Denny's Corporation (DENN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. Good morning, everyone. We're a rowdy bunch. Good morning. This is a great start, some energy in the room. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. I know we've got some people that have come from the West Coast and people that didn't have to travel far, so for all of you that are spending time with us here today, we appreciate you. We're very grateful. Welcome to the Denny's Investor Day, our first investor conference -- and this is for 2024, obviously. The theme Igniting Growth: The Rise of a New Day at Denny's is something that will unfold as we talk throughout the day, something we're really excited about. I think you'll see from the stories you'll hear, the plans you'll see, including outlook for the longer term, that we've got a really great day planned for you. And again, we appreciate you being here. Before I do start, let me quickly make sure to remind you that we will be discussing forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures during this event. Please refer to our SEC filings for a discussion of risk factors and quarterly financial releases for an explanation of our non-GAAP reconciliations to the comparable GAAP measures. So with that, I'm excited to get started and talk to you about what you're going to see from myself and from our team, and obviously, I'm Kelli Valade. I'm the Chief Executive Officer for the Denny's Corporation. But you will see us talking about both of our brands, the Denny's brand, the flagship brand, and then also Keke's Breakfast Cafe. And we're really excited because until now, and having purchased the Keke's Breakfast Cafe brand just a couple of years ago, we've been spending a lot of our time integrating that brand into our shared service model and into the Denny's Corporation. And we'll get to tell you a little bit more. You've been anxious to hear about it and hear what we've been doing with this brand since we purchased it, and you will get to hear that complete story today. So I'm going to review -- we released this morning, as most of you know, and so I'll review the highlights from quarter 3. This is still an incredibly volatile environment that we are in. I believe we controlled what we can control, and we'll discuss, I'll give you those highlights in a moment. I'm going to talk about the state of the industry and what it looks like in the near term and what we can see in terms of the outlook for the consumer, and just in general, what we know about the industry. We will talk about the Denny's brand specifically, our playbook. We'll talk about our CRAVE strategies that apply for both brands. You'll hear from Dave Schmidt, our President of Keke's, and you'll hear from several on the Denny's team as they present those plans. We have a really unique and special opportunity for you. We've got some of our franchisees here from both brands that will be coming up and they'll be doing a fireside chat and some Q&A with Raphael Gross from ICR. We're excited about that. And then finally, you'll hear Robert talk about our long-term outlook, something that has perhaps never been done. Never been done. For us, this was a chance for you to hear from our -- some new members on our executive team. This is a renewed and highly focused executive team and leadership team for both brands. We'll talk about the structure of both of those brands now, having moved from just the Denny's flagship brand for so many years to now having 2 brands in our portfolio. So we'll talk about that. You'll get a chance -- we'll get a chance to showcase that new leadership today and tell those stories as I've mentioned. We are going to show you and articulate our path to revenue growth and to cash flow growth. We're going to talk about the stabilization of the Denny's brand and the transformation that's underway for the Denny's brand. We're going to talk to you about the path to getting to net growth and improvements for all and increases in shareholder value in general. And again, I mentioned we're going to provide long-term outlook. So with that, this is the executive team. So when -- after purchasing the Keke's brand, we really had to set up an executive team that could focus on -- in some cases, there are people maniacally focused only on a single brand, like Chris Bode, who is here, who is our President and CEO of the Denny's brand; and Dave Schmidt, who is the President and runs the Keke's brand. So they're split into 2 separate teams. Everything else is leveraged. Most of the people here you see are leveraged and support both brands, and you'll hear from some of those folks today. In particular, what I'd say about this leadership team, we have both a blend of folks that have been here, like Robert Verostek, who you know, many of you know, our CFO that's 25 years with the Denny's brand. Steve Dunn, our Chief Development Officer, who you'll hear from today, is 20 years as of last Friday. And then we have new members like Patty Trevino, who has extensive experience in almost every segment in the industry and has now joined us just about 3 months or so ago, and she's ready to take the stage and talk to you about the marketing transformation that's underway. She's our new Chief Brand Officer. And so with that, let me highlight some of the things you saw this morning in terms of -- that is not moving for me. This is being webcast as well, so we're all trying to kind of keep up and make sure, but I do want to make sure that -- there we go. Now we're advancing. Awesome. All right. So for the highlights for the Denny's system in particular, what you saw was sequential improvement from July, August, the impact from weather a little bit, and then a stronger September and again, a strong -- so far strong result in early October. So for July in particular, we are flat sales for the Denny's brand. August was negative, impacted by weather, negative [ 1.7% ]. Sequential improvement when we turned on our value offer, our unique value equity, with $2-$4-$6-$8. We saw that increase in September to positive [ 1.1% ]. Started stealing share again from not only casual dining, where we've been stealing share a great deal, but we also started stealing share from family dining in these last 3 quarters, and we definitely saw that same sequential improvement, bigger gains and bigger beats to Black Box Intelligence and other benchmarks that we track, October, 0.7% so far. So we are really thrilled -- as we turn that value offer back on, we're thrilled with the benefits that we are seeing. The other things that impacted our quarter aside from coming out on August 21 with that Everyday Value proposition that we know the guests so desperately needs. We also were able to launch and have been working on the launch of our third virtual brand with Banda Burrito. That contributed to our sales increase about 70 basis points, and we have almost 1,000 units on the Banda Burrito concept. You will hear later today, virtual brands, we hear some talking about it, we hear some that aren't talking about it, and Denny's still seems to be leaning in as a strategy. And you will hear us confirm or reconfirm why, for this brand, it completely makes sense and it is an incremental guest, and why we are continuing to be bullish on our virtual brands and our off-premise strategy as a whole, given our hours at the Denny's brand, given the fact that we can leverage our fixed costs. I would also say for many brands, and you follow them, that have said never to off-premise, never to those third-party aggregators, many now say, yes, even post pandemic, there are a few that I'll leave out -- I won't mention them right now. But you will see that and you do hear that. So for us, we'll double down and talk to you about why that strategy is important to us. We do have a remodel program that we call Diner 2.0. You're going to hear a lot about that, and not only what that did for us in this quarter, but what we think can be unlocked when we start to get tremendous scale on our remodel program. You'll hear us talk about the incentives we're going to give and how we'll make sure that we can get that flywheel turning and get back into some really strong cadence around remodeling our buildings, our assets, upgrading our assets. So we have great results on those. Those 4 things were the contributing factors to the results that we saw and improvements that we saw in the quarter. On the Keke's brand cafe, they were -- we were negative 1%, but also saw sequential improvements for the Keke's brands, heavily impacted right now, as you can imagine, by 2 storms that came through, both Helene and Milton. So that brand is heavily impacted by that because it is almost all in Florida. That's a Florida-based brand that we are expanding and we have taken outside of Florida already. We actually have locations in Tennessee, 2 of them. We've been growing that at a fairly decent clip, and we'll continue to do that. We'll talk about those growth plans in a minute. We actually opened in Colorado 2 weeks ago as well. So we've got a strong start. We spent our time doing the right things, I believe, finding the right leadership talents. Dave Schmidt is absolutely the right person, coming from a portfolio company with Bloomin' Brands. Actually, he started his career at Denny's way back when, and then spent a lot of his time at different brands, both in a CFO role and a President role with different brands of Bonefish. So absolute right person to come in and leverage what he knows and leverage our portfolio and our shared service assets and then unlock the potential of these great franchisees and the model at Keke's Breakfast Cafe. So there was improvement there, heavily hit by or heavily impacted, more impacted by the storms because of their location. They did launch 80% of the system now, has alcohol, has sangrias, mimosa is doing really well, and we'll let the franchisees tell you about that, and Dave speak more to that. But one of the things we found in our research in trying to understand and best protect what was special about the brand, the secret sauce, if you will, when we acquired the brands, we did a ton of research, what we call brand ethos research, to find out what guests expected. One of the things we learned was you expect to be able to have maybe a mimosa, maybe sangria, something with brunch. Brunch is fun, and this is a brand leaning very hard into what they can excel at and what they can have different -- where they can differentiate. Fresh starts served daily. There's new work that's been done just to lean into what makes them unique and different and separate from others in the category. This is becoming a pretty crowded segment, and I'll talk about what the acquisition has meant for us. But they've had -- they've turned online -- they've been able to turn their systems on, do different things with their website and really start to activate online sales, taking them from where they were to a really great robust plan for off-premise sales as well as online, just online and having their website now equipped to speak to that. And then we do have -- so we know there's been a lot of interest in how many developments -- how many units in the development pipeline or how many signed agreements, so right now over 140 are signed, and we're excited about the potential to continue to grow that brand. We've got a remodel that's happened as well. So we've got a whole fleet in Florida that were not ever remodeled, never, ever touched. And I can tell you these franchisees that are with the Keke's brand are really excited about the potential, and our first one in Doctor Phillips really did extremely well. So the highlights from the quarter, again, still navigating a tough environment, and again, stealing share. So share is the name of the game. This is an industry that's been negative in transactions for a very long time. So while we are not, we still want more. We did see that sequential improvement last quarter. It's a 50 basis point improvement from prior quarter on the Denny's business and a bigger -- even bigger improvement on the Keke's brand, over 350 basis points sequential improvement from the prior quarter. So really measured but consistent and wanting to get obviously more and more sales, and the trajectory is strong, as we mentioned. $111.8 million in total operating revenue. Our adjusted franchise operation (sic) [ operating ] margin did not change significantly at 51%, slightly below the last quarter. Our adjusted company restaurant operating margin was $6.2 million or 11.8% as you can see here. Total operating income at $11.7 million, our adjusted EBITDA right on $20 million, $7.8 million for CapEx and then $0.14 in EPS. So this one I know -- we'll go through here for a minute, just to make sure that this is all very clear. Because you're seeing some new numbers here, and I'll call out just what is different. So we're tightening the range on sales guidance, tightening that range there. As you can see, we did not change the openings. We have changed the closures, and you're going to hear why and you're going to hear our strategic approach to why we are looking at closures. In fact, for many conversations that we have with you over the years and knowing what our model looks like today post-pandemic, we believe this is absolutely the right thing to do to kind of work towards getting our system healthier. We're not the first brand to do this and have a bigger closure number that was originally 40 to 60. We're now talking about 75 to 95. But again, on our terms, working with those franchisees, looking at our quintile analysis, and you'll hear us talk about all the inputs that went into this new number and these new expectations. And then finally on EBITDA, there's an adjustment there that's been made down to $81 million to $84 million. As for the state of the industry, again, I'd like to believe we are controlling everything we can control and have a good playbook, with many initiatives in the works. Our initiatives, when they hit and as they scale, we know that they can contribute to our business and to our model. The industry and the headwinds are real, and I'll step you through just what that looks like and yet why we are still optimistic about the plans going forward. You know this, but the choppy economy and the issues that the American people -- the things that are on everyone's mind right now, that is not expected to change in the near term. There's nothing that we see that suggests that slight improvement may be post-election, but there's not a lot of reason to think, in the near term, it won't continue to be choppy. These are some of the reasons why personal savings rates are below where they were in 2019 or they're below pre-pandemic levels now. That is impacting everyone, but especially the lower income households that I'll speak to in a moment. Food away from home continues to outpace food in grocery stores, and when that happens, there is an absolute real trade down that occurs and people say, I can get that at the grocery store, make it myself versus going out. And it's a delta of almost 3 points, 4% to just a little over 1% for grocery store inflation. And when that -- if you went back 20 years in history, when you see that kind of dynamic happening, you do see people that do the math, vote with their feet and stay home a little bit more often. We also saw researchers with Circana, formerly NPD. This research basically said, this is how people are figuring out what to do and how to manage their check. And you've heard it over and over again from many brands in the last few quarters, but they will go out less often, they will eat smaller portions or order less expensive items. There's a comment made in this presentation that basically said, we're seeing a lot more adults order kids' meals, right? And as far as we can tell, that's not the Ozempic impact or anything like that. It is really how I manage my check. So maybe less add-ons, maybe less -- maybe smaller portions, but we do see kids' meals being offered more or ordered more with adults. If you are in a household with an income less than $50,000, you're even more impacted. And so many may assume -- we'll talk about our household income, which is higher than this, obviously, but we do have a decent amount in our consumer and our target consumer base that do have a household income around $50,000 or less than that. So we know that, frankly, this is where we are. And again, we'll talk about what it is for Denny's household income and what the target is or the consumer base is for Keke's. They are different. But right now, it's just worth knowing, obviously, that the household income $50,000 or less are the most impacted by the tough times, personal savings, all the things we just mentioned. And this is just a reality. Family dining, this is the segment we're in, even a Keke's Breakfast Cafe, which is in that new daytime cafe, eatery, whatever you want to call it, is still tucked under family dining. It's not a separate segment, even though it's very different, and there's been explosive growth in that kind of subsegment. It's still in family dining. And what this would say is, obviously, family dining has had it the worst post-pandemic and has lost the most traffic. But everyone has lost traffic. Everyone. So there are things we look to, to try and understand not only is the playbook that we have, are we doing the right things. But given this environment, what are the next steps that we take to shore up better strength in our business? And so for us, knowing what's happening in the world, we look to this iconic brand -- speaking to Denny's first, this iconic brand is still incredibly relevant in cultural conversations all the time. Whether we pay for it or not, whether we encourage the conversation or not, we are out there all the time, and you'll see that from Patty when she covers the transformation happening in marketing and what we've got to work with in terms of this iconic brand. Our new restaurants outperformed, significantly outperformed the average of the rest of our fleet, and you'll see Steve talk about that. That tells me this is an iconic brand that's resilient, because you open a new restaurant, it's brand spanking new. It looks like Denny's, feels like Denny's. You've got that great amazing food, those great breakfast items. You see that, that's a resilient brand that's still relevant today, and is still an icon. We outperformed Black Box Intelligence. When it's that kind of share game, when you see those kind of declines across every segment of the industry, we're still stealing share, and it is a share gain. 6 out of the 7 last quarters, we beat casual dining, the casual dining index. And that's with some very strong players, and you know who they are, in casual dining, but the weakness there and potentially the trade down that we got from casual dining, and because we're running our own race and doing our own things, we consider that to be a win despite, again, our traffic and our sales. Guest sentiment scores continue to improve, and I'll show you that quickly as we delve into the Denny's brand. We've also had consistently solid same restaurant sales, and so lots have smoothed out a bit for COVID here, kind of a wild looking graph, coming off of 2 very strong years and coming off of lapse, basically, post-COVID. They're still positive. We planned and we showed you the tightening of the range and what we plan to do this year, and this is what we've been able to deliver over many, many years and over a decade. We now have 2 complementary breakfast brands that are truly set up to create a long-term, really robust story, and we're excited about that. We are an asset-light company. We're an asset-light model. We generate significant cash flow. We'll talk about that throughout the day. For Denny's -- we have kept them separate. For Denny's, we say we love to feed people, body, mind and soul. That came from Harold Butler, who started Denny's as Danny's Donuts in 1953. And there's a unique positioning and a unique -- there are unique stories for the Keke's Breakfast Cafe brand that we wanted to keep uniquely separate. And so what you'll see is we take everything we can from a shared service perspective or an enterprise perspective, keeping the CRAVE strategies that are at the top of this graph the same. But then when it gets to the brand, if it touches the guests, if it touches the employee, they are uniquely different. So leverage where we can, but also allow them to do their thing, have their own playbook, speak to their own guests, and I'll talk to you about the difference in those guests. The vision for Denny's, at this point, road -- we're calling it the road to $400,000, but it's about getting to AUVs that are $2.2 million over the next several years. And we've got a road map that maps exactly to how we will do that, right, including closures and what that can do to lift the average and they improve the health of the portfolio. So we'll talk about that. You'll see at Keke's, I talked about -- Dave will talk about 40 million fresh starts annually by 2030. So very clear distinct goals for the 2 brands and again, leveraging shared services and the enterprise. The core focus for the Denny's brand: take back breakfast, reignite value leadership. We're doing that with $2-$4-$6-$8, and we see tons of room going forward for a continued improvement there. And then accelerating off-premise growth, as you've heard us talk about many times, for the Keke's brand to strengthen in the core and then it's grow -- as Robert likes to say, to grow the fire out of Keke's. So we'll talk about that growth, that explosive growth. For family dining, Denny's is the #2 player in the segment. We've contracted the most since COVID. That's a fact. We've contracted the most. But we have one of the highest AUVs, and some of that is due to the closures that have happened, whether trade areas moved or they're just simple -- the simple dynamics of the model haven't worked. So for some of those things that we are -- that we know of, we are controlling and doing what we can to control our environments and control what we are doing. So there's still some really good things there in terms of the Denny's brand. Family dining makes up 30% of full-service restaurants. So you see all the players that are there and the size. We're ninth in full-service restaurants. And again, we take up a lot of space in that family dining segment, 30%. And then again, I've mentioned this, but 3 of the last -- the last 3 quarters have outpaced family dining, which has brands, again, like First Watch and some of those A.M. Eatery or Daytime cafes in it, outpaced as of late, and we've been outpacing casual dining for quite some time. For Keke's, you can see -- primarily located in Florida, as we mentioned, this is a franchise model also. It's one of the reasons we purchased this brand, to leverage our world-class franchise or approach. Our approach in bringing them in was to leverage that, leverage the different networks that we have with franchisees at Denny's, but then also to take this already-franchise model and really grow it exponentially. The daytime eatery category, you see Keke's sitting right there in the middle at 61. We've grown that already since we acquired it. This is limited service hours. This is really one daypart. There's huge growth in breakfast that's continuing, whether it's some of these mom-and-pops and some of these independents that you see in this category. There's a huge opportunity to grow this and to grow it exponentially, while others, those one-offs, those independents, are just not going to be able to do that. So the acquisition of Keke's, in short, has really created a lot of growth opportunities for us, and we continue to be incredibly excited. The unit economics are strong with this brand. The growth potential is there, again, outside of 1 or 2 somewhat large players -- larger -- in the segment. The rest is very, very bifurcated, very fragmented segment with the opportunity for this brand to really leap to the top -- to leapfrog to the top. So the growth potential is huge. It's new customer reach, I'll show you that in the next couple of slides, meaning there's not a lot of overlap with the Denny's and Keke's. We didn't buy something that was exactly the same, and we knew exactly what we were purchasing and how we could leverage those locations and have a different real estate strategy, a different growth strategy than Denny's, all the while leveraging our enterprise. So this one's important. We get asked a lot, does -- can a Keke's go in to the same Denny's side and vice versa? They are different brands. And again, we were crystal clear on that, doing this acquisition, in terms of what we could do to leverage the portfolio, leverage our franchise network, both at Keke's and at Denny's, going in and talking to those franchisees about growth. The average unit volumes are similar. The dayparts and the amount of hours open are very dissimilar. You have one that's still primarily a 24/7 brand, obviously, and then one that's 7:00 to 2:30. So very, very different. The household incomes are different. $63,000 is the average household income for Denny's, and it goes up to $78,000 for Keke's brand. And the checks are a little bit different. You can see here off-premise. Dave will call this out when he speaks to you later today, but off-premise was basically nonexistent or in the single -- mid-single digits, and has now grown to 16% just by turning on the website, getting some online orders through and then starting to use third-party aggregators to get in that business. And there's other levers that you will see in addition to alcohol and the things here that can be pulled. Their net sentiment, you'll see Dave talk about this, so I won't steal his thunder, but it's rarefied air in terms of what that brand has in the way of almost a cult-like following. So it's a complementary player. There's the guest income just shown a different way, household income shown a different way. And the overlap for Denny's -- this was done, and this was researched thoroughly to make sure there wasn't too much overlap, and 11% is very low in terms of guests that knew about or have been to a Keke's. In fact, we have -- one of our franchisees that is here, Clyde Rucker, has one of the -- has a Denny's in the same strip center that there is a Keke's, and there's no concern there. They've lived happily there for quite some time. So we know that, that's a possibility. Again, different real estate strategy. You're doing inlines and in strip malls in different locations for Keke's. Denny's is a different animal. So all of what we are doing will continue to be guided by the CRAVE strategies that really work for both brands. So that work will continue, and you'll see us all reference the CRAVE framework. Craveability, winning brands have craveable food. They have great everyday value and they have a consistently good experience that they deliver to their guests. Both of these brands have the potential to do really incredible things with this framework, with this CRAVE framework, as the way forward. The key themes that you'll hear throughout the day is how we are going to grow our AUVs. I've talked a little bit about that. There's a closure that has the potential -- closures have a potential impact to that, rather. We'll talk about that. But I'll also talk about the ways that will drive traffic and drive that AUV growth. The margin growth and the restaurant growth, you will see us get to net positive growth again for Denny's, which you haven't seen from us in some time, right? You have not seen that in some time. And then cash flow and capital allocation, you'll hear that throughout what we are doing, how we're leveraging our strong balance sheet and strong cash position to continue to allocate it to the things that will create the greatest shareholder return. So for Denny's, I'm going to kick this off and then I'm going to turn it over to the teams pretty quickly. So this is the Denny's leadership team. Chris Bode, he's our new President and COO, but he's back from a quick stint with CKE, where he served as President of both the Hardee's and Carl's Jr. brands. He had been with Denny's for 11 years prior to that. And then you've got just a tight small team. They wake up every day thinking about the Denny's brand. I'll hit on just a couple of things that I've mentioned, but the improvements in -- so the guests may be thinking about their experiences differently, or maybe trading down, or maybe thinking about not going out. When they do go out, it better be better, it better be good, and it better be improving. So the guest experience is critical, and we are continuing to just make great strides in the guest experience at Denny's, way outperforming family dining and even casual dining many times. So the industry as a whole at a 27, and Denny's where they are today, it's a testament to our franchisees and leveraging the tools that we have that can help them to improve. These Google ratings at a Denny's of 4.3 is also pretty incredible. This is the thing that happens when you say, I'd like go to a Denny's on this street, and Siri will tell you what the Google rating is, right? So these things matter. These improvements matter, and it makes a big difference to us. So we're going to continue to double down on that guest experience. Our Achilles heel, we're going to focus on with all of our franchisees, focus on the variability that exists between restaurants. We know that, that's the opportunity. When we have 1,600 restaurants, we have over 200 franchisees, our goal is to continue to focus on that variability where it is top to bottom. We do have a, I would say, not a silver bullet, but a really strong -- we have a way of indicating and showing our franchisees, if you do this, this will happen. What you see there is primary learning system plan completion and it's a system called Ignite, it's our learning management system. When that is used, the higher the completion rate of the system that we provide to our franchisees on the Denny's side, the higher that is, and those -- this is 3 different case studies on 3 different franchisees, when they use the tools, when they use the training materials, we see improvements in net sentiment, and we also see improvements in sales and traffic. And these are, again, pre and post and over many years that we've been watching this. And when we talk to our franchisees, like we just did our big annual convention, we're showing them the power of using the tools that they have and leveraging those tools. We've made improvements. You've heard us talk about this. I didn't want to miss the opportunity to talk about our kitchen optimization or modernization program. That happened a couple of years ago when I joined. It was just at the tail end of implementation. It has made a difference. We are using this for over 50% of our menu, goes through either our ovens or used with our -- or we are leveraging our rethermalizer, the equipment that came with this package. We have seen improved scores on bacon, on sausage, things that go through that oven, and even new innovation like the Liège waffles came through that oven. So we think about innovation going forward, the investments that our franchisees made, and that equipment is absolutely paying off. We see lower waste. We actually see efficiencies in the back of the house as well. And then you'll hear us not too much today, but you've heard us on the earnings call, we'll talk about the investments we're making in technology. This is the only thing you'll see us talk about here today, so we can get to the remodel program and some other things that are related to driving and getting this flywheel turning. But we do have the launch of Xenial coming. We are about and ready to go with that, been in the works for some time, and that has a great return also. We know we can see savings in improved waste, in increased table turns. We have KVS screens, kitchen video display screens, that in some cases, our franchisees don't have. So this enables a whole new way of implementing -- or getting food out. It allows us to do a whole lot of different things that will improve, and it enables a -- I was like, is that my timer that -- and it enables a better service model going forward, potentially food runners and beverage runners, things that will simplify operations going forward. We have more investments to go. You'll hear Patty talk about product quality, value leadership with $2-$4-$6-$8 I've already mentioned, but you're going to see us lean heavily into that, because we know the power of that platform for us, and it's a unique equity. We are not chasing someone else's equity on 3 for whatever. We have our own unique equity there. We'll talk about off-premise in the strategy. We'll also talk about remodels and Diner 2.0, and then we'll talk about portfolio optimization, so you're really clear on that closure number and why we are looking at it the way we are and why that's a strategic approach to the situation we have today, and it will propel long-term growth for us. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Patty Trevino. I mentioned she's our Chief Brand Officer with amazing background. She's hit the ground running. I'll let you listen to Patty next. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. I know it's more -- I think that timer is stressful -- like looking -- if you guys see, that's my countdown. So thanks so much for being here this morning. As Kelli said, my name is Patty Trevino. I'm excited to join the Denny's team after, I think, 25 years in the restaurant industry. I've worked at brands like Burger King and Bloomin' Brands, and I've even gotten to work with some of the current leadership team in those brands. But excited to be here with Denny's and just focus a little bit on what we're going to be talking today. And Kelli shared the CRAVE strategy, and I'm going to be focused on the E. Does anybody remember what the E stood for? Elevating traffic. So I'll be talking about how we're going to actually focus on our brand strength to elevate traffic. And that's through frequency, right? Our current base, like how do we drive frequency of those guests that are coming to our locations today? And then how do we expand that base guest? Of course, that's -- we're all fighting for that traffic. So leaning into our strategy, our strength, right, as Denny's is we've got to make sure that we look at how are we going to increase our average visit from 2.2 to 2.5 that will give us that road to $400,000 goal, right? How do we get that $400,000? Focusing on our strengths, winning key use occasions and engaging the next generation of devotees. That's basically the formula. So Kelli talked about this as well. It's like we are a relevant brand. We are part of relevant conversations. And not only do we have these wonderful celebrities, people, but we also are relevant in major headlines, right? We are earning major headlines, whether it's NVIDIA's founder's story to a surprise Blink-182 concert at both, of course, at Denny's. The brand is part of culture today, which, again, is a strength that we have that others do not have. So leveraging our headlines, it really is about us embracing that we are America's diner for today's America. We're the only people that's open for all. I'll talk a little bit about our consumer and who we speak to, are always there for you, hospitality, we're open 24/7, so whenever you're craving our delicious pancakes, they're there for you, and generational spanning memory maker. I'll also talk a little bit about different generations that go to Denny's, and we have strength across those types of generations. So I'm going to share a little video on -- and talk a little bit about how we are part of culture and a little bit about our guests today. [Presentation]

