Good morning. My name is Denise, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the conference call for Recipe Unlimited Corporation 2021 first quarter results. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during the question and answer period, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press the pound key. For your convenience, these instructions will be repeated when the speaker's remarks have concluded. Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. Before turning the meeting over to management, please be advised that this call contains certain forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations and are subject to a number of uncertainties, risks, and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of Recipe to be materially different. Further information identifying risks, uncertainties, and assumptions and additional information on certain non-IFRS measures referred to in this call can be found in the company's management discussion and analysis and annual information form available on SEDAR. I will now turn the meeting over to Frank Hennessey, Chief Executive Officer of Recipe Unlimited Corporation. Mr. Hennessey, you may begin your conference. Thank you, Denise, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining today's conference call. On the call with me again today is Ken Grondin, our Chief Financial Officer. We are once again presenting via webcast, so if you're following along, Ken and I will try to call out the slide numbers as we go. Starting on slide number three, the ongoing gyrations of government mandated shutdowns really continues across the country. I couldn't start this off by not first giving credit to our amazing shared service and brand teams, as well as all of our franchise partners and corporate operations teams. Their ability to stay up to date with the constant changes to the rules and their agility in adapting their business has been one of the most impressive aspects of this entire affair. We're showing this map on slide three to demonstrate two things. First off, the vast distribution of Recipe locations across Canada. Secondly, to highlight the concentration we have in Ontario. Apart from what is tragically going on in Alberta this week, it has been Ontario and Quebec that have had the strictest public health measures. Slide number four shows that during Q1 of 2021, 89% of the company's operating weeks were negatively impacted by restaurant dining room closures and restrictions due to COVID. Breaking this down a bit more, the combination of full closures and dining room only closures accounted for 62% of those weeks. In addition, another 9% of our operating weeks was negatively impacted by the 10-person rule. This is the illogical rule that Ontario had in place limiting any establishment to 10 persons only, regardless if it was 100 sq ft or a 10,000 sq ft location. Turning to slide number five, the number of operating weeks negatively impacted by COVID increased significantly in Q1 versus Q4 of fiscal 2020. Full closures and dining room closures accounted for 62% of all operating weeks in the quarter, a significant increase from 43% in Q4. While we don't normally provide outlook, we thought we needed to give better guidance on how all of these restrictions impact Recipe from quarter to quarter. Essentially, restrictions have been steadily increasing since Q3 of fiscal 2020. To date in Q2, 78% of our operating weeks have had full or dining room only closures. This is our most restricted time since the first few weeks of this crisis back in March of last year. While we do not expect to see some easing of restrictions in some provinces in June, we are of the belief that we will see no easing of restrictions in Ontario until potentially the beginning of June, and even at that point, it is unlikely that all regions would simply open back up. We are anticipating that by July, we will be back to similar operating conditions as we had in Q3 of last year. Notwithstanding the operating restrictions, total system sales in the first quarter were CAD 537.6 million, compared to CAD 747.2 million in 2020, representing a year-over-year decrease of 28%. You will note that we are also showing 2019 as a comparable. As a reminder, in Q1 of last year, we did not begin to feel the impact of COVID until the second week of March, with full shutdown happening on March 17th. Our EBITDA for the quarter increased 17% to CAD 24 million, which is a demonstration of the company's ability to responsibly manage our costs as well as the diversity of our portfolio. On the restaurant side, Harvey's and Burger's Priest showed strong comps versus 2020 and 2019. There are encouraging signs in markets that have opened up. We are paying particular attention to the full-service restaurants in the United States. Most chains are reporting higher sales versus 2019, a combination of more traffic, but also higher check averages. While we are paying close attention to any signs of food inflation, we are also reminded by data from [StatCan] that indicates that Canadians have an estimated CAD 175 billion in excess savings sitting liquid in household savings accounts. All in all, encouraging once we reopen. Slide seven demonstrates the continued strength of our grocery retail business. Sales continue to be strong, led by our rib program under the brands of Swiss Chalet, St-Hubert, and Montana's. Rib sales in Q1 were up 48% versus last year. We also announced the partnership with Hop City of our signature beer, North of 41°, that can now be