“While this year, we expect to outperform that historical pre-COVID margin seasonality, given the strong success we were seeing on our strategic priorities, beef inflationary risks are real and present a headwind to our profitability through the rest of the year.”

In context

“on to $41 million. While we're starting to see some signs of food cost declining and inflationary pressures decelerating, most of our basket cost remains elevated and beef inflationary pressures remain highly uncertain until the end of the year. But despite ongoing headwinds, we guide full-year 2023 restaurant margins to reach 19.25% to 20%. This represents approximately 200 basis points to 270 basis points of restaurant margin expansion in this year. While we are not providing specific fourth quarter guidance at this time, we expect to see typical seasonality in both our sales and profitability from the third to the fourth quarter. As a reminder, prior to COVID, fourth quarter restaurant margins seasonally are lower than the third quarter levels, and that's largely driven by lower sales. While this year, we expect to outperform that historical pre-COVID margin seasonality, given the strong success we were seeing on our strategic priorities, beef inflationary risks are real and present a headwind to our profitability through the rest of the year. We expect this in addition to rolling off that significant October '22 price increase and ending the year with just about 2% price against the broad inflationary pressures we're seeing to impact our fourth quarter flow-through overall. However, all else equal, if beef inflation was consistent with last year's performance and consumer spending patterns remain strong, we see a path for our restaurant margin to exceed 20% for the full year. We expect to open approximately 75 Shack system-wide this year, about 40 of them will be domestic company operated, and approximately, 35 will be operated by our licensed partners. We guide 2023 G&A of $125 million to $130 million. Absent the 3.3 in legal and professional fees that are excluded from adjusted EBITDA in the first and second quarters. at the”