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Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (CMG)

Q4 2012 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 5, 2013

$32.86

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon and welcome to the Chipotle Mexican Grill's Fourth Quarter 2012 Earnings Conference Call. All participants are now in a listen mode only. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Thank you. I would now like to introduce Chipotle's Director of Investor Relations, Alex Spong. You may begin your conference.

Alex Spong

Management

Thanks, Angela. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our call today. By now, you should have access to our earnings announcement released this afternoon for the fourth quarter and full year 2012. It may be also found on our website at chipotle.com in the investor relations section. Before we begin our presentation, I will remind everyone that parts of our discussion today will include forward-looking statements as defined in the securities laws. These forward-looking statements will include projections of the number of restaurant we intend to open, comp restaurant sales increases, food cost trends, effective tax rates, investment costs and capital expenditures, as well as statements regarding potential menu price increases and other statements of our expectations and plans. These presentations are based on information available to us today and we are not assuming any obligation to update them. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements. We refer you to the risk factors in our Annual Report on Form 10-K, as updated in our subsequent Form 10-Qs for discussion of these risks. Our discussion today will also include non-GAAP financial measures, a reconciliation of which can be found on the presentation page on Investor Relations section of our website. I'd like to remind everyone that we've adopted a self-imposed quiet period restricting communications with investors during that period. The quiet period begins on the first day of the last month of each fiscal quarter and continues until the next earnings conference call. For the first quarter, it will begin March 1st, and continue through our first quarter release in April. On the call with us today are Steve Ells, our Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer; Monty Moran, Co-Chief Executive Officer; and Jack Hartung, Chief Financial Officer. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Steve.

Steve Ells

Management

Thanks, Alex. We are pleased with our results for the fourth quarter of 2012 as well as our performance for the full year. While higher than expected food costs impacted our earnings, our top line performance for the quarter was strong with the comp sales increase of 3.8% and total revenue increasing 17.2% to $699.2 million, adding up to a diluted earnings per share of $1.95 for the quarter. Results for the full year met or exceeded the guidance we provided in every area, including a comp sales increase of 7.1% for the year and total restaurant openings, of 183, 60 of which were opened in the fourth quarter. Our strong openings and comps drove revenues to $2.73 billion for the full year, an increase of 20.3% over 2011 and diluted earnings per share of $8.75. The continued strength of our performance is a direct result of our focus on the most important things that drive our business, primarily our unique food culture and unique people culture. With regard to our food, we are always pushing ourselves to find better, more sustainable sources for all of the ingredients we use and to refine our preparation and cooking techniques, so that we are offering our customers the very best tasting food we can and with regard to our people, we continue to develop a culture where we systematically focus on identifying top performing employees and develop them, and empower them to become the future leaders of our company. Through this culture we are ensuring that we have the talent and leadership we need to continually improve our existing restaurants and to open new restaurants with the highest of standards. Through this special culture, we are providing leadership opportunities for all who join the company. Heading into 2013, we are launching a…

Monty Moran

Management

Thank you, Steve. We continued to make significant strides in the development of our people culture during the quarter and throughout the year, and as the year came to an end we promoted two special leaders both of whom have had a tremendous impact on our culture and will help us accomplish even more in the coming years. Gretchen Selfridge, who previously served as Regional Director of our Rocky Mountain region and Mike Duffy, who was our RD for the Pacific region are now both Restaurant Support Officers. Both Gretchen and Mike started as general managers when we had just a handful of Chipotle's which is a great indication to all of our current crew and managers about what's possible at Chipotle. Through these promotions, all of our restaurants around the country are going to benefit from Gretchen and Mike's extraordinary leadership and ability to develop restaurateur cultures in their restaurant. Their track record in leading teams to develop restaurateur cultures is unmatched at Chipotle. Gretchen began her career at Chipotle as a general manager in 1996 and became a regional director in 2001. Since the beginning of our restaurateur program, Gretchen's region has developed 129 restaurateurs. Her passion for getting to know her people and then inspiring her team is a model for many future leaders at Chipotle. As an RD, Gretchen and her team oversaw hundreds of general managers and I am certain, that Gretchen could tell you a personal story about each and every one of her managers. Mike also began working at Chipotle as a general manager in 1996 and moved up quickly. In 2005, he took over a struggling Pacific region and under his leadership it has become one of our most successful regions. Mike truly understands our people culture and has been very successful…

