Please welcome Executive Director of Investor Relations, Ken Diptee. Good morning, everyone. I'm Ken Diptee, Executive Director of Investor Relations for Dine Brands. On behalf of the team, I'd like to welcome you to our Investor Day. Today, you'll hear from members of Dine's executive team. You'll also hear from our franchisees who will provide their perspective. They are not speaking on behalf of Dine or the brands. Before we start, a few housekeeping items. As you know, we issued an 8-K this morning containing the slides with today's investor relations presentation, which is also available on the investor section of our website. Over the next four hours, the team is prepared to share our growth plan. We'll have a short break and wrap up with a Q&A session. Please hold all your questions for the Q&A session. To get us started, it's my pleasure to present Dine Brands CEO, John Peyton. Thanks, Ken. Good morning, everyone. On behalf of our leadership team, thank you all for being here. We're thrilled to welcome those of you that are here with us in the room and those of you that are watching us online. The first moment of success is that this suit is the first time it's been on in two years, and it still fits. That's an awesome sign that we're making progress. We're excited to share with all of you today our story for long-term growth. By we, I mean our very talented team that are here in the room, who you'll hear from throughout the day. We're super confident that our collective team will do everything that we set out to do. To kick us off this morning, I'll provide an overview of the Dine enterprise. You'll then hear from our Senior Vice President of Strategy and Development, Scott Gladstone. We'll then turn it over to our CIO by way of video, Justin, to highlight the investments we're making in our digital experience, followed by our brand presidents, John, Jay, and Tony. Each of them will discuss their ambitions for growth, their business' competitive advantages, and their bold ambitions for the next five years. You'll also hear from franchisees. We have IHOP Applebee's Greg Flynn, who's the CEO of Apple American Group. On behalf of IHOP, you'll hear from Carl Yeager, Senior Managing Director of Argonne Capital. Finally, Vance Chang, our CFO, will close us out with our financial outlook for the next five years, a business summary, and then we'll bring the whole team up for Q&A from all of you. We can take questions in the room, and we'll also take questions from folks watching at home, and we'll give instructions for that. We've also got one of our board members here today. Mr. Mike Hyter is the CEO of Executive Leadership Council. Thanks for being here and would love for everyone to have a chance to meet Mike as well during the breaks. I joined Dine 14, 15 months ago because I believe in the allure and the power of strong brands. I believe in restaurants. Restaurants are essential to strong communities. They're where humans come together to connect, and people appreciate and need that need for connection now more than ever before. Dine is entering 2022 stronger than ever. Let me tell you what I mean when I say stronger. You know, 5 years ago, strength in the restaurant business was the number of bricks and mortar stores that a restaurant had. Today, strength is about your technology. It's about your digital innovation. It's about your loyalty program. It's about communicating with your guests when, where, how they want to be served and how they want to talk to you. It's why 2022 for Dine is an investment year. This is the year that we intend to solidify our back of house, our front of house, and our consumer facing technology. It's a year that we intend, in partnership with our franchisees, to launch our new prototypes and build new restaurants. It's a year in which we're building back some crucial positions that we cut during the pandemic. Our strength is also evident in our performance before, during, and importantly, as we emerge from COVID. You can see we're comparing 2017-2021 here. Our revenue is absolutely recovering from the pandemic. Our 2017 revenue of $732 million included pass-through advertising revenue, which is in the red box, grew to sorry, $896 million with pass-through advertising revenue in 2021. We delivered robust EBITDA, $221 million in 2017, $253 million last year. Strong earnings growth. EPS has grown from $4.09 to $6.54 last year. As a result, we generate significant cash flow, $191 million last year. All of this fuels our consistent history of meaningful capital return to our investors. Our projections for 2026, five years from now, are equally compelling. Revenue is projected to grow to $1.1 billion. EBITDA is projected to grow to $350 million. Adjusted free cash flow is projected to be $225 million. Adjusted EPS will grow from last year's $6.54 to $14.50 a share. Vance will fill you in on the details behind that as we go. Our growth beyond 2022 will come as we invest in innovation. Innovation that drives the acceleration of opening new restaurants. Innovation