And for those of you on the webcast, I apologize we weren't able to show that video publicly, but you'll get to see the other videos. So if you saw a blank screen or didn't hear anything, again, this was a video that we only showed here internally. So show the video. We're part of culture. So for us, it really is about making sure that our strategies are built on guest insights, right, understanding who do we serve, like who our guest is, where do we play and how we win. So who we serve. And this is what I was talking a little bit about, about our current guests. Our current guests are multigenerational. I've been with brands before, and I'm sure you've heard of other brands where they highly, highly over-index in the baby boomer and generation X. And as you can see, our actual guest profile reach is not only baby boomers, generation X, but strong hold with millennials and even generation Z. So this is actually a huge strength for this brand. Ethnicity. Another one, too, that you typically see -- you'll see kind of one, but we have great -- not only with the Black and African-American consumer, but very strong, only over 1/3 of our guests are Hispanic or Latino, which is, again, really great as we know that the generation and the ethnicity is growing in America -- in the United States. So again, this is who we serve, where we play. So knowing that we are speaking to a very highly diversified group, we have an opportunity again to be part of culture. So the next one is, where are we going to play? Three things. One, breakfast. We win at breakfast. We have to regain our breakfast food leadership. Second, value. We recently introduced a $2-$4-$6-$8 value menu. And then three, off-premise. I'm going to go a little bit deeper into kind of these areas and what we've been doing. So I'll start off with breakfast first. When we think about breakfast and we think about the food, there's 3 things that we're going to focus on and that we've been focused on. The first is core menu optimization. Everybody loves to talk about the right side of the slide or -- or is it the left side of the slide, where it says new innovation, and everybody talks about it. Oh, we're going to introduce this, and we're introducing this. I'm a big believer that you have to invest in your core menu and making sure that your core menu is working extremely hard for you, because that's where your sales and profit run, right? So core menu optimization is making sure that we our focus on the right things, making sure that the mix is strong, making sure that the margins work extremely well. So that is the whole. So we currently have a study that's being done. We're going to get the report out in the next probably week or 2, but that will lead us into making sure that we have a very, very strong core menu. Next one is quality investment. It's not just about saving pennies and removing costs, it's about how do we take some of those pennies that we're saving and reinvesting in the quality of our food? And the third is innovation. Of course, we've got to have some new news. We got to have some new news to get people excited to come and try. So we are working across these 3 things, but we can't focus on 1 without focusing on the 2 other. It all works together. So some of the things that we've actually done. Like I said, the menu optimization study. We're currently under study and we're going to get the results in the next couple of weeks. Improved bacon. We invested about $8 million in the improvement in quality of our bacon, and that recently went into effect earlier this year. We also introduced, from a new innovation perspective, Strawberry Stuffed French Toast, which has been doing extremely well for us. And then I also wanted to give a little bit of props to our virtual brands like Banda Burrito. We introduced and been doing some ideation for that brand, but we've got a lot of excitement about this Grand Slam Burrito that we're going to be testing, and you'll hopefully see it on the menu soon. So again, a balance of menu optimization, improving our products and some new innovation there. The next that I wanted to speak about is value, right? We talked about -- I'm sure everyone has seen a barbell strategy before. And I'm not going to re-present this to you because -- again, you've probably heard many, many people speak about barbell. But I did want to highlight one thing is in the Barbell Strategy, the relationship, the pricing relationship between the value side and the upsell side has to be extremely strong. Because it breaks, it doesn't work. So we have to make sure that people that come in for value, that there's an upsell that's not so expensive that they will just stay in the value. So for us, working with the finance team in making sure that our barbell strategy has some great products, but at the same time, the pricing relationship is well -- it works as well. So not too much on this. I'll talk a little bit about $2-$4-$6-$8 value. Launched this in late August, and we kicked it off with a really great partner. His name was Beetlejuice. So it was awesome partnership that we had and that we currently have and we'll see through the end of this month. But with that, I'll do a little commercial and then after the couple of commercials that we'll show, I'll talk a little bit about what we've seen from a results perspective and what guests are saying. So let's go ahead. [Presentation]

Sure. People virtually are catching up to us. All right. So great ads. Again, the Beetlejuice promotion went extremely well. That, we really leaned, not only into the $2-$4-$6-$8 menu, but also in restaurant as the other side of the barbell strategy, which was more premium. And those products actually performed and continue to perform really strongly for us. Then the next one -- hold on one second -- I wanted to talk a little bit about what our fans are saying. So from a $2-$4-$6-$8, from fans, they're saying really great things, like glad it's back, the deals look delicious, $2-$4-$6-$8 is calling me. So not only we have got a great partnership to take this promotion up, but we're getting some really great feedback from fans in the restaurant and on social media. And the results. So we're seeing about a 2% to 2.5% sales lift from the $2-$4-$6-$8. And this is a combination of not only what the actual value menu, but the in-restaurant Beetlejuice promotional menu. So really good results for us. And one area that I did want to specify is California. So California is a huge, huge contributor to our business. California has actually seen stronger results than we've seen system-wide. So very excited about the market performance in Los Angeles and some of our California markets. But I'm extremely proud that we've actually kept -- seen these results, despite the industry headwinds. Like you go out there, you're seeing what's happening in the market. So good performance despite our headwinds. So the next area that I wanted to talk about is off-premise. This is not a new business, but this is an opportunity for this brand. And this is a common thing that I wanted to talk a little bit about the Denny's brand, and I'll pause before I jump into the detail, is, I joined the Denny's brand because it is a brand that's just ready to be unleashed. There are so many strengths that we just have the power to unleash this brand, and this is one area. Two of these areas that we're going to lean into for off-premise growth is our first-party channels. Is our website actually working extremely well and is our app doing its due diligence? No. And we've got to invest and make sure that they are. The other area of opportunity is third-party marketplaces. And all of you knows, like DoorDash, all of that wonderful stuff, is making sure that we continue to support and promote and partner with them because we know that when we lean into our partnership, it really does drive business. So our first-party channel, third-party channels is a way that we're going to actually accelerate our off-premise. So why? Why is it important for Denny's? You heard Kelli talk a little bit about this, but the digital guests have a higher lifetime value. They actually visit 3.5x versus 1.5x. So great, great, strong high lifetime value for us. It's an investment. The next one is the first party, right, people that order through dennys.com or our app, and the third-party occasions, people that are ordering from DoorDash and Uber Eats, only overlap 1%, and that's that top 1 that you see. So there's little overlap between guests that are coming directly to our channels versus the third-party channels. And then digital channels enabled us to get our guests in more occasions, right? So especially the late-night business. When you're at home, you're hungry, these third-party off-premise channels give us an opportunity to meet them at their occasion needs. And the other areas, paid digital channels. This makes it more effective. So when you think about banner ads and they're clicking directly to order, it makes our paid media more efficient. So it makes our paid digital channels more effective for us. So it's really pretty great. So focusing on growth digital and off-premise sales from a high time value little overlap, late night business and making our digital channels, our paid digital channels more efficient, it's a huge, huge strength and opportunity for us. So let's talk more about the virtual brands, right? We introduced Banda Burrito earlier this year. We've had The Melt Down and Burger Den live. So since contribution today, this is Q3, we're about $77 million of sales contribution. Growth since 2022 is up 15%, and traffic during dinner and late nights is over 65%. So like I said, this is meeting also a need that is specific to a different consumer occasion. And last is there's little guest overlap with Denny's. So we are serving a different consumer in a different need state. So The Burger Den, Melt Down, Banda Burrito, there's still absolutely more that we expect to see from these brands. And this is, again, a marketing focus for us. So last, right? I talked about breakfast. We talked about value. We talked about the off-premise opportunities. But there's also areas that I wanted to talk a little bit about unlocking the power of this brand. Like how are we going to win? One of them is owning our brand positioning. Second is optimizing our media support. And third is personalization through CRM and loyalty. So first, our brand positioning, embracing America's diner. We own this, and we're the only brand out there that can own this. We -- I worked at brands before that struggled with relevance, right? It's kind of like one of those things that they're relevant to either a smaller audience. We don't have that problem. We're relevant to multigenerational. We're relevant to different ethnicities. And for us, this is an opportunity to redefine and embrace America's diner for today's America. So the way that we're going to lean into this is reintroducing and looking at the new brand campaign that will come to life in different touch points: into our TV, our ads, our loyalty program. So again, more to come in this area. Next is how we're going to win: leveraging our marketing co-op opportunity. This past year, 85% of the system opted into a co-op. We had 54 co-ops, 1,100 restaurants participated. 16 co-ops reactivated since 2023, and some of those co-ops were our largest co-ops. One specific one was Los Angeles. So great, great win from that side. The biggest, biggest takeaway from this is the contribution from the co-op increased our actual media spend by $8.6 million. So co-ops, great investment from the franchisees. So thank you, franchisees, if you're listening, and those that are here. Thank you for supporting the co-ups and investing in those. But there's, again, more to do, and we will continue working with our franchisees to make sure that the co-ops work effectively, and we continue to build awareness of this brand. Last one is personalization through CRM. I pulled these actual data from some studies that are a little old, but they're still relevant. So 72% of consumers only engage with personalized messages. 81% of consumers want brands to understand them better and know when and how to approach them. Back in the day, we were lucky enough to just send an e-mail and everybody just opened it up and was excited to get like a 10% or a free soap or something. Not anymore. What I'm going to send to you and to you and to you is going to be different based on your needs. Some of you may be parents and they want something for their kids. Some of you may not want a free kids' meal because you're not a parent. So that's the opportunity for us today. So identifying a guest, understanding what they want from us and then engaging and giving them what they want is the way that we're going to lean into driving and strengthening our loyalty and CRM program. So this is our current program, right? It's a cookie-cutter program. Everybody gets the same offer. And right now, we've got about 5 million active members, which is great. So no personalization. And where we want to get to is introducing a new program second half of next year, that is -- that we leverage data for offer personalization to drive more frequency and drive member acquisition. So ultimately, it's getting this brand back to the basic foundation of what a loyalty program is, and that's one of our key strategies for this coming year. So we're well underway. We have been engaging with a digital team internally, and we are partnering as well with some digital agencies externally to help us build and relaunch our digital program, our loyalty program. So all of these are tactics, and I just wanted to put it in a little one slide because at the end of the day, my goal is to look at everything from a guest-first approach, like turning these tactics into something meaningful. So at the end of the day, when someone -- I hold myself accountable.