Jack Hartung

Management

Thanks, Monty. We're extremely proud of results that our restaurant teams delivered during the fourth quarter and for the entire year of 2012. And while achieving these strong results is quite an accomplishment, what's more important is that our food culture, our people culture and our business model all continue to get stronger. Sales in the fourth quarter increased 17.2% to $699.2 million, driven by new restaurant openings and a comp increase of 3.8%, which is driven mostly from increased traffic. For the year, sales increased 20.3% to $2.73 billion and comp for the full year was 7.1%. Menu price increases mostly from increase taken in 2011, up to full year comps by 2.8%, and our average restaurant now generate sales over $2.1 million. Our underlying comp transactions were also 3.8% in the quarter that we had 90-basis point of price in the fourth quarter related to the Pacific price increase from last March that was offset by fewer drinks as more customers order their meal to go and by slightly smaller group size as our larger online and fax orders were down slightly from the previous year. We'll see harder comparisons in the first quarter as we will lose two days or about 200 basis points of comp due to weekday and Easter. And in addition, we are comparing some mild winter weather in the fourth quarter of last year, when benefitted by an estimated 200 basis points. Our new restaurants continue to perform well, opening with sales at or above the high-end of our communicated range of $1.5 million to $1.6 million. We opened 60 new restaurants in the quarter, bringing our year-to-date openings to 183, which exceeded the high end of our guidance range for 2012 ending the year with 1,410 restaurants. As we mentioned during our…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions). And we will take our first question from Joe Buckley from Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Joe Buckley - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Thank you. Could you run through the year-over-year changes in marketing, I guess, the percent of revenues expectations, so just a number of markets where you be active this year versus last year and how are you defining moving towards more transaction driven or traffic driving marketing.

Steve Ells

Management

Yes. Joe, I will clarify in terms of the marketing spend. I think you caught that, we do plan to spend more. Historically, we spent about 1.7%, but the last couple of years as we have been trying different know marketing initiatives, we've under spent that amount last year, we spent about $1.03. Next year, we do expect to get closer to that $1.07, but then your other question was about which markets we plan to focus on and where we intended to invest our marketing dollars. Is that the follow-up to your other question?

Joe Buckley - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Yes. You are aware that's great, but just in terms of percentages of the store base that would be covered by more active marketing programs and how are you defining that?

Monty Moran

Management

Yes. I think the best way to answer this without getting into your a very, very detailed discussion is, we cover all of the restaurants 100% of the restaurants, but in larger markets where we've got a lot of restaurants and where it's efficient of buy media, we will do the full complement of media, which we are going to do some of that as Steve mentioned in margin and I think he said 25 of our markets. In those markets, we are going to invest in billboards and if it's efficient, we'll do radio. We will do some print as well. We can't do that in some of our smaller markets or where it's very to buy the media, so those markets we will do local store marketing. For sure, we also will invest in social media as well, and so each of our markets have a unique marketing strategy depending on how many restaurants, we've got, how efficient it is to buy the media and based on needs how well of our brand is recognized. How loyal the customers are and so our marketing plan is going to be customized market-by-market.

Joe Buckley - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

And has 25 markets where you do the forecast and it's a media compared to what you did in 2012.

Monty Moran

Management

It's more. I do not know offhand. We have done in number of markets this past year, but we are going to be doing more of that kind of marketing in 2013 episode, so that explains that's where part of our additional it investment from 1.3% to 1.7% is going to be to providing more coverage you of that kind of the billboards and radios and alike in more of our markets in 2013.

Joe Buckley - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Okay. The action, how are you kind of defining that?