found in 150 LCBO locations and over 250 beer stores here in Ontario. The retail team was busy in Q1, launching over 18 new products into grocery stores. I want to give special mention to our sales team at Recipe. It's probably not well known that one of the aspects that sets us apart on retail from anyone else in the restaurant space is that we have our own national sales team of over 70 teammates. We do not use brokers. This enables us to not simply list products with grocery stores, but to actually follow up to ensure that they get on grocery shelves. These sales teams work with local grocery store managers to help merchandise the products in stores to maximize sales. In 2020, our e-commerce sales surpassed $500,000. In Q1, e-commerce was up 75% versus last year. While we are encouraged by this, and some of it's natural as we did not shut down until March of last year, what we really want to highlight here is the growth of pickup. This is not simply an accident. The company has been strategically focused on encouraging more of our off-premise business to pick up, in particular, curbside. The best example of that today is Swiss Chalet. After only recently launching curbside, the brand is now reporting that over 60% of all its mobile pre-order business is being fulfilled through curbside. Our guest satisfaction tracker for curbside continues to improve as our digital and operations teams make further enhancements to the program. While we receive a lot of questions about whether off-premise will stick once dining rooms are allowed to open, we believe this channel will. On slide 10, our third Ultimate Kitchen opened in Montreal in Q1 under the name Malgam. The brands being serviced out of this location are St-Hubert, Harvey's, New York Fries, and soon, Sushi Taxi, a well-known Montreal sushi restaurant chain. This month, we will open our fourth Ultimate Kitchen in Hamilton. For the first time, we will be offering Burger's Priest in an Ultimate Kitchen format. This will also be the first introduction for both Burger's Priest and Fresh into the Hamilton market. Each Ultimate Kitchen is an evolution of the previous location. The differentiation we are building to this space is that we are building out a fully integrated, multi-branded, smart kitchen operating system. It combines an integrated operational flow with the technology to make this a more efficient and simpler operation to manage. We continue to be excited about the future potential for this concept. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Ken for a review of our financial results. Thank you, Frank, and good morning, everyone. For the first part of the financial review, I will focus on Recipe's 2021 first quarter consolidated results. I will finish with a summary of our segmented business performance as reported last night and posted on SEDAR. If we turn to slide 12, total gross revenue for the first quarter of 2021 decreased to CAD 194.1 million from CAD 269.9 million in the first quarter of 2020, and CAD 304.6 million in the first quarter of 2019. The decreases in gross revenue were primarily related to the government-mandated restaurant closures and restrictions, which impacted 89% of the company's operating weeks in the quarter. The decreases were partially offset by increases in the retail and catering segment and the growth of e-commerce sales across most Recipe brands. Operating EBITDA for the first quarter of 2021 was CAD 24 million, compared to CAD 20.5 million in Q1 2020 and CAD 50.1 million in 2019. The increase of CAD 3.5 million in operating EBITDA compared to 2020 reflects the benefits from government wage and rent subsidies and various cost-saving measures that were implemented by the company. Adjusted net earnings was CAD 3.2 million in the quarter, compared to CAD 7.3 million in the prior year and CAD 18.3 million in 2019. The decrease of CAD 4 million in adjusted net earnings compared to 2020 was driven by the increase in the fair value of the Keg's exchangeable partnership units. Partially offset by an increase in operating EBITDA and a decrease in impairment charges. Adjusted diluted earnings per share decreased to CAD 0.06 in the first quarter compared to CAD 0.13 in 2020 and CAD 0.29 in 2019. Turning to segmented results for the quarter on slide 13. Total system sales for our restaurant segments continue to be impacted by government-mandated restaurant closures and restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, system sales for the corporate restaurant segment declined from CAD 197 million in Q1 2019 to CAD 162.7 million in Q1 2020, and further declined to CAD 83 million in the first quarter of 2021. The decreases were partially offset by sales increases from off-premise takeout and delivery sales in many of our brands. Total contribution from corporate restaurants was CAD 3.9 million in the first quarter of 2021, compared to a loss of CAD 400,000 in 2020, and a contribution of CAD 18.5 million in 2019. The increase of CAD 4.3 million in corporate restaurant contribution compared to 2020 reflects cost-saving measures that were implemented by the company and the receipt of federal wage and rent subsidies and provincial tax and utility subsidies. Total system sales from franchise restaurants declined from CAD 581.3 million in Q1 2019 to CAD 508.6 million in Q1 2020, and further declined to CAD 367 million in Q1 2021. Similar to the corporate restaurant segment, our franchise restaurants also experienced year-over-year decreases because of government-mandated restaurant