By turning these tactics into something meaningful. So at the end of the day, when someone -- I hold myself accountable is these are the things that we're going to do with our guests. We're igniting crave, we're igniting connection and we ignite culture. Igniting crave through our food, breakfast, core menu innovation, igniting connection through our media or loyalty program, our digital channels, and lastly, igniting culture. Making sure that our brand voice, we embrace it, we scream it, we shout it through our social media channels, our traditional media channels and reengaging into multicultural marketing as well is how do we make sure that we're winning with that core target. So Denny's is a brand that's waiting to be unleashed. We've got to focus and stay focused on the right areas, not get distracted. And again, I'm very excited to be part of this amazing team and my franchisee partners, and we are together, we're going to make it happen. So with that, I will hand it over to Mr. Steve Dunn, who will talk a little bit about our development plan.

Thank you, Patty. And every time you talk, you always make me hungry, every time I look at those slides. All right. Let's talk a little bit about development in the global brand. Excited to be here today. Talk a little bit about what progress we've made. One key thing that I want to focus on today is our strong partnership with franchisees. We're very fortunate to have a significant number of engaged franchisees in the system today. In the system today, our franchisees represent an average tenure of approximately 16 years, which is pretty significant in the restaurant business, considering the age of our brand. Our franchisees are from some of the largest multiunit franchisee companies in the U.S. In fact, 2 of the top 10 largest franchisees in the United States represent -- come from the Denny's brand. Today in the audience are 2 of our franchisees, Roland Spongberg, who is Denny's franchisee. He is also the largest franchisee of both El Pollo Loco and Krispy Kreme, and he's the largest Wendy's franchisee in California. Roland is here today, and you'll hear him on the stage later. Also Clyde Rucker is with us, who's one of Denny's top 10 largest franchisees. He is also in the top 10 largest franchisees for Jack in the Box. So you can see Denny's has significant amount of experienced, tenured franchisees in our overall portfolio. That being said, Denny's is a legacy brand. We've represented a national footprint. We're in all 50 states, and you expect that from a brand that's 70 years old, but that's not easy to do and we have significant share in some of the largest DMAs in the country. In fact, on this slide, if you look at this, our highest penetration DMAs where Denny's is, we also happen to be a top market share brand in 7 of those 10 DMAs, including one of the largest DMAs in the country, which is Los Angeles. So those are represented on this slide. We're very proud of that fact, and that's a significant opportunity for us to grow, not necessarily in the areas where we're dominating, which you see here, but we're saying what we have, we have white space to grow, which is a good thing, particularly in the Southeast. So that's where some of our focus will be as we look towards the future. We'll always do backfill opportunities in the DMAs where we remain strong to protect that market share, which is valuable. Turning the page a little bit to talk about the global strategies that we have. International development has been a bright spot for us since we relaunched the program in 2008. As we as we have doubled the number since that time of new franchise partners, we've doubled the number of new restaurants, and we've doubled the entry into new countries -- launch of our program in 2008. Even though I will say the pandemic has caused significant slowdown internationally, have relaunched our franchising efforts to take into account significant learnings from the disruption. And we've -- which has led us to be a flexible approach to how we think about development internationally. Even as far as going to become sublicensing partners, we have 2 now in our brand, both our Canadian partners and our Middle Eastern partners have sublicensing rights to grow, which will help expand our growth even further. That being said, I've told you about the disruption that we've seen in the last number of years, we have remained remarkably stable if you think about where our global commitments have come as we work with each of our respective franchisees to adjust our approach based on their unique circumstances, both globally or domestically. I've told everybody, and they've heard me say it on the franchise stage even last week, each unique franchise group have their own set of characteristics. So we have to meet them where they are, to make sure from a growth standpoint, from a leverage standpoint, from durability as an organization to grow, we want to work with them. Our development team now, as we sit here today, is out reengage with each of our existing franchisees and new franchisees to pitch our industry-leading package of growth incentives and explain how it benefits their respective portfolios. Switching gears a little bit to talk what Kelli alluded to earlier, and that's our portfolio assessment. And this is kind of reemerging our ability to grow again. We've conducted an extensive review of each and every restaurant in our domestic portfolio. Through the disruption of the pandemic, most of our system had very nice sales gains. And the top quintile saw that. However, the bottom quintile would be absolute opposite direction in our brand. And a lot of data on this slide, but what we saw in that bottom quintile was there's trade -- significant trade area shifts occurred. Some of these restaurants can be very old. So you think of a 70-year-old plus brand, we have a lot of restaurants that have been out there for a very long time. We saw traffic shifts. We also saw convenience shifts QSR, which was very common during the pandemic some of those folks never changed their habits back in some of these restaurant areas where we saw those shifts. This analysis led us to take a very different approach to the lower quintile, which represented at the time of most of the analysis, about 265 restaurants at the time of that review. It shifted into how do we think about this to prepare us for growth. We worked extensively with our operations team, our finance and development group to come up with a strategic plan on how to face the lowest quintile restaurants. First thing I'll say it's never easy to close restaurants. It's a challenge and you work with external factors, landlords and the like, and of course, you're dealing with people's lives. But we've realized that closing underperforming restaurants is strategically advantageous to a number of our franchisees as it strengthens the bottom line cash flow for the long term. We're also looking at a potential consolidation approach to a number of the restaurants that are in that rehabilitate group to continue to enhance performance, which may be better off thought about with a different franchisee approach to that. I will say this closing restaurants is never easy, but we've made significant progress, as you can see on this slide, towards this goal, and this cleans up our portfolio and prepares us truly for growth. Completely switching into the other side of the equation, Kelli alluded to it earlier. One of the things that we're very lucky for a historically older brand, a legacy brand, if you will, the performance of our new restaurant openings is historically strong. We now open restaurants that overperformed the fleet average by approximately $400,000. This is the best validation by the guest of any legacy brand that they're still coming to your restaurants. Let's take a look at what some of our recent new restaurant openings look like. [Presentation]

All right. We'll let the video catch back up to the slides. Great. As you can see from that representation on the video of all over the world, what we truly do are relevant for today's customer, and it's proven their ability to get to us or more. All right. So making the switch from a new restaurant to how do we get that same level of passion and intensity and image driving in our existing fleet. I just shared with you that Denny's is a 70-year-old plus brand with a lot of very interestingly challenging prototypical restaurants. However, we are fortunate to be ready to go with a compelling early tested new model -- new remodel platform called Diner 2.0, as Kelli alluded to. We tested more than 35 restaurants and a very significant test using an APT testing platform pre-post versus control, we are very confident that this will have a major positive impact to the system. Sales lift the traffic lift versus the investment, this is incredibly strong in this industry. To give you a sense of perspective, we keep a constant eye on our peer group, and we're pleased to be leading the full-service category when you combine the investment level, coupled with the sales lift. We track this on a yearly basis to the ability that we can. And in the family dining space, we are clearly outperforming our peer group restaurant brands that currently have an active remodeling program. And as you can see on the slide, Denny's is a standout performer. We're very proud about that and looking to get this more actively engaged with our franchisees on a daily basis. So we all know the challenges that we face today in the financing environment. You've heard some of the headwinds that Kelli explained. This is just as true with capital investment in any brand. So what we are doing is we're putting programs in place to try to help our franchisees overcome these obstacles. First of, we just introduced just a week ago, 1.5 weeks ago, a remodel financial support program. This is a $100,000 financial support program to the franchisees to help them -- royalty over a period of time to help them get access to capital to grow. It was very well received at the time. We put an acceleration program in place also introduced at the conference 1.5 weeks ago. And we have a remodel loan pool that we created working with the clinical commercial capital to have the ability for every franchisee who has needs and has access to capital to do a remodel or a new unit -- have the ability to do so. We believe these are powerful programs that will help relaunch these programs even though we know we're facing an uphill battle until we see some headwinds start to become tailwinds. We're very excited to see and help our franchisees grow. We put really active programs together, and we're looking forward to driving to the next -- turn on the next page. So I want to thank you. And now I'm going to give the floor back to Kelli.

Steve, at this point, we thought we'd just tried before we move on to Keke's and just see if there were any questions. We can take 1 or 2, we do have a full panel we'll create here at the end with the Denny's leadership team that's here, so you'll be able to ask us questions at the end of the day and of Keke's. But right now, just wondering if there's 1 or 2 just on the Denny's business, I'm happy to take those.

Yes, Todd. Going with Todd first. Good morning. Yes. I'm going to -- I'll repeat it, too. But go ahead and speak right into that for those on the webcast.

Thanks, Kelli. I appreciate it. On the slide, it showed the identification of that bottom quintile bucket and the 150 closures. And it's 50 are slated for 2024. Does that mean 100 are slated for '24?

So I'm really glad you brought that up because we're going to come back and touch on that anyway. So everybody understand this question. There was a slide that said 50 in 2024. That percentage has dropped off somehow. So what we're saying is that 50% of the closures of that total number will happen in 2024. So we're not telling you something that we haven't done. We're actually telling you something that's been done and we're showing you that we've accomplished a great deal of it towards that end in 2024. That makes sense? That's a big point. Thank you, Todd. We were going to clarify anyway, so thank you for that. So we are well on our way to getting those closures and moving on, and then you'll see how quickly we get to net growth again for Denny's. That's the goal. And you'll see when Robert speaks to long-term guidance when we'll get there. Great question. Yes.

Jake Bartlett, Truist Securities. My question was on late night. You mentioned that Denny's the same-store sales has come down the most in the category versus '19. One reason seems to be that you used to be 24/7 and now you're not. We didn't hear any mention of that in the presentation so far. So why isn't that an opportunity to kind of bring back the 24/7?

Great question. For those -- the acoustics are interesting in here. So I could hear you a little bit muffled. So he's asking in terms of 24/7, is that a reason that we've seen some more that there is degradation in late night or in even the dinner daypart. And actually, we don't think that. So we were at a greater percentage prior to pandemic in terms of 24/7 operations. There's no doubt about that. We've been pretty overt upfront about that. We really did sit down with our franchisees, and we've done profitability analysis. We've done sensitivity. We've done everything we can to really understand the profitability and the foot traffic in those dinner and late-night hours. And again, to some extent, if the trade area moved to some extent, if the patterns of consumer behaviors didn't shift back and it just didn't make sense profitability-wise, we've closed on those. So we're 75%, all our restaurants today of Denny's today are open 24/7 still. By far, I can't find another family dining brand and I could speak to a lot of quick service, fast food brands that still aren't that open 24/7. It's a contraction that happened for everyone. What we do see, Jake, is a lot of our off-premises as you saw, comes in those dayparts, right, come at dinner and late night. So that different consumer is still leveraging us and that's the reason the off-premise strategy continues to make sense. But the foot traffic inside the 4 walls for some that just didn't make sense, we didn't see the opportunity. And we started to see that really -- that tailwind kind of flatten out late in 2023, and it's the reason we're not necessarily pushing for that, but we're always taking the opportunity to work with our franchisees to understand their business better and see if there's an opportunity to go back open.

Yes. And then on the same topic, the 2.2 visits per year to 2.5 getting that incremental. I imagine peak weekend, this is always at capacity. So are you looking for that core customer to come in during the evening or their weekday? And how do you kind of motivate them for what isn't there occasion necessarily?

Yes. No, that's a great question. So the week -- there's capacity, right? There's capacity on the weekends, but we're incredibly busy on the weekend and weekday breakfast is busy. There's capacity at dinner and late night as we kind of just referenced in terms of our complete hours of operations. But the opportunity is there, both with messaging and bringing back everyday value and saying, this is, yes, we are the place where you can count on us for value, and we have value leadership. And so that's critical. The CRM program that Patty referenced, right, with a database today that is not yet as sophisticated as it can be, has huge headwinds for us, a huge opportunity for us or tailwinds for us in the coming years. So you'll see us talk even after today about the things that we know we can get. It is about frequency of current users increasing frequency, but it is also about getting new guests in. And then finally, the off-premise strategy allows us to get those new guests in all the time, and we're continuing to lean into those off-premise virtual brands, but then off-premise strategy as a whole. It's many things, including just a great marketing transformation that's underway for the Denny's brand. I'm going to go back here then I think we have time for one more after that. So I'll come up.

This is [ JP. Wallin ] from [ ROTH Capital Partners]. As we think about the remodels, besides maybe some of the leverage we get from the sales lift, are there any costs being pulled out that would serve as kind of a tailwind to that 4-wall margin? Or is it really just a maybe an aesthetic refresh?

Yes. It's keeping the brand fresh and up-to-date and we see it with the results that we've got. And that -- those results that we've completed 17, you saw on Steve's slide. That data is tracked by over 44 restaurants that were in that. So that sales lift. We feel very comfortable with seeing that sales and traffic lift. But it is mainly things in the front of the house. There's back-of-the-house innovations that are have innovation that's happening. There are other things we'll do to create more efficiencies in the box, in the model. But this remodel program is really about the aesthetics of the building, seeing something different on the exterior and then seeing a fresh updated look on the interior. One of the things we've learned and Patty talked about America's diner for today's America. It doesn't matter which generation you are, and I've sat in focus groups and listening to our own customers or not, right, or light users sat and listened and America's diner with a fresh, updated look, whether you're 22 or 52, there's a nostalgia that it does resonate that we are uniquely America's diner for today's America. So the refresh is needed. It's necessary, and we're excited about getting that fly we're turning again.

Andrew of CL King. As a longtime successful business, Denny's, I assume a lot of the franchisees have been around for a while, there's a natural tendency as people age and just to be conservative in their investing style. And they may not want to open as many restaurants as they did when they had more vigor and more and weren't as wealthy, let's say. Is there any way to compel these franchisees in a sense to either turn over the business, sell it? If you can start to deliver on what you have and they may lag because of those sort of natural tendencies they come with?

Yes, Andy, a fair question. And you'll see again, we've got 2 pretty amazing franchisees here that are continuing to grow, that are great examples of putting remodels in place and seeing the returns, and I'll let them speak to that later. But part of what we did this last year was talked to our 13 -- we did 13 top meetings. And that was the conversation, what's your succession plan? What's your capital allocation policy or what's that structure look like? What happens next? And how are you doing against your development agreement? And so there are some franchisees interested in other territories and things that we're working through. if that's the case, we probably kind of look to it and are addressing it just being really smart about how to optimize the portfolio. That's a great, great question. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to turning it over to Dave or Kayla. All right. So I'd like to bring up Dave Schmidt, talk about Keke's. Thank you.