Monty Moran

Management

What you said, again, Joe?

Joe Buckley - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Well, you indicated that you were get more traffic focus with the marketing I am just curious how define that versus what you've done historically, so I think a lot of that has to do with creative, Joe. I mean in years past, a lot of our marketing or I should say most of our marketing was what we called building, market which brand building marketing which spoke to food with integrity, the quality of the restaurants, experience, the way we're different, things like that.

Jack Hartung

Management

Mark and his team has made a concerted effort to actually create devices, for instance, in the new short films and shows that are currently under production to the ones that were similar Back To The Start, have components which can direct people online to get engaged and to take opportunities of going in for some kind of a promotion, buy one get one, something like this, where in the past, we sort of left that opportunity on table with Back To The Start, where there wasn’t a transaction driving the component. So I think you can see more things like that that actually push people in to the restaurants rather just talk about brand building in general.

Joe Buckley - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Okay, that’s helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We will take our next question from David Palmer with UBS.

David Palmer - UBS

Analyst · UBS.

With regard to the marketing, is that something that you would use in particular to support catering, for example?

Jack Hartung

Management

Yes, catering, marketing is going on in Denver as we speak and certainly that is very much directed at getting people to go in to the restaurants and try it. It specifically talks about how it works, come in and try it. What you can expect the experience to be. So, yes, that’s definitely marketing that’s getting people to actually go in and place their catering order or place it online.

David Palmer - UBS

Analyst · UBS.

I guess, I am sorry if I interrupted there but I was just thinking about the marketing and the brand awareness, there is there is often a phenomenon where certain chains get up to a certain scale in an individual market and the fact that they get up to that scale in and of itself and that brand awareness, just by the number locations helps the comps. Are you finding that you get up to a certain amount and just adding that extra layer of marketing, and whether it be billboards and keep that above average market awareness curve going in the right direction. Is that essentially what you are doing here in certain developed markets?

Steve Ells

Management

It is certainly not the main intent of this marketing of catering. The main intent is to introduce people to catering. I think because it's so heavily marketed and because this is really new news in a very well developed market, I think you are going to have the affect of just helping to bring renewed awareness to Chipotle in general. Our hopes would be, yes, that would help drive traffic. I think that will be an offshoot of that.

Operator

Operator

We will take our next question from Andy Barish with Jefferies.

Andrew Barish - Jefferies

Analyst · Jefferies.

Question on just the comp direction so far year-to-date. Should we look at it as if we take the fourth quarter trends and take out the two point trading day shift? Is that kind of the way you guys are thinking about the start of the year?

Jack Hartung

Management

I wouldn’t do it that way, Andy. Here is why. We started a trend. I like to look back to 2009 as our baseline year. That was during the year of the depth of the recession. During the year we had four quarters of 2% comp. We started our sales increase. We started our recovery from the recession in the first quarter of 2010. Then built sales in the second quarter and the third quarter and so they are higher in Q2 of 2010 and higher in Q3 and then higher in Q4. Then in the next year, we did a double-digit comp and now continue the double-digit comp. So I think it was seven quarters and so we had this stair step building quarter-by-quarter-by-quarter for 12 quarters over the last three years. Now we are 2013 comparing against all three of those years. So we have some very, very tough comparisons. So I wouldn’t look at the 3.8 that we did in the fourth quarter and say that’s our starting point. I would look at it as we are comparing now against three years worth of comp in the fourth quarter. As a total, it is almost 30%. We are up almost 30% in the last three years. When you look back over the four quarters and you look at our comparison since we recovered from the recession, this quarter is going to be our toughest comparison of all. It is toughest for the reasons I mentioned in my prepared comments where we had extraordinary mild winter weather last year and so we had a very high comp on top of the very high comp from the year before. We benefited from an extra day last year. In addition to those two tougher comparisons, we are losing a day this year with Easter. So I am not quite sure how to tell you what the first quarter, how it will turn out, to be honest, but I wouldn’t start with 3.8. I think it is going to be a tougher hill decline than starting with 3.8.