closures and restrictions. The overall decrease was partially offset by sales increases in off-premise takeout and delivery channels. Total contribution from franchise restaurants was directly impacted by sales decreases caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Contribution from franchise restaurants decreased from CAD 25.5 million in Q1 2019 to CAD 21.9 million in Q1 2020, and further declined to CAD 16 million in Q1 2021. Contribution from franchise restaurants as a percentage of franchise system sales was 4.4% in Q1 2021, compared to 4.3% in Q1 2020 and 4.4% in Q1 2019. The increase in franchise contribution rate from Q1 2020 reflects the Recipe COVID-19 royalty subsidy program, which came into effect on March 15, 2020, and ended on December 27, 2020. Turning to the retail and catering segment in slide 14. Retail sales reported within the retail and catering segment relate to the manufacture and distribution of fresh, frozen, and non-perishable branded and private label food products. Catering sales relate to food and beverage sales from Recipe's catering divisions operating under the Pickle Barrel, Rose Reisman Catering, and Marigolds & Onions banners. System sales from retail and catering division in Q1 was CAD 87.6 million, compared to CAD 75.9 million in Q1 2020 and CAD 72.5 million in Q1 2019, representing an increase of CAD 11.7 million or 15.4% compared to Q1 2020, and an increase of CAD 15.1 million or 20.8% compared to Q1 2019. The year-over-year sales growth demonstrates the strong customer demand for Recipe-branded retail offerings sold in grocery stores, partially offset by declines in the catering segment due to COVID-19 restrictions. Contribution from the retail and catering division in Q1 2021 was CAD 8 million compared to CAD 7.6 million in Q1 2020, representing an increase of CAD 400,000. The increase reflects sales growth in the retail grocery channels, partially offset by higher food input costs and lower margin product sales mix compared to 2020. Contribution from the retail and catering division declined slightly by CAD 200,000 compared to Q1 2019. The decrease was primarily driven by higher food input costs, which began at the start of 2021, while the corresponding price increases to be charged in our retail channels only began in mid-March 2021. The decrease was partially offset by the growth in retail grocery sales. Turning to the central operation segment. Central operation segment sales consist of sales generated by Recipe's off-premise call center business, representing fees charged from delivery, call ahead, web, and mobile-based meal orders. Central operations segment EBITDA consists of franchise fees, property and equipment rent, and vendor volume rebates, reduced by net central overhead costs after federal wage subsidies and after royalties paid to the Keg Royalty Income Fund. Central segment contribution before the net royalty expense was a loss of CAD 3.1 million in the first quarter of 2021, compared to a loss of CAD 5.7 million in 2020 and a contribution of CAD 1.8 million in 2019 under pre-COVID conditions. Compared to 2020, Q1 central segment contribution improved by CAD 2.6 million. The improvement reflects higher revenues generated from off-premise call center fees, federal wage subsidies, offset by lower franchise fees and lower vendor rebates due to less system sales. Turning to slide 15. During the 13 weeks ended March 28th, 2021, management successfully opened five new restaurants and closed and exited 16 locations. The company ended the quarter with 1,330 locations compared to 1,341 restaurants at the end of 2020. Unlike others within the restaurant industry, Recipe's restaurant closures were part of a pre-COVID long-term strategic plan where management identified locations that no longer fit the long-term plans of the company or restaurants that are currently underperforming. For corporate restaurant locations that no longer fit the long-term strategic plan of the company, management is taking steps to exit these sites. For franchise locations that are underperforming, the company will work with franchisees to help them achieve sustainable success, which may include the company providing financial support in the form of royalty relief or other financial assistance. Turning to total net debt on slide 16. Through prudent cash management in Q1 2021, Recipe generated CAD 8.8 million of free cash flow before growth cap, and maintained the[debt] position while providing economic and cash flow support to our franchisees throughout the pandemic. The company will continue to prudently manage its cash flows and liquidity to protect the short-term and long-term health of Recipe, its brands, and its franchisees. On February 18th, 2021, Recipe successfully amended its lending covenants with its banking syndicate and private note holders, which will provide additional covenant flexibility through to the end of Q1 2022. This concludes the financial commentary of the call. I'll now turn the discussion back to Frank. Thanks, Ken. Our priorities from the beginning of this pandemic have not changed, and they remain the same today. Health and safety have always been our top priority. Supporting our partners and properly utilizing our diverse portfolio, adjusting investments to the appropriate divisions or brands so that we can maximize profitability while still being incredibly constrained by mandated restrictions. As slide 19 shows, there really are two other filters that have served as our compass throughout this event. Is our