All right. I think we have a few slides to advance here. Good morning, everybody. It is so great to be with you and tell a little bit about the Keke's story that we've kind of kept a little bit behind wraps for some time. I'm very excited about what we've been doing for the last roughly 18 months or so. And I'm excited to tell the story a little bit. And so I'm going to start with sort of the leadership team. As Kelli mentioned, I came from -- I started my career at Denny's many, many years ago, back when Robert started in the mid-90s but spent most of my career at Bloomin' Brands, So I spend it in a multi-brand environment, similar to what we're creating here. So very, very familiar with the idea of shared services. Something that I actually like to call the center of excellence. And so you can see here's my small but mighty Keke's leadership team, both Annalise and Manny are both familiar with working on these multi-brand environments as well. And what we intend to do is stay small, stay nimble and leverage that center of excellence on all things like real estate, development, HR. It gives us the opportunity to focus ruthlessly on things that are uniquely Keke's, like operations, developing best-in-class training materials and, of course, marketing. So at Keke's we're all about fresh starts. You heard Kelli mentioned this earlier. We're about fresh starts for everyone, every day, not just our guests that come to visit us to start their day off right but also for our staff as well, our team members and our managers. And it's our vision to create 40 million fresh starts annually by the year 2030. So it's a pretty lofty goal. It's pretty aggressive growth. You're going to hear some of our new unit count growth projections from Robert a little bit later, but it also involves increasing our traffic and our topline AUV as well. So it's a combination of both the topline growth as well as new unit growth. I want to take a little look at the brand. Some of you might not be as familiar with Keke's. 2 brothers, Kevin and Keith Mahen, moved down to Florida from Pennsylvania, and they had a very difficult time finding a great classic breakfast place like they were used to back home. So they made the decision to leave the insurance business that they were both in, and they opened their first Keke's, in Orlando, Florida, and it was a big success, right, in Millenia Mall in the heart of Orlando, if you're familiar with Orlando, it was a big success. It did very, very well. And for the next 15 years, they grew to 50 cafes with virtually no marketing at all. Most of the franchise partners that they brought on board, some of whom were friends and family, but most of who they brought on board as franchise partners also had little to no experience in the restaurant space. So Kevin and Keith had a very specific idea in mind to keep it as simple and easy to operate as possible. They admittedly even today say, "We don't have any experience in the restaurant space. So we just wanted to keep it as simple and easy to operate as possible. " I know it's genius. It actually turned out really to their benefit. The model with no marketing, worked fine. So they focused exclusively on quality of food, portion sizes and service. And at the time of the acquisition in the middle of 2022, they've grown it to 53 cafes. Since that time, we've opened 9 additional cafes. And Kelli mentioned, we opened our first one outside the state of Florida in January of this year in Hendersonville, Tennessee. We've since opened a second one in that Nashville market. And just less than 2 weeks ago, actually, we opened our first cafe in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. So very excited about the growth that we've seen. Take a quick look at Keke's kind of by the numbers. I mentioned the first cafe opened in 2006. So we're very excited to celebrate our 18th birthday in November next month. Talked a little bit about the economics of a 7 to 2:30 business model that only focuses on breakfast and lunch and the attractiveness of that business model, particularly as it relates to labor deployment, which is obviously a growing concern in the entire restaurant space. But the attractiveness, not just on the economic side, but also in recruiting talent, team members and managers to the business who that proposition of being able to close the doors at 2:30 and be home by 3:30 or 4 to pick your kids up at the bus stop is very attractive, and it's one that we've leveraged pretty heavily. You see we just opened our 62nd cafe. Very excited about that. And then from a product mix perspective, we are very breakfast-heavy. So even though we're open through lunch, roughly 90% of the items we sell are breakfast items. So they're very protein light. Let's take a look at the Florida footprint. You know that we're a Florida-based brand, but it's important for everyone to understand that even within Florida, 75% of our Florida locations are in 2 markets. It's in Tampa and Orlando. That's just the nature of how the brand grew over the last several years. So 43 out of our 55 units in our comp base, actually residing in either Tampa or Orlando. So when we report our comp sales and compare those to national averages and even Florida averages, you can see it's very, very heavily skewed in Tampa and Orlando. And while we remain very bullish on the Florida economy overall, I am personally very excited to step foot outside of those markets and not be so reliant on those 2 main markets. So what have we been working on over the last 18 months? Well, we saw the small but mighty leadership team we put in place. And while Kevin and Keith focused on all the right things you would as a small business owner, flawless execution, getting tables turned every 38 minutes, putting every -- all the food on the plate, making sure every plate comes all perfect. They invested very little in things like training, technology. There was virtually no consumer insights or analytics and I mentioned no marketing. So some of those things we've been working on over the last 18 months. We're in the early stages of rolling out a new point-of-sale system that comes with kitchen displays, which makes our kitchens more efficient. We now have robust training materials, so we're ready and able to open cafes faster and more efficiently across the country. We've got some great consumer insights that I'm going to share just a little bit with you. And we're in the very early stages of developing and evolving a great marketing program, all while remaining focused on flawless and excellent operations. So with that, I'd like to show a quick video. [Presentation]

You saw that stuff, the new imagery and everything, we had to start from scratch. So when we bought the brand, there was none of that collateral, no pictures, no video, no nothing. So we created a lot of that over the last 18 months. You think about the brand differentiators, what makes Keke's different from everyone else in the daytime eatery space -- and Kelli mentioned, we have an almost cult-like following in our home state of Florida. Love for the classic offerings, large portions, the things I mentioned. And we did some initial consumer research in a brand ethos study early on. And one of the guests told us this quote, and I've used it many, many times, who was a regular at Keke's, they said, "There's 2 type of guests, those who love Keke's and those who haven't tried it yet." So of course, I snatched that quote, and I use it quite often. If you look at where Keke's is in the daytime eatery category, it is a, as Kelli said, a highly fragmented and regional, other than one major large national chain, it's very regional. And so we believe that Keke's has a unique positioning that allows us to be the leader in this category for 4 primary reasons. The first is that Denny's partnership. Partnering with a world-class franchisor like Denny's, who's got a long history being experts in this franchise business is a huge advantage for us. And we plan on leveraging the shared services and things like real estate, Steve's team in real estate and development, legal, accounting, technology and things like HR and benefits, which, quite honestly, we would not be able to otherwise offer those things to our employees. And then, of course, leveraging the size and scale of Denny's for our purchasing power. Things like contract and lease negotiations gives us a huge advantage versus some of our competitive set. Second, we're committed to this asset-light approach to our growth, something that no franchisor of scale is doing in our category. And quite honestly, we have a large group of eager existing Keke's franchisees who are ready to grow. You're going to get to meet 2 of them later this morning. We also have access to Denny's community of franchisees who are eager to grow their businesses as well. And quite honestly, it's a match made in heaven because they're looking to grow their businesses beyond just their Denny's investments, and it gives us access to great operators in markets that sometimes are more difficult to operate. So they've got the local expertise in some of those markets. I talked about the visionary leadership team that we're putting together. We remain committed to being small and mighty, to stay small and nimble, test and learn, move quickly on some of these new ideas that we're bringing to the table. And we focused ruthlessly on creating this culture of accountability, recognition and collaboration. I think one of the biggest risks as you grow a brand is losing that culture that is so embedded in Keke's today while we're still a regional brand in Florida. So we're spending a lot of time focusing on attracting the right team members and the right franchisees to the business who love Keke's and appreciate as much as we do. And then lastly, we believe that Keke's just has a winning recipe. It's a well-loved brand in Florida. Our brand ethos research work that we did told us a lot about what people love about our brand. And now that we've turned on some guest research and get feedback from our guests, it solidifies what we had already known. The guests love us for the abundance, the portion sizes, the fresh quality, the speedy service in a great atmosphere. If you've never been to a Keke's, I'm going to show you just a few pictures of the phenomenal food. In the top left there, you see our Florida Pancakes, which have won several awards, Best Pancake in Florida. You see our Stuffed French Toast. So the food is very abundant, powerful, beautiful. It falls off the plate. I mentioned turning on Black Box Intelligence and our guest satisfaction scores. We did that in the second quarter of 2023. It's the first time we've ever really got data to support what our brand research suggested. And so coming out of the gate in the second quarter of '23, see our net sentiment score was positive 53%, which is fantastic, right? Now we had data to support what we already knew about the brand. And look what happened over the last 5 quarters from Q2 of '23 to Q3 of 2024, our net sentiment score today in Q3 is 73, which is phenomenal. And if you look off to the right, there by category, which Black Box breaks this down for us, we're leading the segment in pretty much all categories. And specifically, if you look at food, service and ambience. We've got best-in-class scores. Now ambience is interesting because if you actually dig into the comments and read some of them, ambience often becomes a proxy for cleanliness. Yes, we'll call out our cafes as being some of the cleanest that they visited. So when you got great food, you got great service and you've got some of the cleanest restaurants, you got something pretty special there to leverage. If you look at our Google Star ratings, again, 2022, improved in '23. And year-to-date, we're at a 4.75 for 2024 and that's pretty elite status at 4.75. In any category of restaurant chain, 4.75 is pretty, pretty high. And what this does is it gives me a high level of confidence that as we start turning on some of the marketing programs to invite new guests in to experience Keke's, they're going to get a great experience. They're going to come, and those marketing dollars that we deploy will have huge dividends and be highly accretive to both sales and profit. Let's take a look at Florida sales trends. It's no surprise Florida sales have been challenged relative to the national averages for some time. Keke's is no different. However, I will say we have closed the gap most recently, and we've taken this opportunity since the middle of 2023 and to really level set our value equation. So during this time, we tested a few things. We rolled out a new menu in Q4 2023 and reduced the number of items on that menu from 97 down to 46. In Q1 of 2024, we rolled out a new kids menu in an effort to infuse a little bit of value. And to that point, even though we had a section on the kids -- on the menu that said kids menu, it basically was just the adult-sized portion at the adult size price called out on the kids menu. So guests would come often comment you don't really have a kids menu. You guys just call it out over here, but you're serving me the same waffle at the same price. So we rolled out the kids menu. We saw our value scores improved there. We've seen very minimal pricing during this window from Q3 of '23 to today. So we feel like we've really kind of level set our value equation but we've also taken the opportunity to test some AUV drivers, some topline drivers. So let's take a look at what those might be. On the runway, we've got these 4 top line traffic drivers. Our beverage program, our marketing program, our design and remodel program and our off-premises program. Now I will tell you that all 4 of these are still relatively in the early stages of executing. We have rolled out Phase 1 of our beverage program. Let's take a look at that. Phase 1 was really just 3 very basic cocktails. It was a mimosa, a bellini, a sangria. For that, we only had to bring in 2 products. We brought in Merlot for the sangria. We brought in a Prosecco for the mimosa and the bellini. We had one glass that we had to bring in for all 3 cocktails. So it's very basic, very basic. We're really just trying to address the veto vote of people who want to come in and get a mimosa. We rolled that out in the first quarter of 2024. We're about 80% active in the system today, and we think this initiative is worth 400 to 600 basis points. Now Phase 2, we're starting to test in some of our new cafes. Phase 2 includes expanding that cocktail menu a little bit larger and bringing in some more coffee beverages like espresso, cappuccinos and some lattes. The second topline driver is this evolving marketing program. I mentioned that we had virtually no marketing to speak of prior to the acquisition. Took us a little bit of time. We had to build some collateral, create -- do some creative in terms of getting the pictures, the videos. When I said we had no marketing at all, we didn't even have a Facebook page. Like there was no online presence at all. So Jenna Law, a very talented director of marketing came on board in late 2023. In the middle of that year, we started collecting 1% for a brand-building fund. So we can start creating some of this content. And this is some of the things you see here. You saw some of that in the video as well. Q3 and July of this year, we did our ever paid media campaign. We saw very, very positive results. Again, it's very early in this stage, but we have our first ever newly created brand campaign that's going to launch in January of next year. So very excited about that. In terms of the new design, first cafe we opened outside of Florida in Nashville, Tennessee, implemented this new design plan. And if you look to the left, that's what the first 53 Keke's cafes look like. Black ceilings, dark floors, purple booths, every one of them looked exactly like that, brown color walls. And so we want to keep some of the elements that make Keke's, Keke's like the booth-heavy floor plan, but we introduced a lot lighter colors. You see the white ceilings, a lot more open, more windows, a lot brighter -- just a lot brighter atmosphere. So we have 5 cafes that have opened this year with that design, and we just recently completed our first-ever remodel. This restaurant #7, I believe. So it's 11 years old. We just did that in July. This is what the new Dr. Phillips looks like. You can see the sales lift. We're very excited about this. I would caution, again, it's still very early. We're going to do 2 more remodels this year. Once we've got 3 remodels complete, then we'll be able to put together a remodel package and roll that out to the balance of the system. Last growth lever is off-premise. Again, very early stages of this. Something that Keke's historically has paid very little attention to. So just with a little bit of effort, we turned on some third-party partnerships with DoorDash and Uber Eats. We introduced some better staging, some packaging and staffing for success, and we've seen just an organic growth to about 16% is where we're at in Q3 of 2024. We think this is conservatively worth 18% to 20% of our sales, and that's just basically benchmarked off of some of our competitive set. Just scratching the surface on catering, there's some other levers as well as it relates to off-premise. So this is the makeup of our current portfolio of 19 franchisees. We've got a very healthy mix of single unit operators who love their Keke's who operate it. It's their bread and butter, their family business, and they're very happy and we also have some multi-units who are eager to grow. Like I said, some that are here today and you're going to get to meet that. But as we expand into more experience, we're looking into new markets, we're looking for more experienced operators. We're willing and able to commit 5 to 10 units as we're signing new development agreements. All right. long-range outlook. The portfolio. If you look at how Keke's has grown up until this year 2024, it's been very slow and steady has been through franchise partnerships, as I mentioned earlier. We've got 14 new units is what we're -- is the midpoint of what our guidance is. We're reiterating that 12 to 16 this year. We've got 5 open year-to-date, and we've got 15 units currently under construction. So if you look at what's in the pipeline, we've got new cafe development agreements of over 140. That's just from the existing Keke's franchisees and the Denny's community who has already expressed interest and signed development agreements. There's 2 additional levers that we'll be able to expand as we move into new markets. The first one is bringing new franchisees into the system. I haven't really explored that yet. We're in the early stages of really looking for new franchisees who aren't already part of the Denny's portfolio. And then the fourth piece is this idea of a seed and feed strategy. And it's something you're going to hear Robert talk a little bit about, but I just want to mention the seed and feed strategy. Not all great franchise operators have the ability or the structure to be able to develop and grow new restaurants. And this is something that, quite honestly, is a new trend in the franchise world. And so we don't want to say no to great franchise operators, but not all of them want to develop markets. And so one of the questions I get most often as we're talking to prospective franchisees is, what do you have for me to buy? Do you have anything in Florida? I'd love to buy a market or another one is this Tennessee for sale because I'd love to buy Nashville. So I'll never say never, but this idea of investing in the development in the early stages and then partnering with the right franchise operator to flip that market is something that we're exploring. We're still committed to the asset-light long-term strategy with an 85%, 90% franchise mix. So that's still our long-term strategy. But we think there's an opportunity to capitalize on some markets where we don't currently have a great Denny's developer, and we don't have a Keke's operator who's willing to develop. This is just a nice snapshot of where those 140-plus development commitments are. What's unique here as you can see, we plotted some of our competitors as well. And this gives us a really neat opportunity to sort of leapfrog some of our competitors and really get a stronghold in what we consider to be some high-value markets from coast to coast. So our strategy is still committed to be in high penetration in key markets, build out in a market and get operational excellence in the markets that we penetrate in. We don't want to do 1 in 2 cafes in certain cities across the country and just sort of a shock on approach. It doesn't give us the operational excellence and experience that we need. So it's a new day at Keke's. We spent a lot of time over the last 18 months solidifying the foundational elements that we need to be able to build the brand, solidify the core and be prepared for rapid growth. The brand positioning is now in place. We're excited to turn on some marketing levers with the collaboration of the shared services team at Denny's and the enhancements that we've made to the building design and the menu design, Keke's is ready for national expansion. And the takeaways today, the key themes. Number one, we do have top line growth levers that we're executing against. We've tested them. We're in the early stages, but we do feel confident that they'll deliver. There's a tremendous amount of excitement for the brand, both from the guest as well as from the franchise community out there. And with needed technology that's now in place, we also have margin growth opportunities, both in labor as well as food cost, and we're moving into more states that I would say are labor friendly. So we've got some margin expansion opportunities there. And then lastly, while you will see some near-term investment in capital for new cafe growth, we are committed to long-term asset-light strategy. And with that, I will open the floor if there's any questions.

I was wondering on the seed and feed strategy, whether -- or why not refranchise some of the Florida stores? Obviously, going to a new prototype, you've got most of your stores in Florida. You already have a franchise base that knows the model and you probably fairly seamless and then you can focus that capital on expanding it into other markets.

It's a great question. In Florida we don't have a lot of corporate locations today. So as you mentioned, most of our Florida locations are franchised. The only markets we're concentrated in from a corporate perspective is we do have some in Jacksonville which we opened 2 with a new cafe look and feel. So we've got 4 Jacksonville, the rest are in Orlando. So we don't have much to sell. We do want to keep at least some locations in Orlando, so that we can test some of these things and kind of lead from the front as we roll out new operational things. It's something we would definitely not dismiss though.

I had a question about why Florida has been such a hot bed for this category. And that's one part. And then the other is how it travels. When you think about California, obviously, there's very few, looking at that map. There's very few competitors in California. So is there something like California that would make it more difficult to grow? And then as part of that question, how much of the 140 is in California with dark green so it suggests a fair amount?