David Palmer - UBS

Analyst · Jefferies.

Okay, thanks. Then, one quick clarification, just on the food cost. So, again, the starting point is the fourth quarter, the 33.5%, am I correct in saying that food cost will kind of run in that 33.5% to 34% until we see your next pricing action?

Jack Hartung

Management

That's exactly right. That's what our hope is. The inflation that we expected hit us harder and faster than we thought it would in the fourth quarter, but now as we look ahead it looks like we'll stay in kind of the ranging that in 33.5 to 34. It looks like it's going to stay in that range for a few quarters, so we don't have any specific plans to our menu price increase. I wouldn't expect that we'll even consider doing something in the first half of the year, so I think the earliest, we might use something would mid-year, but as long as inflation stays in that we'll get through the next few quarters and then we'll look at what the outlook for inflation the second half of the year what the economy looks like and what our transaction trends look like and then we'll make a price decision at that time.

David Palmer - UBS

Analyst · Jefferies.

Just finally real quick, what was the sauce issue that hit you guys in the fourth quarter?

Jack Hartung

Management

We have two one things. One, we bought more of our white corn. We've been moving away from the yellow corn into white corn, and so there is a little bit of not a big amount, but that contributed to it. And then we actually had to source some of our tomato salsa from the West Coast during the quarter just because we are having just because we are having trouble keeping up with supply for some of our East Coast restaurants, we had to pay a premium just to get some of the Tomato salsa from the West Coast into the East Cost. That's always more temporary. The white corn is going to be more of an ongoing, premium that we'll pay to continue to source white corn.

Operator

Operator

We will take our next question from Michael Kelter with Goldman Sachs.

Michael Kelter - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

The food cost question, I mean that 33.5% of sales, it's the highest it has been in any quarter in recent history and the guidance 33 5 to 34 is in line to higher than that. Why are you letting yourselves get behind on pricing, like what's the relevance to keep with inflation and especially in light of the previous comments you made about your belief that the elasticity for the Chipotle brand is limited why wait?

Jack Hartung

Management

Because, Michael, the most importantly to us right now is to build customer loyalty and to build transaction momentum., the thing we'd rather not do as we saw our transaction level off and you we're happy you 3.8% transaction growth, but that one low transaction growth what you that we have seen over the last three years and so what we don't want to do is, during a time when the economy seems to be okay but not great. It is not clear what happened. As we hit the debt ceiling crisis and you know how people are feeling with their payroll tax increasing we'd rather be more patient, we rather see what happens with the economy what happens with our transaction trend, and if we are little late to the game in raising prices, that's okay because as soon as you raise prices the margin of our model bounce right back to where they can and should be on a going forward basis. So, the headline is, we don't want to risk interrupting trends that are causing transaction to soften during the time like this. That's why we rather be more patience.

Michael Kelter - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Very helpful. Then, yes, the other thing was on labor costs which I was looking there roughly flat as a percentage of sales over the second half of '12, so I guess the same-store sales in the other current range and now be Affordable Care Act flows through within about a year, or so might labor costs actually start to de-lever unless comps meaningfully reaccelerate?

Jack Hartung

Management

Yes. We need without considering any increase in healthcare costs. We've always talked about we need kind of a mid single-digit transaction driven comp in order to just hold on for labor line and you saw that play out in the quarter where we had a slight increase in basis points, so let's call that basically flat with 3.8% comp. If we had slightly higher comp maybe 4.5%, it probably would have been exactly flat. I mean that's consistent with what we've said really over the years that we need kind of a mid single-digit comp. The reason for that is, when it's driven, we need to add labor hours. We actually have a labor chart that has a prescribed number of hours at as we add additional transactions and so when you get that mid single-digit comp so we you won't deleverage or you won't lever labor. To the extent that we have additional cost with healthcare next year that will cause our labor is now we think that the first year, Michael, it won't be that big increase. We think 2014, the penalty for employee not opting. Our plan right now is to offer insurance to qualify hourly employees, but the penalty for employee not electing insurance is so low than the cost of them electing insurance, their cost is so high, we think it is likely that most people won't elect it. So we think our cost in 2014 is not likely to be that extreme. We think that those costs are likely to hit us more so in '15 and '16 as that penalty begins to increase.

