we have received, you know really high redemption rate on it, but we have not necessarily noticed any change in our business from their specific discounting. Steven Ray – JP Morgan: And then Katie thanks for the color on the …instead of just talk about your full year and fresh importation 60% of that change and how………

We are still working on recovery missing single digit of somewhere between 5 and 7 Steven Ray – JP Morgan: Okay and then how is that going to progress throughout the year based on, you know all the contracts you have in place today?

Yeah I mean I think a lot of it is going to depend on the spot for hamburger, we feel like you know we have contracted and that’s why we have only contracted for about 40% to 60% of our volume in the back up of the year, we are hoping we might be able to broaden that with some capability that, may be we will see if that will back up the year so we don’t know if for too much of a volume to the back up of the year, so its really hard to speculate what we’re going to see when. We do know that cheese is coming off and we’ll probably start to benefit from the reduction in cost of cheese prior coming down and we’ll start to see that sometimes starting in June, so we do know that there is some favorability in certain commodities we talk about we don’t know what the potato crop is going to be there this year, hopefully the grains wont trump the potato planting and you know cause a fragmental supply to price orders again. But that’s again speculation that’s why we are going to use the 5% to 7% range and as we move throughout the year we will get more visibility but right now it’s hard to put as when. Steven Ray – JP Morgan: Okay and just finally on the labor component, I guess a 40 basis point excluding the charge will look pretty good, you know despite being done at 50%, so just perhaps you can just talk about what you are doing at the store level to manage labor and if we should expect those sort of trends to continue throughout the year, you know in a negative track environment

Yes Steven , we’ve been obviously focused on picking the picks and neutralizing some proprietor software that we have in terms of forecasting, we’re definitely not cutting corners or increasing section sizes, some of the benefits that we are seeing or have initially seen is in the hardware house with the simplicity to the project initially that I spoke to, we are taking anywhere between you know 3 and 4 hours a day out of the hardware house, we are investing a portion of that to improve sales we are, we will not get through however expensive our team members of our guests, so we will not go to 5 , 6 , 7 table sections, that’s not the way to maximize peak hour sales, so we’re using old processes and it’s a daily commitment to make sure that we pick into… Steven Ray – JP Morgan: Great thank you very much

We’ll go next to Joe Barsley of Bank of America Joseph Buckley – Bank of America: Hi to you, could you, I had an. earlier on the kitchen streamlining and… to use, are you… Kitchens stream lining and the removal of SKU’s. Are you simmering the menus? To some extent could you do that?

Well, Joe, we are looking at the menu very strategically, Suzan and her team as well as our Food and Beverage division. I’ll give you an example, we have a burger item that’s on the menu that sells for a day, and that menu item actually requires 3 preparatory SKU’s and two prep recipes. So we’ll look at that by eliminating a single item that’s a little bit a lot on the lower end of guest preference, we’re able to take prep out of the equation as well as SKU’s. And replace it with an item that we think is even going to have stronger guest appeal. One small example of many of the things that we’re doing to streamline the operations back there. It’s not going to be a considerably smaller menu however. Joseph Buckley – Bank of America: Okay, and then I got a question on the second quarter advertising plans, and then you said half of the 1.3 million is incremental. Is that 50 or 60,000 entirely a corporate expense or system wide expense of the franchise will be share?

It’s primarily a corporate expense Joseph Buckley – Bank of America: Okay. Could you remind us how the advertising in the fourth quarter last year, I think you just said you earned second quarter last year for five weeks, what you earned for the first quarter and if you have it what you going for third and fourth quarter really?

Yes. So in the first quarter of ’08 we were on for eight weeks. And they were – it was a pretty solid start since we were launching two new brand spots. In Q2 it was the continuation of those brand spots, and it was on a week, off a week, on a week, off a week, on a week, off a week. So five weeks but they were like I said, forced. And so that was five weeks and we’re coming in roughly over the force and doing three weeks straight. Joseph Buckley – Bank of America: Okay. And back to last year were you on a certain number of weeks in the third and fourth quarter?

We’re on, as you know, 23 weeks total, so in Q3 we’re on seven weeks and then three weeks in Q4 Joseph Buckley – Bank of America: Okay. Thank you.

Sure.

Welcome back to John Glass with Morgan Stanley John Glass – Morgan Stanley: Hi, thanks. On the 11% comp that you talked about in the first four weeks in this quarter this year? Again what was the comparable period last year?

Up point five. John Glass – Morgan Stanley: Okay. And how did the last four weeks compare to the prior four weeks? It would seem like its down probably sequential, is that true?

Slightly. Slightly John Glass – Morgan Stanley: Got you. Okay. And then, Kay, what kind of comp are you planning on for that down 50 to 80 basis points for restaurant margins. Could you achieve that?

[Inaudible] and I didn’t answer. It is based on a range of comp assumptions but we are not going to try to box in a guidance number at this point on sales, there are a lot of variables that also play into, you know labour and commodities, they drive that as well. So we’re not going to give you a range but it is based on a range that we’ve done internally. John Glass – Morgan Stanley: Could you achieve it with comps where they are today?

Yes John Glass – Morgan Stanley: Okay. And then, that’s important. And then you said down 50 to 80, in last quarter you said down 50 to 100 so what got better incrementally on margins from last quarter?

One of the things that we thought was, you know, some better than we’d hoped for Q1 results, so our estimates of Q1 came in a little bit better. And then in - again we talked about some of the commodities that we could see may not be material you know what else scenario for our commodities in the remainder of the year, so there is some potential for up side there as well. John Glass – Morgan Stanley: Got you. Okay, great. Thank you

At this time we’ll take our last question from Thomason Wade with Pacifial Research

Great. Good afternoon everybody. I got a question on the ad campaign. So in the back half was it all brand advertising as well?

Yes

In the back half of 2008, yes. Yes it was all brand advertising. We launched two new creative spots though in the beginning of Q3

Okay. And then what you’re planning to do with these? national advertising for the sliders?

That’s correct. Its national cable advertising.

Okay. As you look back on this, on the ad campaign that you ran in the last year or two, do you feel like you got an adequate pay off from it? Or is the fact that it was mainly brand advertising kind of hindered any sort of traffic that you were able to generate?

We did feel that we got benefit from the television primarily to advertising awareness and understanding. Especially in our newer markets, we did see our unaided and aided awareness increase significantly in those markets. So that was very successful on our minds, but as we mentioned in our past calls we believe that our strategy of focusing on product news and that’s what were doing with these stake sliders, is the way to drive traffic for us.

Going forward is national advertising going to be part of that – your budget and your thoughts on marketing

There’ll definitely be a consideration if the return is there, yes.

Okay. Well, I guess a good question is more of do you feel like you got a good return? I mean here we are in the first quarter, you had a down eight, and yet you’ve got up earnings and your full level, your EBITA margin is you know, flattish. It can arguably be said in a more competitive environment.

Yes. We felt we got the return out of the TV.

Okay. Thanks

Thank you

And that concludes our Question and Answer session I’d like to turn the conference back to our speakers for any closing remarks.

Well, at this point we thank you for your time today, it’s been a long call, Katie’s out of breath but we appreciate your time and look forward to talking to you again. Thank you.

Thanks everyone that concludes today’s conference, we thank you for your participation.