policy both the right thing to do, and is it the smart thing to do? I just want to take a moment to demonstrate two examples of this. For well over eight months, we have been actively pursuing approval from Health Canada and the Ministry of Health in Ontario to do rapid testing for our teammates. We believe that this is consistent with our desire to ensure the health and safety of our teammates and our guests. This week, we have finally been able to begin that testing program here in Ontario and are actively working to get approved in other provinces. We are the first and only restaurant group in Canada. This is both the right and smart thing to do. It provides peace of mind to our frontline teammates and management while also working to prevent any type of virus outbreak that may end up closing a restaurant down for an extended period of time. It also gives our customers confidence that they can socialize inside of our restaurants. The program, using the Abbott Panbio test, is another tool in our overall social safety program. Turning to 2021, the second example is our support of our partners. Most of you are aware of the support we have provided for our franchise partners. Programs such as our Recipe Rent Certainty Program gave partners confidence that they could survive this. It was both the right thing to do to support our partners, it was also the smart thing to do as it is in all of our interests that our franchisees make it to the other side of this event. We have been closely monitoring franchisee financial statements, and we are very pleased with what we are seeing and have high confidence that the overwhelming majority of our franchise partners are in good financial health and will continue to operate for years to come. We could not forget about our frontline teammates. This is one of the groups of people who have been the most economically impacted by the continued shutdowns of our industry. After the latest round of closures in Ontario, we set up a CAD 500,000 support package for our frontline teammates. We do not believe that anyone that works full time for us as a cook, a dishwasher, a bartender, a prep person, should worry about feeding their families or paying their rent. It is the right thing to do, but it is also the smart thing to do. When we do reopen, we believe we are going to be very busy and we want fully trained staff, ready and willing to serve our guests and to give them a great experience. On slide 22, we are very excited to announce that this week that we have completed the purchase to gain 100% ownership and control of the Burger's Priest. Burger's Priest is a fantastic brand that has grown over the past few years. We believe that with singular ownership, we can move to quickly accelerate the growth of the brand, both domestically and potentially in markets outside of Canada. I'd like to thank our former partners at Crave It as we work together to successfully transition the business and welcome The Burger's Priest team fully into Recipe. I'm also excited to announce that Ryan Bullock, currently Chief Marketing Officer for The Keg, will assume the role of President for The Burger's Priest. We congratulate Ryan on his new role. Finally, as a reminder, this Sunday is Mother's Day. I would encourage you all to support restaurants this weekend. If you need any prompting, please, the Swiss Chalet app or any of our restaurants. At Swiss, you can always choose to give the gift option to send a great meal to whoever is important in your life. With that, I will turn it back to the operator for any questions. Thank you. We will now begin the Q&A, question and answer session. Reminder, if you'd like to ask a question during the answer period, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press the pound key. If you are using speaker equipment, you will need to lift the handset before making a selection. Your first question comes from George Doumet with Scotiabank. Your line is open. Yeah, good morning, guys. Frank, there's been a number that's been floated around saying that there's anywhere between 10%-15% reduction in seats due to the pandemic. Is that a range that you agree with? To what extent will that eventually help our four-wall economics once things eventually open up? Hey, George. Yeah, it's been a little difficult to try to ascertain exactly what's gone on out there. Restaurants Canada has reported that there's about 10,000 restaurants that are permanently closed. We've heard other reports coming from the broadline food service distributors that say that they're seeing that number could be over 20,000. Part of the challenge is some restaurants have just shut their doors and are staying closed until everything reopens. We don't know what's going to permanently stick. Clearly there's going to be, and we just see it even when I drive around our little neighborhood here in Vaughan by our office, the number of restaurants that you can tell are permanently gone. It's not the way you want to gain business, but it is an important fact that when the restart happens, if you think about this as a race, when the restart happens, we want to be full on the gas pedal and full speed go. Even in Toronto, and when they, in that kind of crazy time, reopened the patios and gave less than 24 hours notice. Our restaurants had patios. We were up and running as we could be long before most others. We're ready to go. Again, it's another important reason to make sure that we keep our frontline staff engaged and ready so that we can take advantage as quickly as