Operator

Operator

We will take our next question from Paul Westra with Cowen and Company.

Paul Westra - Cowen and Company

Analyst · Cowen and Company.

Just on your CapEx budget, can you give us a little more detail and then you outline the little bit extra spending here but obviously CapEx looks to be up about $13 million in the EOE you might have even last openings and back into what incremental cost for the grills? Can you give us maybe more color of how many remodels you will be doing and on the grills what impact they might have on the expenses? Do you have a payback for the new grills? Or is that a quality investments?

Jack Hartung

Management

Paul, we are planning on a similar number of openings. It's in a same kind of ballpark. But yes, we are going to spend an extra about $13 million. The grills are going to be, depending on how many we replace a few million dollars. It could be $3 million, $4 million, $5 million range. There is an extremely favorable payback. These new grills not only produce better tasting food, they are easier to maintain but the utility usage on these new grills is dramatically improved such that we can get a payback within a matter of a few years. So those make a ton of sense. Same thing with the LED lights. That will cost us a few million dollars as well. We have no choice, because we have to get rid of the old bulbs we have to move towards LED. The old bulbs just won't be available. They stopped manufacturing them. Those will have an early payback as short as the grills, maybe even shorter. It could be that we have a payback on those as short as one year. So these investments make a lot of sense for a lot of reasons. Then we are going to do a few remodels. These are a handful in New York where our users from older restaurants where we went in to a very old building. Very tough, from a construction standpoint and the building is holding up that well and it is our old look. So we are going to invest in remodeling those restaurants. I would not expect us to be doing a bunch of major remodels every single year. That’s a matter of a few million dollars that we are going to invest in upgrading a handful of restaurants in New York.

Paul Westra - Cowen and Company

Analyst · Cowen and Company.

How many stores have the new grill, as of now?

Jack Hartung

Management

I think it’s a handful right now. Yes, it’s a handful. I mean, Steve and his core team has worked on this grill for quite some time now and it is better in every single way and we have been anxious to get the new grill in as many restaurants as possible and we think, in 2013, we are going to be able to make a big dent in that.

Paul Westra - Cowen and Company

Analyst · Cowen and Company.

You can cover most of the base in a matter of a couple of years, going out?

Jack Hartung

Management

Yes, we can do it in a couple of years. Yes, we think we can.

Operator

Operator

We will take our next question from Jeffrey Bernstein with Barclays.

Jeffrey Bernstein - Barclays Capital

Analyst · Barclays.

Great, thank you very much. Two questions. I guess first, just following on the earlier topic of pricing. I know you talked about, at the earliest, maybe mid-year, but I am just wondering, theoretically how you think about it. I know in the past you did what seems like these pricing going forward but it would be more nationwide rather than in one specific market with the rollout with, say premium ingredients. I am just wondering how you think about it, whether, up in the past you talked about you would prefer to do one larger increase rather than smaller increases. So I am just wondering, with the current inflation level, what pricing would you consider and are there any the concerns when there is only a few well-recognized items on the menu in terms of how you take that price?

