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Is it going to be inflation? Everybody’s dealing with that, but we’ve been pricing below inflation because we think it’s the right thing to do for our guests and for the long-term benefit of our guests, our team members and our shareholders. Is the biggest challenge going to be an employment challenge, that it’s hard to find people? The industry is dealing with that. I know that we’re ready for it, whatever it is. On the opportunities side, I don’t know what the biggest challenge is going to be. Those margins help us offset inflation and help us continue to make the investments that we’ve been making over the years to have an even stronger company no matter what environment we’re in going forward. I’m most excited about the fact that we are back to our levels of employment from pre-COVID, with a stronger company, with better margins. That purpose really is something that we talked about 20 years ago: is nourishing and delighting everyone we serve. but that strategy helps us meet a bigger purpose. It’s worked for us and COVID has actually strengthened our resolve on that strategy. There are still some uncertainties, as you mentioned, some uncertainties that we’re seeing whether it’s inflation or staffing, but we have the strategy in place that we put in place before COVID. We’ve had some challenges through COVID, but we’ve come out a much stronger company than we went into it. What do you see as the biggest challenge and what are you most excited about?Ī: The last few years have been pretty challenging. On the last earnings call you talked about the possibility of a recession. Q: Coming out of the pandemic, restaurants have faced challenges, whether it’s employment or inflation.
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So that’s kind of where the differences are, but they’re slight. The only thing, and it’s a little Post-it note in his handwriting, and it says, “A pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.” That’s a Winston Churchill quote. There was a quote sitting on a Post-it note in my office, which used to be Gene’s office, it’s the only thing he left. You try to figure out, “What can go wrong? What can go wrong?” My bent is “Yeah, things can go wrong, but how can we make them go right? What can we do to make things go right?” So that’s really where we’re slightly different, and Gene said the same thing. We do a great job, but that one tenth of a percent that goes wrong, sticks to you. Gene grew up in operations where 99.9% of things go right. It’s because of nature and where people grew up in their careers. This is not to say that Gene’s a pessimistic person. He’s an operator that has a good financial mind, I’m a financial person that always had an operations bent, but if you really come down to the essence of it, there’s a spectrum of optimism and pessimism. As I said, we’re a little bit of a mirror of each other. Q: You’ve said publicly people shouldn’t expect a lot of change, but how do you see yourself as different than Gene?Ī: We’re very similar.