I don't know exactly how many of the 140, Robert or Steve might have the answer to that question. But I will tell you, just anecdotally, historically, my experience, Florida has been a great place to test the concept because you get a lot of people from across the country coming to visit Florida whether it's on vacation or whatever, they go back to Ohio or across the country wherever they live and the like, "Oh, we went to this great branch." So you get a really good cross mix of the country if you test new concepts in Florida. So that's my experience. In terms of the development, how much of it is in California, I don't know -- do you know a number? I don't know what the number is in terms of how many of the 140-- we'll get back to you on that. We'll get back to you on that. I will say that Denny's has a pretty strong hold in California. So they're very good at operating restaurants in California, and we're going to use that to our advantage.

Of that 140 is there a time frame that, that commitment stands for?

So depending on the development agreement signed, most are 5 to 10 units, as I mentioned. And typically, they come with a 1 to 2 units per year. So I would say on a weighted average, think about that over a 5-year period, think a 5- to 6-year period for that 140 plus that are already under development agreement.

And is there any sort of out for the franchise or so like how secure is that 140? Or what would be a situation where it may be delayed or decline?

Well, Steve, I don't know if you want to answer that. I think there's -- I think these are about as rock solid as a development agreement could be. There's always reasons why people can default on that, but if they do default on it, do have levers that we can pull as penalties.

Yes, Dave, you answered it very well. There are strict guidelines within that. There's also incentives baked into these development agreements. But there's also performance characteristics that they have to meet in order to maintain those. And they're very reasonable based on the time frames within each individual market in those unique circumstances.

Dave, a quick question for you. The 140 units. I think this time last year coming out of the franchisee convention, you guys have talked about a 100-unit pipeline. So looking at kind of a 40-unit growth over the course of this year. Just wondering, a, are you metering the growth right now? And it could be more if you wanted it to, but you're kind of controlling that growth pace? And then secondly, if you think about that concept of the non-Denny's and the non-Keke's, kind of what's the timing as you look to the horizon for kind of pulling those levers to help build that franchise pipeline?

Sure. Well, in our internal models, we always wanted to give first priority to the existing Keke's franchisees. So anywhere they wanted expressed interest and desire to grow. We wanted to give them that opportunity. Second was the Denny's franchise community. So where we know we've got Denny's expertise in specific markets. We want to -- thank you, Robert. We wanted to give them an opportunity to grow their business in markets where they already exist. So I think just from an order of operations that went kind of Keke's, franchisees, the Denny's community and now when we're going to go to spaces that aren't already heavily penetrated with Denny's or Keke's, will look for new franchisees.

It's Eric Gonzales of KeyBanc. You had a slide up there where you talked about your sentiment for food, beverage, service, ambience, intent to return and sentiment. This caught my eye because it seemed like you were ahead of a few of your competitors by a fairly wide margin. So my question is where are you lagging relative to your peers? And what are the opportunities for improvement on some of those metrics?

I'll tell you one of the areas that we were lagging was in value. Prior to the acquisition, there was some pretty substantial pricing that was taken. And so as we started to lap that, and it fell off in the third quarter, actually, Robert and Kelli and I sat down, and we talked about this is going to be a little bit of a hit. We're going to see double-digit -- high double-digit headwind from the falloff of some of the pricing that was taken pre-acquisition. And we all sat down on the line and said it's a good opportunity, let's level set. We've got some foundational work to do. We want to get the value equation right. We want to test some of these ideas like the new menu, like the kids menu, like the beverage program. So we collectively held hand them said it's going to be a little bit rough, but we're going to work our way through that.

Mike Tamas from Oppenheimer. You put a lot of work into the brand, talked about getting consumer insights, marketing, all of that. So -- and you're going to a new market now. So can you talk about maybe the unit economics on those new builds going forward versus maybe what they've been over the last couple of years?

It's a great question. And we've got 2 actually franchise developers, franchisees who are opening new cafes that probably could answer that better than I could. But I will tell you, on the first unit, we went to Tennessee, we did invest a little bit. We overinvested a little bit because we wanted the new design. But I will tell you, on the first unit, we went to Tennessee, we did invest a little bit. We overinvested a little bit because we wanted the new design. We wanted to make it pop, make sure it was right. So since we opened the first one, we've done some value engineering, and we'll continue to do that. We're still looking for -- the prototypical is less than 4,500 square feet. Inliner end cap is really the perfect tees. One of the ones we opened in Nashville market is a freestanding because the property was available and it fit exactly where we wanted to go. That won't be typical. We'll typically go back to in line and end caps. So short of some of the inflationary pressures that everyone has seen in the construction world, we feel pretty good about our economics, and it's why we're proving a lot of deals. Back here?

Just 2 questions. What is the customer frequency of a Keke's versus at Denny's? Is it a higher frequency or lower frequency? And then just on maybe brand overlap you see in the Florida market, the customers come to Keke's also going to other daytime dining concepts? Or have they selected Keke's as their daytime dining brand of choice and maybe that's where they're going to frequency? Or do you see a lot of switching between them and other concepts?

So the honest truth is I don't have enough consumer insight to be able to track that specific of data. What I can tell you anecdotally, spending a lot of times in our cafes is we do have a high level of regulars. We've got people that come to us multiple times a week. I've seen experiences of that and the 2 franchisees are both shaking their heads, yes. So we do see that. Our real estate strategy is we're a little bit more in the neighborhoods. We don't see guests travel more than 2 to 3 miles to come to Keke's, so we're kind of off the main and main, so to speak, in some of the higher-end neighborhoods where people come and frequent us often. The trifecta of our real estate strategy is if you get in the higher income neighborhood near a church, a grocery store, a great grocery store, people frequent regularly and you get near a gym like that's like the perfect mix of real estate strategy for Keke's. So we don't see a lot of crossover with Denny's, but the truth is I don't have great data yet that tells me how many visits a year we get.

Can you help us bridge the difference between the 140 development and 250-plus franchise Keke's expected to open in the next 5 years on Slide 112. And also how many company Keke's would you expect to open over that time period? And how many would you expect to actually have or not have refranchised, let's say, at the end of the 5 years?

Yes. The honest truth is that delta is the number of franchisees who are very interested in owning and operating Keke's, but not yet really ready to develop and own a market. So they want to own a market -- excuse me, they don't want to develop a market. So we've got a lot of interest in. I want to be a franchisee, tell me when you've got some units for me to buy, which is kind of the dawn as Steve and I sat down and said, "Man, we've got a lot of interest" but the number of great developers isn't as large as we had hoped or thought, combined with the fact that the new trend in this industry in the franchise world is people want to buy EBITDA they don't want to risk owning it. So we're committed to the 85% to 90% franchise, but it might mean in the earlier years, we got to deploy some capital to seed and feed some of these markets. That's the delta between the total and the...

I can add clarity to the development agreements in California. As I told you earlier, a heavy concentration of the Denny's franchisees reside in California. Currently of that 140 , approximately 45 of the development agreements are California franchisees that Dave mentioned earlier, have an extensive knowledge of the area, the real estate and know how to build the team. So it's a really good fit in California, which is why a lot of brands can penetrate that market because it's a very difficult market to get into. However, with our franchisees, it's a legacy of experience there. And so you can see it's almost like I said, 45% of our current 140 development agreements. And that will grow in that market as more new restaurants open. Hope that's clarity.

One last question before we go to break? All right, Kayla, I think we're going to break then.

All right. So we'll go to break, and we'll come back at 11:00. Thank you. [Break]

Great, everyone. We're going to get started with the rest of the today. My name is Raphael Gross. I'm a partner at ICR. And together with my ICR colleagues, we've been working with Denny's for more than a decade on all things related to Investor Relations. And as part of that work, as many of you know, some of you in the room that I've spoken to, we conducted a formal perception study this past summer as a lead up to today's Investor Day. One of the key findings from those discussions there was a lot of interest in hearing directly from franchisees about their experience with the Denny's system and their thoughts on the future with respect to both the Denny's and Keke's brands. That allow us to assemble a group of franchisees to share their stories with you directly. So now I'm pleased to introduce our franchisee panel, beginning with Roland. Roland joined the Denny's franchise system 20 years ago, 2004. He is the largest Denny's franchisee and operates 108 restaurants nationwide. About 1/4 of his portfolio is in nontraditional travel center locations. He's also been an early adopter of the new remodel design and the POS rollout and we'll talk about that shortly. But he also has a diversified portfolio consisting of Denny's El Pollo Loco, Krispy Kreme and Blaze Pizza. Clyde joined the Denny's system back in 2017, and he has expanded its portfolio through Denny's refranchising and development program. He is the ninth largest any franchisee with 36 restaurants across Texas and Florida. He was also an early adopter of the new remodel program and invested to convert over 35% of his portfolio already, and also an early adopter of the new POS rollout, and we'll be discussing that, too. He also has a diversified portfolio, which includes Jack in the Box. John Ehrhard opened its first Keke's cafe in 2017 and yet now owns 6 Keke's cafes in the Orlando and Fort Myers areas. He also has 2 additional Keke's Cafes under construction. It has the second largest AOV cafe in the Keke's system. And finally, a husband and wife team, Jordan and Ashley Swan, they opened their first Keke's Cafe in 2014. They currently operate 7 Keke's Cafe in the Tampa St. Pete EMA, and they plan to expand into Georgia very soon.

So with that, let me ask a question of all the franchisees, and I'll begin with Roland. What do you see as the unique advantage for your brands today and into the future? And what do you see as the biggest challenge as well? Roland, we'll start with you.

I think Denny's is an iconic brand. I think I know 9 out of 10 people in America have either know Denny's have been in one. And it's a huge advantage. It's America's diner. If you've been traveling, you probably stopped at Denny's. And so we have that iconic brand that brings people in biggest challenge, I would say, is we got to get more people back in things since COVID have changed, and we have more price and less people, and we need more people.

Clyde?

Yes. I would say the biggest advantage for -- that I is going through the remodel program. I think the box economics are very, very strong. I'm really big on return on capital. And I will tell you that I will continue to invest and reinvest and put this -- put my capital into Denny's because the IRR is just beyond amazing, in my view. I would say the challenge is really more of an industry challenge as I see it. I think it's more -- we got the labor model that we're looking at, just like all the other brands out there, whether it be QSR or all the way to fast casual or even family dining as we are in. So I think the challenge will be there, but we showed that challenge with the rest of the industry.

John?

Yes, I would say that the product on our side is the thing that is one of the strengths. I think when you're inside the Keke's, and you see the reactions of faces when the server brings the place the table is truly a very cool experience. And so I think being in the Florida market and knowing who are competing against, it's just the thing you hear constantly from customers is just the quality of the food, the menu in that moment when it hits the table is really special. On the challenge side, definitely, I think what Roland said, I agree with it's traffic, it's the macroeconomic phase we're in and just getting through this other side, and that's [indiscernible].

Jordan.

Keke's has just continued to evolve to become such a staple as far as in Florida, being that spot that people love to come to have business meetings have family gatherings. And it's that local spot that just people love to come to big boost privacy. It's amazing because what Denny's has brought to it is that continued just encouragement and growth and all that kind of stuff that we haven't had as a smaller company. And so there's just a lot of big things that are coming for Keke's that we're just very excited about. But in regards to anything from the other spectrum, yes, economics, all those kind of things, but is how quickly we can even advance with the technology with some of these things that are coming for us that prior ownership did not give us. And all those things are coming that are just going to continue to be great things for the brand. So...

I want to talk about the 2 brands specifically and your beliefs about the strategies and investments that are taking place. Maybe we'll start with Clyde and Roland because they've been a long time franchisees. How would you describe your -- the evolution of the franchisor franchisee relationship, both yours and in general, since you entered the Denny's system. How do you feel about the leadership refresh over the past few years? And then just a final question, what makes you confident in the future? And what are you most excited about? Clyde, maybe we'll start with you.

Yes. I was -- I have been trying to get into the Denny's system probably since 2011, even though I got in 2017. So I've always admired the brand from afar. And I always admired it because I felt like it was a very iconic brand, much like you've heard today, but then also a stable within the household. I feel like it's a global brand that while we have 1,400 restaurants in the U.S., 167 abroad, I feel like I can go anywhere in the entire world. Somebody's going to know the Denny's brand. So being a legacy brand like that, it's one that I had always wanted to be a part of. And I think the evolution of the leadership team and the whole management franchise or franchisee relations. I think that's continued to evolve. I think that we started up and I -- when I joined in 2017, great interaction with the franchisor. And I think where we are today is that it's just -- it's just continued to build. So the quality of the team, their vision, the strategy continues to excite me when it comes to reinvesting back in the brand because I invested in the leadership, along with the fact that the brand is an iconic brand. So I'm extremely excited about it. So I look forward to the future. And I'm going to put my mind where my mouth is.

Fair enough. Roland?

So. 20 years ago, when I came into the system, going to be a greater franchise document, we signed. I call it the most one-sided agreement in the history. Sign it and put it away and hopefully, you never have to look at it again. But there was a great contention amongst the franchisee community and the franchisor. It was just -- it was the second brand I came to, I said, "Wow, there's problems here" and then a few years later, entered John Miller and John did a great job kind of fixing that. You did a lot of great things. And he was there for like 11 years, and I thought, okay. Then I retire, who could they possibly hire to take his place. And I don't know how they did it, but they found the perfect person. Kelli has been great. I mean her restaurant background. I believe if you're going to be in the restaurant business, you've got to operate good restaurants. So I personally like to see an operator, someone has kind of come through the operations side. And Kelli has done that, operate great brands great analytics with Black Fox, and she's been perfect. And so she comes and she introduced a new team. There's new ideas. It's fresh. It's invigorating and been very good.

John, you have an interesting background. What made you decide to become a franchisee of Keke's?

So I was a customer of Keke's first for a long time. My wife and I, we've been a franchisee for about 7 years now. We used to have a production company in the TV world for 25 years, had offices in Florida and L.A., and we're winding it down, retiring looking for the next chapter. Never in a million years. Did I ever think we've done up in restaurants, probably if you -- I would have told you the last thing on my list. And we had a friend that was a franchisee at Keke's. And we're exploring a ton of different plays for us. And the more we dug into that, we already were huge fans of the brand. When we started seeing the model by like this is a totally even thing. So we started up with 1 restaurant 7 years ago. Absolutely fell in love with it, with the culture single shift, the hours of it, the return was fantastic. And so we just sort of fell in love with it. Love the culture, love the team and everything behind it. So yes, never thought we would be here, but we're having a great time and growing with a lot of excitement.

Fantastic. This question is for Roland and Clyde. You're both early adopters in the new XenioPOS rollout, which for everyone's clarification, includes server tablets, kitchen video systems and QR. Can you tell us how those investments are paying off in your restaurants and the benefits you're seeing? Roland, we'll start with you.

So in the restaurant business, we operate about 385 restaurants in 20 states. And the technology is just critical. I mean to get it right in that many restaurants. We love to buy restaurants where people haven't used the technology because we think we see 3-, 4-, 5-point savings. And so this new system is long overdue at Denny's. It's been very, very helpful. I mean it's still new. We have 3 systems in so far. And any time you can pay more attention to labor and food costs to prime costs, extremely, extremely beneficial, especially when you have a big group of restaurants.

Yes. I agree with Roland. I should have about 5 systems in by the end of the year. And I sort of look at Denny's as a huge technology upgrade. And it's also something that is an upgrade in front of this is customer facing. When you start talking about working with a tablet versus a pad and pencil when you're dealing with orders and that sort of thing. I mean it's just really more of a sophisticated look. It makes your business seem more contemporary. And so to me, I like that. I haven't really tracked so far the savings. I'm sure the savings are there. But what I'm interested in is how I how I look to the consumer. And this is something that the consumer can see that there is a change and it's an upgraded feel, touch and feel from a contemporary standpoint. I really do see Denny's really levering up in that area.

I want to stick with you both and discuss the remodel image. Both of you have been early adopters and big fans of this initiative. Maybe you could talk to us about your experience with the new image, how guests are responding, how the teams are responding? How many have you done? And what are the trends that you're seeing? Clyde, we'll start with you.

Yes. I've done about 10 of them so far. And as we mentioned earlier, about 35% of the portfolio is completed and I continue to do it. And I'll tell you why, because I'm actually getting double-digit returns on investment. And I believe that the more we do that, the more we show the guests that we are a different look, we have that different look. We are lit up, especially when you think about a 24/7 business, which case I have only 1 store that's not 24/7 out of the 36. And I think that, that is where we're going to win the game is at 24/7 because that's where I'm winning the game. And I know that Roland went in the game that way. So I'm very, very enthusiastic about 2.0. Customers see it from the curve. They understand exactly what we're trying to do, and we are getting more and more incrementality as a result of that. So I'm extremely excited.

I brought you some good information. This is not forward-looking. This is like factual and helpful. I -- in the industry, you've got to remodel this to stay up. But what you really hope is when you remodel you get a return on investment. We've done 5 of the new Denny's. We do a little different than Denny's. We look at the outside -- we look at the dining room and then we go to the back of the house. People sometimes we get the back of the house is where our people work. And some of the Denny's are old. So they need to be redone. The T-bar ceiling, the lights, the FRP, the equipment. I mean we try to touch it all. But we've done 5 and we've seen 7.2% increase in sales to 25.3% increase in sales. We had a restaurant in Prescott, Arizona. Everything around it was beautiful with this old Denny's city. It was a beautiful Walmart, a brand-new Burger King, and here's this old Denny's. And we remodel it. I think we spent about $600,000 inside, outside, and we took it from the ones there were closing a $1.3 million to almost $2 million. And so this has really resonated, I think, with the consumer. They like to see the difference and some are Denny's remodeling. And it's been very beneficial. It's a beautiful remodel. It's really good and it's been very helpful. Actually, you see a return on investment.