Steve Ells

Management

Let me take a crack. There is a lot to that. But let me try that in a condensed answer to try to cover all those, Jeff. In terms of the percentage increase, if we are talking about inflation in that kind of mid single-digit range of 3%, 4%, 5%, a price increase would, in that same kind of 3%, 4%, 5%,range, if you exactly match the food inflation that would allow our food cost to bounce right back to where it was before this inflation. It would allow all of our other line items to get better. Okay, so it wouldn’t take much of an increase to get our food cost back right where it should be and get our margins back to where it was before the inflation, or maybe even better. As a perspective, a 4% or 5% increase on a burrito is about $0.25 or $0.30. So it's not that much. If you compare that, some have assets who will instead of doing one price increase in a year or one every other year, want to do a few small ones, but we're only going to do a 4-ish or 5-ish. Let's say 4 for example. Instead of doing 4, you could do increases and you do 2% of the time now, what now what you are talking about doing is an increase of at rate of maybe $0.10, or $0.15 earlier in the year, and then do another $0.10 or $0.15 later in the year and we would rather not nickel and dime. Our customers really can't do it one-time, would rather have the conversation with conversation with them one-time, because a lot of cost don't necessarily notice the amount of the increase but I do noticed when you're increasing it multiple times and so our real desire is to not increase prices. We'd rather find efficiencies ourselves and that's why we have always been patient, we've always tried to make sure that that we can find as many efficiencies within our existing business model before having to raise prices, but in cases like this where we think we are finding most of efficiencies or have most efficient in our model where inflation has cooked our food cost up into this range strength 33.5% or 34%, or so. We find that we have no choice, but to raise prices, so does that helps you? Does that answer your question?

Jeffrey Bernstein - Barclays Capital

Analyst · Barclays.

Yes. The 4 to 5 wouldn't be unreasonable. You kind of look at it as I'd rather raise the quarter one-time rather than multiple.

Jack Hartung

Management

I think two things though that we've been thinking. Yes. We'd rather do what we did three or four years ago where we waited three years or more in a lot of our market and then we raise prices 7%, 8%, 9%, okay? That we want to avoid cost, but we are not about quarter or so, we think that's not an unfair increase to take.

Jeffrey Bernstein - Barclays Capital

Analyst · Barclays.

Got it. Then just separately on the new unit productivity. I know that there was some noise in the middle of 2012 with your new unit openings. I am just wondering if as you look out 2013 as it relates to kind of this productivity. I think you said it was 40% in new developments in 20% a sites, but putting that all together would that as a mix and we will year expectation for productivity, what would have maybe the most or least impact on just so we are prepared for pull ups some new productivity based on what you know today in terms of your unit openings.

Monty Moran

Management

Well, our new unit productivity has increased sort of steadily over the years as our comp sales have increased, our new units have kind of followed too and been a substantial percentage of the amount of our average unit volumes, so when you talk about a stir in the middle of 2012, with regard to new unit productivity. From our standpoint there wasn't any stir. You are probably referring is that there were some talks about like new unit productivity falling off in 2012. From our perspective that's really not what happened. What did happen was that we had a pretty exemplary 2011 with very high new store opening volumes, driven in large measure by the fact that we were opening a great deal of our restaurants in proven markets and the proven markets have, as Steve mentioned in his opening words, a very high likelihood of great returns and so in 2010-2011, we opened a lot of restaurants in these proven markets. Our A models in 2010 and 2011 were almost all in proven markets at that point and that was very intentionally done by us to basically stacked the deck in our favor of our A model strategy being successfully and it worked much, much better even than we thought it might with new unit volumes for our A-models that were literally adjust about at pace for traditional openings, but with the lower cost structures associated with the A models I mean that our returns on the A models were extraordinary. In fact, during those years much better than our traditional openings, so we went into 2012 for that year began, we explained to you guys that we would be continuing on with our A model strategy, but doing it and it is taking some more risk with it and going into developing markets, experimenting with the A model strategy in those developing markets. We did so, it's been very successful. The A models now are still are opening newly at that new store opening range lower than the traditional models now in terms of openings, though with returns that are really at pace, very, very similar to the returns of our traditional unit. So, we feel very, very strongly about new unit productivity. We felt that it's been an uninterrupted increase of new store productivity over the years with the possible exception that 2011 was an outlier to the good and an extraordinary year due to having so many in proven markets and having so many A models in proven markets and taking a little bit more risk thereafter.

Jeffrey Bernstein - Barclays Capital

Analyst · Barclays.

Got it, '13 is more normalized based on the lap of '12 versus the anomaly of perhaps '10 and '11?