possible. Yeah. Thanks for that. Ken, I think you were talking about the retail and catering. Obviously, we haven't seen the strong year-over-year growth that we usually do there. I think you called out mix and food costs, and you also mentioned price increases. Putting it all together here, should we expect to get closer to that CAD 10 million-CAD 12 million per quarter contribution there as we go through Q2, Q3, and Q4? George, it's hard to predict volumes. Even when restaurants came back open last year, the retail and catering grocery sales stayed strong. There's obviously traction in that segment, and our brands are getting a lot of customer loyalty and attention. The sales line has been positive, and we continue to produce those levels of volumes. On the contribution line, as you say, we're managing input costs. Product mix has a big impact on contribution because certain products are just higher margin. It's a complex formula with over 200 SKUs that we're selling into grocery. As I say, we were able to increase some prices at the end of March, and hopefully we see the benefit of that in Q2. Yeah, I'd just add on to that, George. Again, as I said, we're also launching new products into the market. They put 18 new SKUs in in Q1. It's going to take some time for that to fully flow through the system. Again, that pipeline is going to continue to produce new products out there as well. Okay. Frank, there's been some talk about the potential for increasing labor shortages for restaurants when they eventually reopen, given that some folks have retrained to different industries. I think we see that in Quebec and Ontario. I'm just wondering your assessment in terms of access to labor when things fully reopen. Well, again, it's one of the reasons why we took the actions we did to try to support our frontline teammates, and we certainly encourage our franchisees to do the same thing. In the States, it's a very real issue, a little bit maybe different there. The economy is red hot. Some people did leave to get some certainty around their paycheck. Also, there's a lot of subsidy money down in the States right now, and people are taking advantage of that. Here, we expect it will be a bit of a challenge. Again, because of the actions we've taken, we think we're probably in better shape than most. Okay. Just one last one from me, Ken. Are we looking for similar levels of government aid in Q2 versus Q1? I think for the most part, George, the answer is, we would expect so. The provincial subsidies for property tax and utilities, that tends to be a month-by-month type of extension. It hasn't been announced for longer term, but wage and federal rent subsidies have been. The rent subsidy program is pretty complex because most of those federal rent subsidies for us come when we are mandated to be fully closed. Okay. If we're not mandated to be fully closed, we don't get as much of those benefits. Okay. Got it. All right. Thanks for your answers. Thanks, George. Your next question comes from Peter Sklar with RBC Capital Markets, sorry, BMO Capital Markets, your line is open. Okay. Thanks very much. Ken, on your SG&A expense, where you give the breakdown in the notes to the financial statement, there's a line called other, which has an expense of CAD 8,598,000. Can you explain what that is? Peter, that's a combination of a variety of things, which includes our net central overhead expenses offset by rebates. Also, there's federal wage subsidies that go through that line as well, which is why it's down from last year. Again, it's a combination of a variety of other costs. We've always had that line item. You might recall in years past, it was even a positive contribution line instead of an expense. Right. Yeah, that's what I was just wondering why it's so volatile. Yeah. Well, rebates are a big driver in that line, Peter, and when our system sales are down the way they are, there's a direct relationship in what we collect or don't collect. Right. Okay. On subsidies, all the government programs where Recipe Unlimited itself, franchisees would have benefited during the quarter. Sorry, I haven't read the MD&A yet. Have you quantified what the dollar amount of those benefits were in the quarter? Peter, yes, it's actually in the first financial statement. We've outlined what we [audio distortion] Federal Rent Subsidy Program and the Provincial Property Utilities Programs. What was the amount that total you'd given? Yeah. Total was about CAD 27 million in the financial statement. Okay. During that, did you have any programs, committed programs where you're using franchisees? I know the royalty break ended, so there was no benefit there, but were there any other subsidies you were providing to your franchisees above and beyond the normal? Yes, Peter. We extended our rent support program at the end of March of 2021. It was restructured from what it was last year, but it was effectively protecting our franchisees on the rent. That was coordinated with our franchisees' ability to claim federal rent subsidies. We did provide support there. We also provided support to our franchisees, so we did not require that they paid full quarter rent, while their restaurants were forced to be closed. We're collecting that later over Q2. How do you account for that? L ike do you accrue or I'm just wondering, I guess what I'm really after is, what was negative impact on your results, from these you're providing to franchisees in terms of dollar amount that you would have booked in the quarter? Yeah. It was mostly [audio distortion], Peter. The expected cost of supporting the franchisees was accrued last year. As soon as we knew we were expanding in 2020, we accrued the expected cost. For the cash flow impact, it flows through our working capital in Q1. The rent support program that went to March was accrued last year? Yeah. Okay. Just lastly, Ken, when you described CAD 3.1 million loss in central, which was an improvement, there were so many puts and takes, and you went so quickly. Do you mind going through? Yeah. Peter, we can probably take this offline, but I think the improvement this year over last year would have related to some of the subsidies we collected in Q1 this year that were not there last year. Okay, great. Thanks very much. Next question comes from Sabahat Khan with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open. Great. Thanks. Good morning. Excuse me. Can you give some context? I know you mentioned that you are spending some capital to support your frontline employees. You're going to be a ramp-up period in bringing some of them back. Maybe can you share some context around, across your network, how many people hired to sort of be back at full capacity? Are you taking steps to sort of plan toward that to try to attract some of those, some industries are finding it hard to bring back people. Yeah. First, for us, it's for our corporate restaurants. Again, we are taking care of our full-time hourly staff, and our managers are keeping in touch with them. We experienced high percentage of that group to return. We're also hearing some from our franchisees. Again, because we've been very focused on this and staying in touch with our teammates throughout this process, and letting them know what's going on, and then things like the financial and other things that we're doing to help them. We feel good where we sit from the employment aspect. Again, a theme in the States is that you have chains that did not approach it similar to what we have, are saying that they're doing fine. They're not experiencing some of the issues that others who weren't able to do it are. The economy is very hot in the U.S. We expect hot here. We're going to have to be staffed up and ready for that, but we've got us doing an exceptional job. We're fairly confident that we can meet the need. All right, great. Thanks. W ith the Ultimate Kitchens as this rolls out, how are you thinking about those that you've had so far? Is there something you're planning on changing based on the first couple? In a post-COVID world as the restaurant count, you mentioned earlier, and the seats decrease, should we expect that this, obviously expect e-commerce and takeout to become, is it possible that it becomes a very large part of your business three, five years out? It could have a significant impact for our business. That's obviously the intention. I think, there are lots of lessons we've learned. There's lots of lessons we've learned on the technology. The fact that there is no one basic operating system out there that you can take that plugs from customer order all the way through inventory and stuff that our teams are working on and building out. We think we're going to have to actually have something customary. One of the big lessons we learned is that the very first one we did here was a delivery-only kitchen. I think I said it on the last call, we wouldn't build that. We believe the right mix is having delivery with pickup. The Carlaw location, which was the second, had that component put into it. It certainly helped get the margins better to where we want it, and Hamilton will be another evolution on that. Also, we're also mixing up the portfolio of brands. One of the other great about U.K. is that if there's concepts that explore, want to test to see how they do, it's having you to put them and plug them into these Ultimate Kitchens and see how well they do. If they don't perform, then we can take them out, and can tell us a lot about new markets before we go to the full expense of building a brick and mortar location. Okay. J ust thinking about the mix of corporate restaurants now on the top of the line might be a very significant contributors. I guess coming out of COVID and your banner mix, how are you thinking about those two banners? Do you think you can maybe develop a new sort of patio type concept at some point? Just want to understand your thoughts on your mix of corporate banners at this point. Well, Bier Markt, we don't have locations, the locations that we do have been in severe lockdown. It's one of the things that, I know we just need to pause for a second, and there is a difference between, is there a systematic problem with the brands that we have? Is it an industry thing that we're being shut down in the pandemic? It even goes back to if the subsidies didn't exist, and we had a systematic problem with Recipe, we would take very, very different actions. Everything that we're doing is to bridge a crisis, in that we believe that great restaurants and mall prior to COVID. We expect that when COVID ends and we can reopen our restaurants, return to those kind of numbers, better. In fact, in the brief periods of time where we have seen more openings, like Q3 of last year, we saw people flock back into our restaurants here and panic induce that it would be in our best interest in the long term. We are playing the long game here. Brands like Bier Markt, although small in our portfolio, some of those qualifications to operate. Thanks very much for the call. Again, to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from