“So there is some pressure, certainly, again, more early in the year, on margins and therefore, on cash flow also. We certainly don't expect it to wipe away what we gained either in 2021 or prior to that. But it certainly will pressure, again, both margins and cash flow.”

In context

“ooking over a 3-year period, it's up about 50%. It does get to over $500,000 on an individual restaurant basis. It is fair to say, to your point that, there is commodity pressure going into 2022. Just to give a perspective, in 2021 in the U.S., our food and paper costs were up about 4% for the year. If we look forward to 2022, our expectation is that will be about double or in high single digits increases for 2022. Most of that pressure or more of that pressure will be in the first half of the year. And as the year progresses, we expect that to ease somewhat. On the international side, just to give a similar perspective, we saw about a 3% increase in food and paper costs in 2021, and that increase is supposed to be around double also in 2022, similarly more pressured early in the year. So there is some pressure, certainly, again, more early in the year, on margins and therefore, on cash flow also. We certainly don't expect it to wipe away what we gained either in 2021 or prior to that. But it certainly will pressure, again, both margins and cash flow. From a pricing perspective, our franchisees, I think you know they obviously decide pricing for their individual restaurants. They're advised by a third party, and the pricing mechanism or methodology that's used is a consumer-based research approach. We take into account market conditions, economic environment, competitive landscape, et cetera, generally try and take small increments of pricing at various times versus take a lot at one time. And really, the most important thing that we're trying to balance is cost pressures with making sure that we provide good value to our customers and that our customer ratings on value remain high. We do keep a close eye on that. Our customer ratings have continued to score well on the idea of providing good value for money, and that's a really impo”