Jack Hartung

Management

Yes. I think that is a fair estimate. We'll see how it goes, but we feel very, very good about the way they are opening and don't see any reason why we wouldn't continue to have this success with our new stores that we've come to rely upon.

Operator

Operator

We will take our next question from David Tarantino with Robert W. Baird.

David Tarantino - Robert W. Baird

Analyst · Robert W. Baird.

Hi, good afternoon. Jack, just a quick clarification question on the turns in the first quarter. Perhaps maybe if you could talk about what you have seen so far and if you are seen any change in the momentum of the business? And if you feel comfortable giving some directionality on the comps, that would be great.

John Hartung

Analyst · Robert W. Baird.

Yes, David, I usually do give some kind of indication based on how sales are doing. I am really unable to do it this time. The reason is because there is not really a pattern that I could see in January that I could tell you that would give you an idea of what's going on in the rest of the quarter. The reason for that is we had some days and some weeks that were really nice mild winter weather and our comps looked better than expected. I know we have had some snow and cold and some normal winter weather. Then the comps fell off quite a bit as you would expect. So I have not been able to really pick-up the pattern, but I could tell you what I expect during the quarter. So the only thing I can tell you at this point is, the quarter is a tough comparison for the reasons I mentioned because we are comparing to the three year, nearly 30% and we are missing a couple of days when comparing to. We are just now comparing, by the way, to some of the really mild weather, most of the mild weather we saw last year was in February. So, the first quarter trend stays is still to be rewritten. So I am sorry, but there is nothing I can tell you to give you insight in terms of how the quarter might finish.

David Tarantino - Robert W. Baird

Analyst · Robert W. Baird.

Okay, fair enough, and then Steve, a big picture question on Chipotle brand. It seems like you are talking a lot more about traffic drivers in terms of advertising and catering and a new menu item. I am just wondering if you think the brand is reaching a point at which you need those traffic drivers to continue to sustain the unit volumes that you are seeing currently?

Steve Ells

Management

I don't know if need is the right word. Over the years we have had a lot of requests. We have ignored a lot of those requests for fear that it might upset the focus that we have, which contributes to a great economic model, as you know. But a couple of things appear to be really important requests, we think, and that has been the ability to enjoy Chipotle in people's school or office or some of the large venue kind of areas. That's why we think catering is a really good option for that. People did these catering events, but we would make boxes and boxes of burritos and we feel that this is a completely different experience that we thought that people would enjoy and they are enjoying it. It's really a new way to experience the same stuff and it's very, very efficient for us to do. The other item, the Sofritas, we think, is really, really important because it speaks to not only a new taste and new experience in Chipotle, but it speaks to this idea of food with integrity that even if one is not a vegetarian or a vegan, you can participate in this idea that eating less meat is somehow environmentally responsible or maybe better for your health. A lot of people think that eating less meat is more healthful. So we have created this exciting new thing called Sofritas. It's very, very savory. It has this umami flavor. This flavor which is something that a lot of vegetarian offerings don't have. Vegetarian offerings at a lot of restaurants seem to be the dish, but without meat. This is something that's very deliberate in creating something that's vegan and quite delicious. So these are things that we have been thinking about for a long time mainly by listening to our customers and deciding if it actually fits into the economic model or doesn't degrade the economic model. In fact, I think catering has the potential to dramatically improve it because we can serve these two to 200 people much more efficiently, much more quickly than if they were to come through the service line. The Sofritas is quite easy to prepare. It's braced and has lots of ingredients, but the actual preparation, the finishing preparation in the restaurants, quite efficient and it only takes up one of our service containers on the line. So I think both of these are going to help people enjoy Chipotle more often and perhaps in different ways without degradation to the model, so hard to really answer your question whether we need this, but it seems like the time is right and its fun to try new things in a very sort of measured way.

Operator

Operator

That concludes today's question-and-answer session. At this time, I'd like to turn it back to the speakers for any additional remarks.

Steve Ells

Management

Thanks for joining us, everyone, and we look forward to speaking with you next quarter.