I'll start. I wanted just to take a step back and talk about all these initiatives that are rolling out across the system. Obviously, they require some sizable investments. And while you guys might be able to invest, are there ample options and support coming from the franchisor to enable these investments in a tough lending environment? Clyde, we'll start with you.

Yes. I know the brand has recently come out with a very, very strong program where franchisees if they want to take advantage of that. And it's basically -- it's kind of an upfront payment to the franchise and then it's a little bit of a payback -- it's a payback over a certain period of time. But if you -- but it is definitely something that, in my view, if you're looking to do a remodel, the 2.0, is probably the best program I've seen in terms of support from the franchisor. I think there's also been a an opportunity when you start talking about the technology upgrade and that sort of thing where there's a leasing program that the franchisor has introduced to the franchisees. And I think you'll see -- we'll see a lot of franchisees take advantage of that. But it goes back to the franchisor or franchisee support system, in which case, when you have a caring franchisor such as Denny's, it really motivates you and as a franchisee. And it makes you feel like you both are at the table together, but trying -- looking at having a common view and working together collaboratively to really build -- take the brand forward. So...

I would just say they've done 2 things that are kind of unusual in the industry. If you need it, they'll finance the new Xenial basically 100% of the lender that they lined up will go behind your primary lender. So if somebody needs 100% financing to do the new system they can. And they also, again, innovative. I don't know if this is step done probably. But on the remodel, it give me $100,000 and build that payment back into the franchise fee you pay. So at their cost of money, which is attractive and unusual, helpful to people, especially maybe if the smaller franchisees don't have access to capital, very helpful.

Going to turn to Keke's for a second and ask Ashley a question. A little different spin on investments. You've been in the system about 10 years. Can you tell us how the Keke's brand has evolved since being acquired by Denny's 2 years ago and has the shift in ownership change the trajectory of the brand and what's changed?

There has been, obviously, for us, a huge change. So we were one of the founding franchisees 2014. So we have been with the original franchisors for quite some time. And now the Denny's has taken over, it has been night and day. We are able to grow, we're able to have support, we're able to have -- even a culture as far as like franchisees and being able to talk and really help build our sales, build brand recognition and Denny's has done an amazing job. We could not have been where we are even today with the current franchisors. We probably wouldn't be in Keke's, if we were with the bad franchisors. So we plan to grow. We plan to expand and Denny's has made that possible.

John?

That is a long, long list. They have changed it also the better. The access to the services to the shared services has been tremendous. From development and their development team to help assess access to the data. There was no data prior, it's been a very little data. And if you think about the old Keke's brand, it was very much a successful regional brand that was very static and analog, if you will, and I think it's been tremendous in the last 2 years, what's already happened, menu innovation, optimization. To David's point, we shrunk the menu down and really streamline that. Inside of the stores were the same. So the new look of the stores is updated. The technology is everybody is saying, we had very little technology very old school way of running the store. So a lot of these things are just helping improve. So top to bottom, it's been huge off-prem too. So prior to the acquisition, there was virtually no off prep. The old franchisor orders were sort of against the off-prem. COVID shifted that a tiny bit, but then when they came on. So we've seen a huge growth in that catering channels, a lot of different opportunities. So at the beginning of a lot of great things that come, but it's been 9 days.

I'm going to shift a little towards marketing and sales, and Roland, I'll start with you. Can you speak to the incremental marketing investments from the co-op and the ships back to the $2-$4-$6-$8, especially given the breadth of your portfolio as your restaurants in 16 states?

So I'm a huge fan of the $2-$4-$6-$8. I was supposed to taking it away, so you know. And anyway, I was delighted to Steve brought back, and we went to -- for 4 weeks, we went to instant positive traffic, which is huge. It's a value proposition that I think people recognize and know and Denny's is a value brand. So the incremental spending is critical. The last people know that back. An average person comes in 2.3x the -- I mean now, the quick serve, they may come in twice a week. But at Denny's, it's 2.5x a year or something like that. So it takes some money to let people know that the $2-$4-$6-$8 is back. And that initiative has been very, very helpful to us. And I think it will continue to be helpful. And we have to spend the money to have the word out there that is back.

Clyde, I want to ask you about the virtual brands and your experience with them. Most larger chains is probably now have moved away from virtual brands over the past few years, and Denny's has leaned into its virtual brands. And in fact, rolled out a third virtual brand recently. Has the launch and existence of these virtual brands improved your own 4-wall economics? And maybe discuss also the incremental costs of supporting these virtual brands.

Yes. I'm actually glad that they're moving away because and that's share that I can take. I actually feel good about the fact that we have Meltdown, Burger Den and also recently Banda Burrito. The layer -- this new channel of distribution of our food actually allows for us to be able to have that layer to layered sales -- incremental sales. I think we're somewhere in the neighborhood, if I had to consolidate I mean maybe 70,000 week per restaurant. I mean that makes a difference. I don't necessarily look at the cost as much as I look at the fact that it builds variety under 1 roof. And to me, I think that, that improves overall, I look at that as improve my overall box economics from a brand standpoint. So I'm very much enthusiastic about providing a new channel when it comes to virtual brands. So it's been very, very effective for us. And I also believe that it allows our teams to also be excited about new things and variety and that sort of thing. So to me, I think it's just an overall added value versus looking at it from, gosh, how much money to say is this going to cost me. And I tend to new initiatives, I tend to newness like virtual brands. I tend to lean into those as opportunities, not so much. And I don't look at it from cost first. I look at it from a standpoint of what's my opportunity to really gain more guests within the portfolio.

Can I add something just to that? So a lot of brands are moving away from what we're doing. And I think, I don't know, a large percentage of the -- these brands, it comes at late night. When the other restaurants are closed. I have 108 Denny's, 102 of them are open 24/7. And so a lot of the 3 brands that we're talking about, it comes late night. And so it really works well for us at Denny's.

Let me shift back to Keke's for a second. I want to talk about the rollout of the new beverage program and how that program has been received in your cafes. Maybe Jordan, we'll start with you.

Sure. Yes. No, I think it was something over 10 years that we were actually behind in that segment. We really work because we're premium breakfast. We serve the freshest, most amazing food and so many customers would say, "Hey, I just want the Mimosa" or "hey, I just want to complement it with a late or something of that degree" and so with the new ownership and Denny's is coming on and saying, hey, this is a no-brainer, right? This can make you more money. We have absolutely heard nothing but great feedback. And it's one of those things that beer and wine is the start of it, but even if it can evolve even more beyond that full alcohol with liquor or like we were talking about specialty coffees that are coming. Those are just absolute big revenue streams that are going to continue to add to that profitability that we're very excited to offer to our guests and create those new drinks and all that kind of stuff as far as marketing and all that.

John?

Yes, I think we were missing out on some of those customers over the Saturday, sunday-funday-Brunch kind of customers that they wanted to go to a place that they could have a cocktail with that. And really unlocked a huge growing on the comments we were getting for customers that wanted it. So yes, see positive we've rolled out all our cafes. They love it. I think everybody is craving for more an expansion to it, but it was a great adoption and really, really good feedback.

Final topic discussion around development and unit growth, and I'll start with Roland. Being the largest Denny's franchisee and having multiple other brands, how do you balance your investments to grow your brand and what makes you excited about growing Denny's specifically?

So the way we do it is we operate basically 4 brands, and we keep each one in a silo, and we try to reinvest in that brand. You heard me talk about the remodel success when you invest in that brand. billed sales. And not every brand that you remodel gets increases, sometimes it's just part of the business. And Denny's has been different. It's been invest in the remodel and see a fairly substantial increase in sales. And so that's the way we do it. We constantly look, we love to buy Denny's. We look at anything that comes our way. We'd love to buy things where people are not using technology because we think we can find 2, 3, 4, 5 points, which is huge.

Let me ask Clyde. Do you have plans to build additional Denny's locations or acquire additional and these restaurants? And then I'll ask you a separate question on Keke's.

The answer is yes to both. So I'm looking forward to -- in fact, I've got a couple of Denny's in the pipeline now to be built. And should have the next one open around February, I think right? So about February and then -- but then also consistently or continuing to do the remodels as well. But we have the next remodel done by the end of the year. And as I think about the -- my -- the 2 concepts I have, Jack in the Box and Denny's, they both stand on their own. And Denny's funds its own future in my portfolio. And we are growing profitably. So it's not a situation where we're having difficulty from the standpoint of economics. You've heard me say on and on the box economics for Denny's is very strong, probably one of the strongest in the industry is especially when I think about EBITDAR, as I think about EBITDAR is one of the strongest in the entire industry. And so it's -- to me, that keeps it exciting for me. And I'm actually doing what I need to do from the standpoint of managing the top line in the middle of the P&L and investing appropriately and doing was right for the business, including compensating our teams well having well-trained teams and well staffed in order to maximize the potential of the model. So it's really, really been rewarding for me, but not only for me, but for our teams. So I'm excited about that.

I want to ask you just quickly on hikes as well. I know you're watching the brand and you would consider being a franchisee of the brand. We've heard about the [indiscernible] and feed strategy. Is that something you'd be interested in exploring? And really what would you need to see before you were to step in?

I think I'm continuing to watch Keke's. I think talk -- I spent some time with John and learning because I think for me, I tend to study a brand a bit. Before I jump in, I think that's prudent to do that. But Keke's is proving itself out. And it's really, really checking the boxes that I tend to make -- where it helps me make the decision. So it's checking those boxes for me. So the answer is that I used to what you said earlier, I am still watching. And that -- once I get started, I won't stop. So I'm looking forward to continuing to watch. But if you talk to me again in a few months or so may have a difference. I may be able to tell you what I'm doing.

Yes. Yes. John, I'll start with you. We know you're under construction in terms of building Keke's Cafes and even some outside of Florida, what keeps you excited about growing this brand further?

I think the opportunity, the upside because it was already a really successful model in the pre Denny's acquisition. And so to see what's being unlocked now is really exciting. So we've really accelerated. We're going to have 9 cafes by January. So like we're already there. We've got more lined up for next year. So in talking to Clyde and some of the other Denny's franchisees. And I think there's -- it's such a family environment. So I was already bullish on it pre Denny's. And then when you've got this robust team that you got to tap into and as a young franchisee to be able to lean on them and also, it's such a collaborative environment with the seasoned Denny's franchisees that help -- can help you fast track and not make mistakes that every franchisee goes through as you go to those growth steps. So I think that's been really great. So I feel just more bullish. And we haven't even barely tapped the catering in the technology piece. I mean it's already great in knowing what's coming down the line still. It's really, really exciting. So yes, we see no end in sight. We're really pumped about it. So...

And Ashley?

I mean we are extremely excited to introduce Keke's to other states and not be in Florida. I mean Florida is well recognized if you know anyone in Florida and you ask for to go for breakfast, they want to go there. Everyone wants to go there. It is -- it's one of the best places. So for us, going to Georgia, we cannot wait for our neighbors on the border to give them that same love of the great family breakfast and -- we just -- we -- I mean we're just thrilled to get it out there.

We feel that there's not so much underserved areas that Keke's is just going to excel in. The reality is that premium breakfast where you want to take it to that step above is our category. That's where we succeed so well. We capitalize on customer service. A lot of people reference us as like 5-star hotels. It's literally you're greeted at the door, you're greeted within 30 seconds. There's all these parameters that we base our service on in our food quality that it's something that I'm very passionate about. I'm a big breakfast person myself. And over the 10 years of people coming to Florida on a vacation, always are saying, "I wish I had this here or I wish I had it there" and Georgia is one that we know personally has gotten a lot of request for it. And so we're very excited to get across that border and bring pieces there.

Right. We're going to just wrap up real quick. Just want to give everyone opportunity to share any final thoughts if you have, and I'll start with Roland.

Great to be here. I'm a great lover of Denny's. I start with 1 restaurant 37 years ago, and I'd pay attention to invested capital and return on investment capital. And Dennis has been a great place to be -- to do that.

Yes. I started out with 7 restaurants. I wish that could have been in Denny's 15 years ago. It's a very proven -- it's a well-proven model out there. And I think it's not -- I don't know what people really know the strength of the Denny's model. As well as they probably could once they dig into it, but it is a good model. And it's one that allows you to reap big rewards if you run it well. So we're very, very -- I'm very, very excited about the future. I'm excited about this leadership team led by Kelli and just the overall really what's to come. And I think we're on the verge of something big. And I'm excited about that. One of the things that I wanted to mention is that 2 things is that you've got. To me, I think you got 3 brands within Denny's. You've got Denny's, you've got Grand Slam and then you've got $2-$4-$6-$8. And if you ask customers Grand Slam, $2-$4-$6-$8 they're going to say, "Oh, Denny's". So that's the strength of the brand. So I think that a lot of brands don't have that in terms of those being known for those kinds of things. So that makes me even more excited. So you can bring folks in from the curve by just whispering $2-$4-$6-$8 or Grand Slam and they know Denny's for those iconic let's say, inside brands. Underneath the Denny's brand. So I'm excited looking forward to the future.

John?

My answer change after listening to what you just said. I think I'm probably most excited about feeling here at the beginning of something and with the team that created those brands and knowing what we have going for us to sort of be at the beginning of creating all this brand international level and the sub-brands underneath one of things that are sort of coming out. So it just feels special part of it and what's coming.

Ashley, maybe wrap it up.

The big thing on a closing statement is just the excitement of Keke's and opportunities that are there going back to technology and things that we don't have in our stores that are going to make us that much better. And we were just so happy. I mean, to get a President like Dave on board and Kelli, I know seeing both brands that, that's all that new energy, that new passion drive for both brands. But like having that legacy of Denny's, but then the youth of Keke's, I think, is a really cool combo.

Well, thank you all for joining us and for making the trip to be here today. We all really appreciate it. And now we're going to turn things over to Robert to discuss financials.