John Zamparo. Your line is open. Thank you. Good morning. I wanted to start with a slide from the investor deck. I think you said on the sites are operating with only modest restrictions. Leases on these sites versus the rest. Really what I'm trying to get at is, have you seen some signs of comeback that we've seen in other countries that are in better shape on dealing with COVID? Yeah, some of the leagues, John, are in the U.S. restaurants. We have some Kegs down there, some open. We're certainly seeing positive sales to fiscal year 2019. Similar chains are reporting down there, which gives us a lot of confidence. What kind of chain? My quarters are mixed up. It may have been blended in Q1. Definitely it was EC. EC, for the most part, dine open. It was really only recently with the third wave that dine-in shut down. That was something that was new for us. The anniversary right now, obviously here in Ontario, dine closed in May. Last year, we had patios open for us in some region areas. It is kind of a blend and what we're seeing in the U.S., what we're seeing in the U.K., material that are basically for cases have dropped out, is in our industry, it is coming roaring back. Nothing here that says we will operate differently than those markets are dying to get out and to sit on a patio. I think that as vaccines, confidence will increase for people going into dining rooms. We saw that in Q3 last year, seem to be heading into dining rooms. Again, we think all the other aspects that we're doing around safely and how we're advertising and these rapid testing of our employees, again, we think we're in good shape. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. Second question for Ken. How should we think about the relationship lease paid and lease payments collected franchisees? In 2020, this was a net outflow of CAD 1 million. In 2019, I think it was closer to CAD 55 million. The run rate in Q1 looks like CAD 80 million. I'm trying to get what a normalized number is for this metric. Yeah, I think, John, when we're in a normal operating conditions, what we're going to pay the landlords on franchise locations matches what we collect from the franchisees. The difference you might see is what we pay on our corporate rent, which is on our own because it relates to setting collection from a third party. Obviously, 2020 was a year where we provided rent assistance to our franchisees. We shouldered, as we announced, over CAD 30 million of rent to landlords that we didn't collect. Some of that got subsidized with CECRA and other assistance between landlords. Yeah, 2020, there's nothing comparable there. I think best to look at 2019 and any shortfall really relates to corporate restaurants. Okay. That's helpful. My last question, and apologies if I missed it early in the call, but in the press release, you referenced possibly rationalizing certain brands. Is that referring to individual stores that you aren't optimally placed or don't have great leases about entire brands? A follow-up to that, we've seen virtual brands do pretty well for a few American dining concepts. Is that something you're thinking about testing as well? Well, let me address the first part of that. I think we're [audio distortion] the sites that we have. We're constantly looking at making sure the brands that we have, we want to make sure that they have the ability to win in their segment. Within those brands, you might set that they're better than others. We constantly do this. We have a very rigorous process for how we evaluate these. We have as detailed reports and data as you possibly imagine on all. We're constantly looking at that. As I've said about the history of this company, Cara, it has been a company that has grown through mergers and acquisitions, but it's also had divestitures. There could be a parent. We're always looking at that, just like we're looking at opportunities to find young brands that we think can also really do well, and that's Burger's Priest. We're constantly looking at that portfolio to make sure that we're putting the best lot to drive the returns. Got it. Virtual brands, is that something that could potentially interest you to better leverage existing infrastructure? Virtual brands is one of the ones that I'm not sure. I think we have talked about it. I know what you're talking about with the stuff that Brinker's done in the U.S. with the Wing concept. I think a lot of that has taken place with when they had empty kitchens and they had a lot of capacity. Not too many restaurants are overbuilt in the kitchen capacity. I'm not sure of the stickiness of that. Because one thing we have learned, even with Ultimate Kitchens, you put a brand in that doesn't have local bricks and mortar, you have to really make sure you're doing a lot of marketing to build awareness in that community about that brand. Just sticking a white label in there may sound good, but if you don't support it with healthy marketing and a healthy marketing spend, you're just not going to generate the sales. Never say never. We continue to look at it, but right now, our approach with this is through Ultimate Kitchens. Okay. I appreciate the insight. Thank you. Okay, there's no further questions queued up at this time. I'll turn the call back over to Frank Hennessey for closing remarks. Well, thank you everybody. Happy Mother's Day to everyone out there. For those of you joining our AGM, that's at 11:00 A.M., we'll see you then. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.