So that was pretty cool. Particularly for us sitting over there, we've known these people in a long time. They're very, very busy. I was just with Clyde and Roland in Colorado for the Denny's franchise convention, a week later, we're here, had the pleasure of meeting John, Jordan and Ashley personally, for the first time here in New York just last evening. But as you can imagine, they're all very, very busy people, and so to make time to come here. It won't even side no, right? The Ehrhard had a little family of urgency. We didn't know if they were going to make it. So Dave called Jordan and Ashley just a few days ago, and they humped up here just to be with us. So I can't thank you guys enough. Really excited to be here with you. So what I'd like to do, I'm going to do 4 things for you here before we kind of ramp up and get to another Q&A session. So I'm going to recap a little bit the AUV growth, the restaurant growth, the margin growth and the kind of the cash flow and capital structure that's kind of been the bouncing ball throughout each of these presentations kind of remind you what those are because they actually really form the foundation, be the kind of the longer-term outlook, that will be the fourth point, the longer-term outlook. In between, I'll touch a little bit on G&A, add some clarity to some of the things that were posted earlier. And then the third point will be -- again, that interplay of how we will allocate capital. You heard about a seed and feed strategy today, the interplay of what that might mean to share repurchases and debt leverage. So those are the really kind of the 4 things I look to accomplish here in the next 13 minutes from this point. So if you go to AUV growth, right, we talked about getting to $2.2 million, both on the Keke's side and the Denny's side, but $2.2 million from $1.9 million today on the Denny's side. Really -- Patty spoke really eloquently towards that in her how we win, right? So it's the breakfast value offer and breakfast value off-prem. In the home office, I talk about that quite a bit, really kind of getting back to that focus, right, to drive traffic through those 3, thank you for that. I appreciate that, Kayla, pulling the slide up. Through those 3, how we win strategies to drive traffic. Beyond that, we will also increase AUVs through what Steve talked about, that portfolio optimization. And we did a lot of clarity, and I'll get to that. But the reality is, is we had a [indiscernible] that 60% as we identify today may not be long standing with the brand. That's 150 or so restaurants, 50%, Todd, thank you for bringing that up again, are reflected in the current year guidance already. So another part that I'll speak to in the longer-term guidance. We also, with the portfolio optimization now that we have in Dave's world the right infrastructure with regard to development and training, we will continue to accelerate that growth within the Keke's brand. So 12 to 16 midpoint of 14 this year. That was off of 4 of last year. That's double any other year in history, quadruple anything we've done with it since acquisition. But we needed that infrastructure in place. I think that was probably hindsight being 2020 back from acquired it. One of the things we probably didn't understand as well is that it really didn't have that infrastructure to grow. I think you heard both Ehrhard's and Swans talk a little bit about that, and we are really -- have put that in place and are poised to grow much more quickly from this point forward. And then ensuring from another point of the portfolio optimization, ensuring that portfolio is representative of the way we want our restaurants and cafes to look through highly accretive remodel programs. That's another critical point to the portfolio optimization. So driving traffic through the how we win strategies, breakfast value off-prem and then the portfolio optimization. You'll look at restaurant growth, again, really robust growth. I'll guide to give you an outlook of that in a minute, but we have 140 development commitments. I can speak for a moment as to why they may not be that 200 at this point. People want to see us in Tennessee. They want to see us in Colorado, see us in California. So those 140 won't be the end of our development commitments. They will come further and it will really fill out that pipeline needed to get to the number of cafes that Mike mentioned earlier. Then the seed-and-feed strategy. Talk -- that will be somewhat capital intensive for the next couple of years, right? But we will get that back. It's not intended to be that we want to run 50% Keke's Cafes, corporate cafes. We will, in the near to midterm, invest in those to then refranchise those out to ensure that this pipeline of development that I'll speak to really comes to fruition because it's a critical component of our longer-term outlook. Margin growth, AUV growth really will support broader margin expansion. We will also talk about investing in technology. You heard Clyde and Roland. And I would love to get the returns Roland is seeing 2%, 3%, 4%, 1% -- 1 margin point actually has a nice return on that. But it's ready to go, and those will improve margins. And then the G&A. Again, it's an opportunity for us to really take a deep hard look at that here. Cash flow and capital allocation, again, that bouncing ball AUV restaurant growth, margin growth and then cash flow and capital allocation. We will, in the short term, invest to grow EBITDA. We will invest to grow the corporate Keke’s Cafe to then refranchise, we will over-index to remodels, particularly on the Denny's side in the near term and the Seed -- I mentioned the Seed and Feed strategy. We will, though, that does not mean that we will not return value to shareholders. We have the ability to do both, although likely albeit on a lower level until we begin refranchising the Keke's Cafe back out. That has been a consistent part of our strategy and one that we will -- as you will see -- have seen consistently even within the 2024 number, something that we would do. So let's talk a moment about G&A and what we put forward earlier today. It's not lost on us that our G&A both in dollar terms and as a percentage have increased as a percentage of overall system sales have increased over the last few years. It's also not a surprise to us internally and hopefully not too much of a surprise to you given what I said about building out infrastructure development and training infrastructures for Keke's, that we had to over-index to get to this point that we can accelerate that growth. The other part of the story, though, to be perfectly transparent is as we've shed and will continue to shed a good number of Denny's restaurants. So if you look at that, one of our benchmarks is as a percent of system -- total system sales that has increased. It's north of 2%. Our number that we said prior to the pandemic was 1.7%. So we have taken quite a hard look at our G&A and what's represented on this slide. Let me -- just for clarity, illustrate this. We have $72 million that we define as kind of core G&A spending. $63 million of it would be reflected within our G&A on our external financials. There is another $9 million that is encapsulated within our franchise margins. Those are individuals such as our franchise business consultants that really focus on our franchise operations. So when you aggregate those 2 together, it's a bucket of $72 million. You see it on this slide, roughly [ $70 million ], slightly over $70 million. So we have committed, and you will see this beginning in 2025 to reduce that by 5% to 6%. So the other piece that you need to incorporate in that is, otherwise, right, in a normal year, this number would have grown by 2% to 3%. That's the normal rate of inflation within our G&A bucket, just from labor, 80% of what's in our -- what is contained within our G&A, our labor dollars, so you can -- you've seen what's happened to labor inflation over the last 4 or 5 years. So that would have inflated otherwise 2% to 3% in total. So the delta between where -- what we would have guided next year and where we will guide is a delta more like 7% to 9% with that 5% to 6% reduction. Hopefully, I'm coming across clearly there. About 2/3 of it, you will see within the core G&A, that $63 million bucket to about the other 1/3 will be within that franchise operating margin kind of thumb in the air with that, but to give you a broad sense of what that is. One other piece to note is that within 2025, it is a 53-week year for us. So that will visually eat into that savings, but we get that right back in 2026. So we -- again, it's just that there's a 53rd week of payroll that we have to account for. As we grow both Keke's and Denny's in net terms, pulling this back, growing at a much slower rate into the future and then growing restaurants, we will get back -- our goal in the future is to get back to that 1.7% of system sales that we've talked about previously. We've benchmarked that. We think that, that is a relevant benchmark and one that works very -- in terms of that works very well for us and one that will have a somewhat industry-leading with regard to that. I will tell you that despite the reduction that I'm talking about here, we will be able to confidently accomplish everything we shared today. So we're not compromising anything we've talked about with regard to our strategies with this pullback. The other topic I'll briefly touch on before I get to the long-term goals is capital allocation. I've talked pretty extensively about going deeper, more deeply into Keke's Corporate Cafe development. You should expect that for the next couple of years, at least, that 50% of the new builds on the corporate cafe side, the Keke's corporate cafe side, will be Denny's development. We will begin refranchising those likely as soon as some point in 2025. But getting back to that 85% to 90% franchise level won't be accomplished and really until the kind of the back half of this longer-term outlook. So -- and in context here, pretty much everything I'm speaking to is about -- it should be viewed on a 5-year horizon. So again, we'll get back to that 85% to 90%, but we'll over-index in the early years against Keke's corporate cafe development. Again, I told you we will invest into shareholder returns. We still have cash to do that. And our debt leverage, we talked about this since the pandemic. It is a 2.5 to 3.5x debt leverage target, that still is the target. We've floated up above that here in the last couple of quarters, largely due to several different onetime legal and franchisee expenses that begin to peel off as soon as Q4. So we'll trend back down within that range as soon as Q4 into 2025. So no real change there. No real desire to pay down debt either, being in a highly franchised brand, this is actually somewhat of a moderate to lower level of leverage. So we don't intend to pay down, we'll grow EBITDA to get back to where we need to be. So last but not least, let's talk a little bit about the kind of the longer-term guidance that we have put out here on this slide and that the outlook for the coming years. So when you -- again, one of the other things that I'll point out here is that, we don't really expect the macro environment to change. We don't expect the rest full-service restaurant industry to change or the family dining environment. We work within that, that will be the environment we work -- that we live in for the foreseeable future. But regardless of that, regardless of the challenges, everything that Kelli spoke about earlier today, we're putting forth these targets with confidence that we will deliver them. We expect kind of working down. I'm going to start in the positive same-store sales, we expect low -- flattish to low single-digit same-store sales with traffic that's approaching flat. That's the health of the brand. We -- all of the things that Patty talked about really need to drive traffic. That would be industry that would buck industry trends, at least in the near term with what we're hearing from all of our different insights to that. But that's where we're going. This one, it is new, right? And this is one that we wanted to get out as a result of this conversation today. We will drive towards net -- 3% net unit CAGR growth. So that's -- while next year, given the additional closures, the other half of the closures that Steve talked about in the optimization, over the next 5 years, we got a 3% CAGR. So that's growing once we get beyond 2025, that's growing 45 to 50 net new restaurants and cafes a year on average. So that's something, frankly, we haven't seen since the pandemic, we haven't seen positive restaurant growth since the pandemic ensued. And even prior to that, that was -- that growth was fairly muted. It was somewhere between flat and 1% prior to the pandemic. So we are putting a stake in the ground, largely fueled by the Keke's growth that we intend to have 3% net unit growth for the foreseeable future. G&A reductions we talked about. We talked about balancing the Seed and Feed with share repurchases and the debt leverage and that ultimately leads to a compounded annual adjusted EBITDA growth of 5% to 7%. So again, a rate well beyond what we've delivered, particularly since the pandemic and very confident we can do this. One other point that I will make, and this was a little bit of an ad lib comment here going off script. One of the things I wanted to point out is that even with the closures that we represented here, the 150 in that bottom quintile, half of which are contained here and half of which we talk about in 2025, we will grow adjusted EBITDA into next year. It's not something where we're going to step back to make a tremendous ball forward in 2026 and beyond. But all of that 5% to 7% adjusted EBITDA CAGR was contemplated with those additional closures noted. So I think I'm out of time. I think I'm out of guidance points to talk about. We will bring the -- Kelli comes back to kind of close this out before we get to the final Q&A of the day.

Thank you, Robert. So we will move into Q&A. I actually only have -- I really have just a quick wrap-up. And the closing thoughts are really about recapping the compelling business case for both brands and how we will make sure that we are leveraging both brands appropriately, right, that there's the right amount of attention paid to stabilize and getting to net growth for Denny's. The levers that we've talked about that will pull forward are ones that are ready. They're not ones that are in early -- we're not in early innings, not early innings on Xenial and the investments in technology. We're not in early innings on the remodel program. We've shared the lift -- and been really clear about what we know we can get. It is now about getting the flywheel turning and putting those investments into action and putting those plays into action. And so we know with doing that, that you'll see growth in traffic from us that you'll see growth in those margins, all the things you just heard Robert speak to in terms of long-term guidance. For Keke's, there's a huge opportunity. When I look to the right side of the slide, huge opportunity, again, measured -- we're being very measured in everything that we're bringing you here today to unveil more specifics, more detail, that long-range guidance that we talked about but also just be really smart about how we're leveraging both of these brands to create a really compelling case and stronger business model. So that's really just a quick recap of the things that you heard, you'll see more growth from traffic for us. It's not going to be about price, as much as it has been in the past. We've got strong plans to grow traffic and sales through media, creative, new teams in place, new renewed teams that I hope you've been able to see, and huge thank you to our franchisees that we're able to speak to what we've been able to do so far and then the bright future ahead. So with that, we bring one more stool up and then I'll invite the leadership team for both brands to join me up here, and we are going to take some questions. Let them get settled and then we'll get started.

Robert, going back to your presentation, you talked about kind of restaurant level profitability goals and AUV goals. Can you give us a framework, if you look at the 150 closures, how much of that delta between where we are now and those eventual goals are just based on cleaning up that part of that lower quintile. And then any assumptions that's going to help other existing units to lift their volumes as well?

Excellent question, Todd. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on that. So when you think about the $2.2 million AUV goal, with regard to Denny's, we are about $1.9 million today. About 1/3 of that will be accomplished through cleaning up the -- that lower end of the portfolio, so $1.9 million to $2 million. The balance of that Todd, will be coming through that positive system-wide same-store sales that I referenced also with regard to opening the additional openings that are achieving $2.3 million right now versus the $1.9 million. So really kind of a 3-pronged approach to get to that $2.2 million. With regard to the kind of the mid-teens Denny's margins, that really will be more of a function of just the AUV growth kind of compounded juxtaposed against the technology enhancements and what we can do with regard to that. Keke's will be 17 or upper teens, right? So think about what an upper teens might mean you can define that but that largely will come. That's the business model that we're in with regard to that. It does take into account, we do scope out the preopening costs related to that with regard to that, and it does take 3 to 6 months to get fully loaded to get to that level of performance.

I want to ask about Keke's in regard to the Seed and Feed Strategy, financial strategy, So 5 are going to open in Dallas pretty soon in other new markets. What is the possibility that they're quite successful, let's say. And therefore, the season fee is no longer really desired by the franchisees because they want all the action right away. What -- or that would become less of the use of your free cash flow and your capital? Secondly, if that's the case, what would you -- how would you allocate that free cash flow? If it were to come to be sooner than expected?

Yes. Thanks, Andy. So with regard to that, we will -- I do believe that you will see us begin to refranchise Keke's Cafe into 2025, as early as 2025. the commentary to get to that 85% to 90% in the out years that suggests it may take a minute to get that wheel building to get those markets built out. But to the extent that, that comes sooner to the extent that, that capital is not required earlier, I think you'll see exactly what we have done for -- since 2010. It is return that of value to shareholders. Now historically, that has come with regard to share repurchases, and that we -- there was a chart in my presentation that spoke to that, and 2010 was the first time we were able to do that. We continue to ask the question. There was a question asked within the perception study that we did in advance of this event today on whether that was preferred against dividends. For the first time, previously, it was fairly agnostic. Every time we ask the question, people said, we don't care just to return value to shareholders. There was -- I wouldn't say that there was a bias towards a dividend, but there is an openness towards that. So I think we would consider all mechanisms of returning value to shareholders. But that's what this model is, Andy. You know that this should be a highly cash-generative model that as we have shown historically, returns a lot of value to shareholders.

Can I just reiterate the question about -- I didn't maybe articulate. Is there -- what do you expect would happen if the returns are really good? Would you expect there would be less desire for the seed capital from Denny's? Or you -- or would you expect the 5-year plan is just, hey, this is what it's going to be what these franchisees are asking for now, just whether these markets open well or not?

I think the expectations are the returns will be really good. But with each new market that we move into, it may take a second. Like in Tennessee, right now, we're building the impetus, right, 2 open there. I think 1 or 2 more open expected through the end of the year. So you'll see that market and then we will likely flip that market. But I think that mechanism, you will see perpetuate in Colorado, then California, then Texas. So I don't think that there's all of a sudden going to be somebody in California going, "Hey, look, it worked in Tennessee. I'm going to go build a bunch in California." I think we're going to -- this is going to work market by market. So the light -- we were very thoughtful with what we said in the 5-year. So I think it will likely more play out like that than otherwise.

Robert, can you clarify the comment about 2025 EBITDA, relative to that 5% to 7% longer-term model. Does that apply here? Or is it going to be a little bit lower than that because of the closures? And then you talked about the investments that you're going to be making to grow Keke's on the company side, remodel Denny's, but I don't think you gave any actual numbers around that. Is there anything you can help with that in terms of what the CapEx might look like annually over the next 5 years within that plan? And Keke's going to grow 25% to 30% starting next year?

Yes. A lot in there, Michael. So let me see how to clarify that as best as possible. So the 5% to 7% compounded annual EBITDA growth really wasn't intended to be what we looked at over the 5 years, my clarifying comment with despite the number of closures, we will grow within there. I think we offered that range for a reason. But again, I do expect positive EBITDA growth into 2025. With regard to CapEx on average, I think the best way to think about a new Keke's development is somewhere between -- right around $1.5 million when you think about that. So if it's half of what we were doing, let's say -- so you -- let's just do the math, right? I always love doing math. So at midpoint it's 14, let's say, next year, we grow that 30%. It would approach 20, so you would be 20 restaurants, half of those, we would say, would be -- would be corporate cafe development, so maybe $15 million there. I do believe we will accelerate our company Denny's remodels on average that we -- for the system, they're about 250 or are a little bit more expensive just given the volume of our restaurants. So on any one year, you would expect us to be doing 8, which would be [ 2.4 ]. So I could see us that, that number potentially doubling, if not more. So I think you would see this year, we have a 20-somewhere in a 20 number for our capital, Michael. It will be beyond that because we will be opening more Keke's next year. Did I miss a third part? Okay.

It's Eric Gonzalez from KeyBanc. One of your competitors in casual dining is having a lot of success bringing people in with a high-low strategy and then getting them to trade up to other parts of the menu. You have this compelling value with the $2-$4-$6-$8 are you doing maybe on the premium end to get people to trade up? And how do you -- you talk about marrying that to the $2-$4-$6-$8 or having it not be as big of a leap to get people to trade up. So can you just maybe unpack that a little bit more for us, so we can understand.

Sure. The most recent one was we had a Beetlejuice promotional menu, and that actually worked extremely well for us. So we were able to -- it's about the compelling offer. So I was speaking to some -- I think it was Victoria that I was speaking to earlier. About one of the surprise performers was this triple burger that we introduced on the menu. And again, it is it is something that was enticing, it looks craveable and it got people to again come in with the value $2-$4-$6-$8 message and then trade up. But one thing that I did talk about during my update was the relationship pricing, right, between the entry price point and the trade up. It can't be so -- that relationship can be so wide that it doesn't work. So it's not only making sure that the message and the product is compelling, but making sure that, that pricing relationship works as well.

So the other thing I'd offer, and that has shifted in the last couple of years, frankly, is just how we've leveraged, everybody does this. So this isn't -- everyone talks about a barbell strategy. Ours has truly improved. What we now do and how prescriptive and surgical we are with what is in the restaurant in terms of merchandising, what's on the -- what's on the table so. So our Lumberjack Slam, not a new item. Not at all a new item, not a new offering. And with one of our promotions, I think it was the Original Grand Slam promotion we did for $5.99, in most markets $7.99 in high-wage states and markets. And that Lumberjack Slam, we've tripled the incidence rates. I mean by, say, 30% to 90%, I think it was. So it tripled it, just featured on the table. It was just an offering on the table. And the other thing you see us doing a lot is saying with, our Slams, our equity with slams, as Clyde eloquently pointed out, and we'll take a slam and just upgrade to the Strawberry Stuffed French Toast, that Strawberry Stuffed French Toast sold like crazy as well, and that was a premium offering. So we'll say, upgrade your slam with this offering. So that's how we continue to balance it and bringing them in for a $2-$4-$6-$8 or an Original Grand Slam, whatever value we're leading with -- you'll see us do it around $2-$4-$6-$8 and you'll see us continue to both innovate in that platform and then take the offering and suggest what either goes well with it and where do you upgrade. The last thing I would say about the upgrades or the things that we're seeing, the $2 and the $4 category for those that have covered us for a long time and those that have been around for a while, that $2 and $4 category were simply for $2, you can get this for $4, you could get these offerings. And what we did this time was made those add-ons only. So we had to purchase something else. So that in and of itself and the guests aren't coming in and saying, what happens they're not upset about it. When we test it, we were very clear in looking for anything we get from the guests, and we didn't get it. We didn't get, hey, wait a minute, it's not really $2 and $4, it's really an add-on. It didn't bother in one bit, and we still had people coming in for it. The results still showed positive results. But that's an add-on category. So that's helping to check right now as well.

Jake Bartlett from Truist Securities. One is -- I want before it was $2-$4-$6-$8, $10 and I'm not hearing the $10 part, so just want to clarify.

Yes, I absolutely can clarify that, $2-$4-$6-$8 is what you would remember, right? $2-$4-$6-$8, who do we appreciate. There's a nice cheer that goes with it. But $2-$4-$6-$8 was the equity. We added the 10 just much like we did listen to the feedback from our franchisees, the 2 and the 4 became a, Hey, we love this -- but given today and given this offer was over 10 years old, we wanted to refresh it. We wanted to be mindful of the economics of the business model. So adding that $10 category is helping in certain areas, of course, California being one of them. but the, 2 and the 4 also was a change. So we just dropped it. So we had some that said $2 to $10 as the offers like no, it's $2-$4-$6-$8, because that's the catchy rhythm of it, and that's what everybody knows. So when you see the equities around it and Patty slides and all of our slides, you're not going to see the 10 there. But again, there's nobody kind of -- there's no guess saying, "Wait a minute, is it 10? Is it this?" We think like that, it's a bit sometimes inside baseball. But to the guest $2-$4-$6-$8 is our equity.

And then my real question is about the trajectory of the business, and this is very near term, but just what happened throughout the third quarter and then into October? And Robert, you gave good detail about or Kelli, you gave great detail about the monthly cadence. My question is you got, I think, 2% to 2.5% lift from the $2-$4-$6-$8 when it came in mid August. I think the 1,000 stores for the Banda Burrito was at the end of July, so that would have helped. It feels like if I kind of take those 2 out and especially with the deceleration in what you've reported for October that there's a deceleration in the underlying demand without those promotions without those additions. Maybe if you can clarify that because I also thought that last October was an easier comparison. You're unique, I think, among a lot of concepts where last October was lighter. So there's a deceleration in this October, but I'm just trying to get the cadence of the business and how you feel about the macro, what that says about really underlying demand?

Yes, Jake, thank you. With regard to that, I think Kelli spoke to that in her setup slide, right, talking about the macro environment right there. So whether it's the personal savings rate, us fighting against at home. There is an underlying drag. We get updates from Coke all the time, and it says, that the expectation would be to -- in full service. The traffic is going to be a challenge going forward. So everything we're doing, everything that you saw on the slides today, fights against that, right, $2-$4-$6-$8 value menu, CRM platforms, loyalty programs, remodel programs. Everything we're doing is to fight to get that back to positive traffic because there is an underlying drag in the economy right now to be -- just be plain as day.

And just a question on just the valuation for the company. It's roughly been cut in half since pre-COVID. Do you think it is just that macro pressure? Or I mean, what do you hear from investors in terms of what's really driving the valuation is so much lower. We have a macro environment right now that by right should be temporary. But anything else that you hear from investors that you think accounts for that disconnect?

Jake, as you would expect, it's pretty painful for us up here to see that valuation in that decline over time, right? It's we benefited from something significantly higher prior to the pandemic, and we just have not return to that level. I think it's -- our responsibility is this management team to put forth these strategies, these targets and then to hit those targets consistently with regard to that. From investors, I think the question that preceded this one, is the exact question that gives many in the room pause. It's like where is traffic, what is full service, what is family dining. And that is the underlying cautiousness of the restaurants that we run. We want to be here today, putting forth the confidence that these strategies will deliver in the face of that deliver beyond what we have experienced since the pandemic and particularly the one -- I'm excited about all of them, right? But I've not personally -- I've been here when comps have been positive for 9 years in a row, right? I've been here for a lot of -- I've not been with Denny's Corporation where we grew system net units 3% or more, right? I've seen flat to plus 1%. So I'm super excited about that. I'm excited about all of them, but that's one I haven't seen and I am super confident in the 2 gentlemen at the end of these chairs right now and to being able to deliver that.

Nick Setyan from Wedbush. One of the constant questions we get from investors as a refrain as, Denny's owns the best stores in their company-owned portfolio, their highest volume stores. The four-wall margins are 12%. The franchisees have lower AUVs and they're paying a royalty. So are they really as healthy as they need to be for the system to grow, right? At the same time, we hear from the franchisees today a couple of franchise today that have said, Hey, you know what, the returns on Denny's are actually underappreciated and people don't actually appreciate the profitability and the unit economics of these stores. So maybe one way to address that, if you can, today, is to actually talk about some franchisee profitability metrics and some franchisee unit economics, if you have that.

Yes. I think that's a great point in terms of just talking about they're the middle of the P&L for all of them. It's a fair point. On company margins and company ops, Chris, just back up, right? So just back a few weeks, but hit the ground running. So Chris, do you want to make some comment.

Nick, I appreciate your question. So first, I was hoping that somebody would ask me a question, I get a chance to talk today. So I'm 3 weeks back on the job. So 11 years with Denny's. In my career, I spent 20-plus years at Dunkin' Brands, 11 years here. In the last 2 years, I've been with CKE restaurants, Carl's Jr., and Hardee's, particularly focused on the Hardee's brand as the President. And it's a really big opportunity, Nick, within the four-wall margin. So there, we had a deep level of focus on that, managing the middle of the P&L, we were to increase it by 2 points. It was through things like menu optimization, it was thinking through out labor scheduling managing utility costs, managing repairs and maintenance. So for me, as I reenter the brand, our focus on the corporate P&L is going to be really important because my job is to lead the way with that fleet to demonstrate to the rest of the world. This is how we can get done, we introduce tools like Xenial. I think Xenial is going to be really important, serve of productivity, efficiency, how food gets sent to the kitchen. So think about it a tablet, table side, fires right to the kitchen. So we're able to turn those tables a little bit faster, that should help with labor. There's other things. I was asked the question during the break around back of the house and maybe some robotic type stuff is there's things we could do to take labor out. We're actually testing things right now from a dishwasher perspective. So there's a whole host of triggers that we can pull. We just got to get laser-focused on it. I do believe there's a lot of strategies that the brand has in place today that I'm really excited about. When Kelli and I started talking about my introduction to the brand, I chose this job, right? Why I try to choose it? Because I believe in this legacy brand more than probably anybody in this from my 11 years in my life put towards it, and I'm really excited to get to exactly what you're looking for. So let's tighten that up a little bit.

With regard to franchisee profitability, Nick. We talk about this fairly routinely, and interestingly, when we look kind of quarter-over-quarter, we gentlemen that reports into Chris and kind of dotted to me, Ethan Gallagher, you saw his picture earlier. He looks at this very routinely. We just took a look at it on a quarterly basis. And the numbers tend to be, and this has been average, right? We have 600-plus restaurants within this system that we collect data upon. And the average tends to be an upper single-digit kind of bottom line number that they're delivering. And that has not really dramatically changed year-over-year in that environment. We kind of look at it and cut it multiple different ways. I will tell you that there is a large variation. I would imagine if you ask the people sitting next to you, what their margins were, they would probably be higher. And I think one of the opportunities to improve that for all is what we talked about with regard to this portfolio optimization. We have routinely had conversations now. Kelli alluded to it in the first part of this year where we went to franchisees and said, "Look, if you close these restaurants, your overall profitability improves." And that's important, not only for profitability, everybody would understand that, but also for what can be invested back to the balance of their portfolios, right? So if you are losing $1 million on these 10 restaurants and all of a sudden, we can help you get out of those, that cash flow drain can then be put into the EBITDA traffic growth initiatives that we're describing. And then it's the representation of the entire portfolio improves because of that. So this is -- while a shock to the system to see a bigger number, I did allude to this on a Q1 call that half of that quintile was likely compromised, we've updated that to 60% and -- but saying we are actively going in to try to get those closed. It will be a near to midterm benefit, no doubt.

And just one follow-up on the Keke's side. We opened 3 units earlier this year. So maybe we could talk about the performance of those 3 years -- of those 3 units, specifically on just the unit economic side of those 3 units because now we have almost 4 quarters of data behind us. And then we have a pretty small company-owned portfolio, right? So we're opening this many Keke's, if they are as profitable as that we all hope they should be, we should actually be driving much higher EBITDA growth. And we would hope to see that with these 3 units, for example, this year. So maybe you can kind of talk about what's going on? Is it new unit inefficiencies? Are they not profitable in the first 6 months? How should we think about sort of that build over time, as we add those units? And does that actually pressure level margin in the near term before we start to see a pickup in maybe '26, and so we shouldn't expect that in '25?

Yes. Great question. You kind of answered your own question. So the 3 units, I assume you're talking about the 2 in Tennessee and the one that we just opened in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, which it's been less than 2 weeks. And that one is a franchise partner that opened in Highlands Ranch. The 2 in Tennessee 1 in January and 1 in May. We do have a pretty detailed plan that says by the 6-month mark, we need to get to those margins that we expect. And that we model out when we make the decision to make the investment. So we feel confident that by the 6 months, Mark, we can hit those margins. I will tell you, we hired a great area leader in Tennessee because we knew we were going to grow in that market. We're very excited to get unit 3 and 4, the doors open, so we can leverage some of those above cafe costs by having that area leader. So there's a little leveraging that has to happen pretty quickly, but the way that we model it out and what we model as a pro forma to get approval for new units is based on once that unit gets to sort of the 6-month mark is what we target for sort of the optimum margin performance.

If I understood your comments correctly, the -- if you lopped off the bottom quintile of underperforming stores, you'd be like at a 2% same-store sales?

So just to clarify, so with that -- with the restaurants that were in that portfolio optimization, the 150 that was on the slide, the 50% that will be closed this year. With those gone, the, $1.9 million AUVs, the annual unit volumes would be $2 million just from that move alone. So they are decreasing the overall annual unit volumes by $100,000 themselves -- they're $1 million or less restaurants on average.

I guess like when you complete that portfolio optimization, there's just like an inflection point that you can map for us on a time line where we would see same-store sales pick up appreciably because you're not having that drag? So is there some time line you can kind of map for us on that?

Generally, I would go back to what I had said earlier. It will take us through 2025 to complete this portfolio optimization. But despite that, you should expect us to target positive -- flat to positive system-wide same-store sales growth on average for the coming future. So could it be more once we finalize that optimization? Potentially. But again, within that range, I think you should see us target at least flat or above with same-store sales and the completion of that optimization by the end of 2025.

I mean I think the other thing you'll see from us quarter 4 is when we'll release the full year guidance for 2025. So we're not going to hear. So we've shown you a lot, I hope, you feel -- in the way of long-term guidance. We're probably going to still keep talking about it over that 5-year time frame until we get to annual guidance for '25, and as Robert said, are closer to having those closures.

And if I may, just one other question. You have the headwind of the industry with your category, but it also seems like a great opportunity to grab the trade-down customer. So do you see like an opportunity? Or is there something you're kind of targeting for that? And could there be maybe same-store sales lift a little sooner than anticipated because of an effort for capturing that trade down? Or is it significant enough to make enough of a difference?

I think it's on both sides, right? So are we capturing trade-downs 6 out of 7 in the last quarters. we've handedly, in some cases, be casual dining. And there's some good casual dining players, as we've talked about. And then at the same time, we do have a lower-income consumer. These are just the facts. So you've got them both they almost fight against each other. What you might be getting, and we think we're getting a trade down. $2-$4-$6-$8 is the value proposition that helps that person that does need to see value from us at the same time until things loosen up just a bit in the environment, especially for those lower income consumers just we're being, again, balanced. The initiatives you add them all up, the initiatives out of the way more than what you're seeing. It's just we're balancing that for the reality of demand. It's just a simple demand equation that says, until we see this come back. And it's been a long time for the industry having not seen consistent traffic gains for the industry. Full service hampered way more than quick and we all kind of know how that works.

Maybe just a follow-up on the franchisee cash flow, is that a pre- or post-royalty number, the high single digits?

Post.

Got it. And then I have 2 questions, post royalty. And then just -- I had 2 questions. The first one is just you guys put out guest satisfaction numbers for both brands that we're improving. I guess as you think about operational metrics that are the best leading indicator of comps what do you think those are? And how have those trended more recently? Maybe for the Denny's brand specifically?

Yes. So I appreciate the question. So net sentiment score is what we track. For those that don't know what net sentiment is. It's positive comments left on the Internet, minus negative comments give you a score, right? The higher score, the better the brand is performing. So food, beverage, service, ambiance, hospitality, all of those things that we track, guest complaints. So we're staying laser-focused on that. For a legacy brand like Denny's, when you look at a Google rating, the performance of the brand over the past several years is outperforming the industry as far as it's moving because those are lifetime ratings. So for as long as people have been leaving comments on the Internet, so if you look at some of our restaurants, you'll see 2,000, 3,000 comments that are left on over a period of time. It takes a long time, and it's very difficult to change that. So the movement that we're making there is really huge. We have to lean into ambience. So we have to lean into image. So you heard a lot about that and our strategy is today. Kelli talked about the variability. The variability in Denny's from top to bottom performers is pretty significant, that's our Achilles' heels, exactly how she framed it. It's a 30-point spread from the top 20% to the bottom, 20% in the system. So where I have to lean in with the operations team is to make sure we're focused on that, the bottom 20%, 25% of the system and how do we get those folks up and performing better.

Got it. And maybe my other -- my last question is I thought the investment slide you put up was interesting. I mean you guys have basically made almost $800 million of investments over 10 years. And the way you guys frame it up is $650 million has gone into repurchases and $150 million gone into CapEx. Like $65 million and $15 million. How do you identify the $15 million of CapEx is the right number versus $35 million or $40 million? Like where do you think you're maybe ahead? Where do you think you're behind in terms of capital investments?

Yes, that's a great question. So when you look at that slide, we've had -- again, it goes back to the model that we're in. We're in a highly cash-generative model that's franchise focused and that's been Denny's. It was -- we went to 90-10 in 2017. We went to $96.4 million (sic) [ $96.2 million ] in 2019. So we really have existed in a low cash flow requirement model. So again, with regard to that, we are leaders when it comes to these investments that drive returns. For example, with our Xenial rollout, the new technology platform, we completely implemented that in 2024. So that's done within the company portfolio. Now we just need to leverage that investment to drive the returns that Chris is describing. Also with remodels, you heard me allude to the fact that, that program is now ready to go, we will accelerate those -- this is not intended to be guidance, but to give you -- this is a factual statement from the last time we did a remodel cycle, we completed all of the company remodels within 3 years. So when we have a high returning initiative, we invest into that initiative. But that being said, we don't look to be a Keke's brand that's 50% corporate cafes and 50% franchise cafes. That's not -- that's not our sweet spot. We bought this brand intentionally 2.5 years ago to be another -- to be leveraged into the franchise-focused model that we know how to run very effectively as a Denny's. So to kind of answer your question, if we have a high returning asset, particularly on the corporate side, we will invest in that as quickly as possible.

And we have time for one last question from Todd.

Thanks, Kayla. Obviously, right now, the street is not respecting from a valuation standpoint, the cash flow generating power of the business and the growth opportunity with Keke's going forward. I could ask the question 1 or 2 ways, but the best way is probably to frame it, if this was a situation where Denny's was operating as a private entity, how much faster could you get through the work that you're trying to do around the repositioning here of the base? And I guess, any thoughts you'd want to add, if the market is not going to reward you for your cash flow and the future growth opportunity. Any thoughts on how to handle that going forward?

Yes. That's a fair question, Todd, to be candid, right? If you look at our valuations, it clearly is not where any one here would want them to be, right? And practically speaking, right, being a public company, and this is not intended to be flippant or not intended to be a solicitation, we are for sale every single day to be what it is. Now we don't have an activist, we don't have offers on the table right now. But our job is to execute against the strategies that we put for today. With regard to speed of execution that you if you look across the various data points that I provided, G&A, we will execute getting that in 2025. So that's coming fairly quickly in relative terms. If you think about the portfolio optimization, in large part, that's not us. These are franchise-owned restaurants, that we are partnering with them to point out where they have opportunity and to provide them with the necessary tools, consultants insights to potentially get out of these restaurants more quickly, but that is ultimately a franchise decision. There's nothing that technically do. They're not in default. We couldn't default them through that. So we will work through that. And frankly, to Steve's earlier comment, the closing restaurants is actually not that easy when it comes right down to it, getting through that in the next 5 quarters is frankly pretty quick.

What I would add to that, I think, Todd, it is a fair question. The things that we consistently hear and we -- when we consistently talk to whether to or others that are interested in understanding this valuation or why it's the way it is, we hear really consistently 3 things. right? We hear about our G&A, right? We're addressing that, we will get to that. And we'll get to it with urgency and accountability. We hear about closures, and we hear from many that have watched us over the years that, hey, coming out of the pandemic with a different model with the escalation of costs that everyone is burdened with now, it has put pressure on the lower-volume restaurants, right? That's just a simple fact. But one we hear about. So is this going to be a continued slow burn? When do you get back to net growth? We unveiled that today. We couldn't unveil it before today, but we unveiled it today. Having a significant amount of those closures already happened, right? So again, it was strategic in terms of how we've gone about it the last year and working up to today to be able to say, this is our long-term guidance, and this is what you're going to see from us. The last one is sales and traffic, and sales cures a lot of ills, traffic here's a lot of ills and this has been a difficult environment, and yet we still to be flat to talk about our results today at flat and stealing share. We feel good about it, not great. And those are the 3 things that I think changed for us, and we've laid them out today in terms of how we're going to change those. Yes. Thank you. We're -- Kayla's going like this, either [indiscernible]. We appreciate all of you being here. Thank you for the questions. Thank you for your attention. Hopefully, it was a good event for all of you. We are going to be here to talk to you over lunch, and we're happy to take any further questions, any of us, including our franchisees. So thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Thank you.