that drives the acceleration of comp sales by investing in technology and menu innovation, breakthrough marketing and loyalty. Innovation from growing new sources of revenue like virtual brands. Each of our business units have significant leverage to pull in these three areas, and you'll hear from them throughout the day. Now, as you consider our plans for growth, it's important to understand the steps that we've already taken during the pandemic and how our achievements from the past two years make us stronger today than we've ever been before. First, we've innovated the in-restaurant guest experience. For example, our hygiene and our safety protocols are enhanced. They've become the new standard in our restaurants. Guests can now use their cell phones to put their names on our wait lists, QR codes to view menus, then offer us feedback. Servers are now leveraging tablets. It makes them more efficient. They turn tables faster, they make more money. When it comes to off-premise guest experience, during the last two years, we've innovated our to-go packaging. It keeps food hot longer. It beautifully merchandises the food when people open the bags. Applebee's and IHOP grew takeout and delivery to more than two times what it was before COVID. This is largely incremental business that we intend to nurture and grow. We changed back-of-house processes over the last two years to support this higher off-prem business. We introduced Carside Express at Applebee's. We introduced Curbside at IHOP. Finally, we're stronger than ever before because we've streamlined operations during the past two years. We've identified new sources of revenue that strengthen our performance for our franchisees. You know some examples. Our menus are now streamlined. They're two-thirds of what they were before COVID, and as a result, our kitchens are more efficient, we have less food waste, faster prep times, improved quality, improved consistency of what we serve. Applebee's launched Cosmic Wings. IHOP is testing two new virtual brands, Thrilled Cheese and Super Mega Dilla in 7 markets in 50 restaurants. That's expanding and providing additional revenue to our IHOP franchisees. We worked with franchisees during the past 2 years to expand our sales channels via ghost kitchens, via virtual brands in the U.S. and abroad. You know, I'd wrap up the benefits of the last 2 years, if you can think about the last 2 years having some benefits, by saying that our relationship with our franchisees has never been stronger. Working together to navigate the crisis was truly a trial by fire that strengthened our bonds with one another and really has us aligned in both brands in our vision for the future. We sit here today stronger than ever and poised for growth because of what makes us uniquely Dine. What makes us uniquely Dine is our world-class brands, our scalable platform, our super talented teams and exceptional franchisees, and our asset-light model. I'll talk a moment about each of those. The first is our world-class brands. I learned long ago that brands win when they're different, better, and special. IHOP and Applebee's are truly different, better, and special. IHOP began making people smile back in 1958 when Al and Jerry Lapin opened the first IHOP in California. Ever since then, they've been known for their iconic pancakes, their freshly made craveable breakfast items, now their all-day dining menu. IHOP brings joy and a sense of belonging, and we call that the recipe for joy. There's over 1,750 IHOPs across the country and around the world. System-wide sales of $3.1 billion, and it's No. 1 among family dining restaurants in the U.S. For Applebee's, it all started in 1980 in Atlanta, Georgia, when Bill Palmer opened the first restaurant that would later become Applebee's. Today, Applebee's embodies what it means to be all American and locally relevant. We call that eating good in the neighborhood. Applebee's has almost 1,700 locations in the U.S. System-wide sales of $4.2 billion. The bottom line for both of our brands is that they are category-defining brands that connect in emotional ways with our guests. Second, our scale is uniquely Dine. Our IHOP and our Applebee's purchasing co-op, for example, procures approximately $2 billion in goods and services for our restaurants annually. That significant market footprint helps mitigate, to some extent, the availability of certain items, as well as helps us manage cost dynamics, particularly at a time like this. Our scale also enables us to invest more in technology than either IHOP or Applebee's could do on its own. You're going to hear from Justin, our CIO, and our business unit leaders today, specifics about our technology investments from last year and this year. The third thing that makes us uniquely Dine is our team, our incredibly talented team. Whether it's the executive team, many of whom are here today, our 500 headquarter staff in Kansas City, L.A., and across the country, our 338 outstanding franchisees and their 150,000 team members across all the restaurants. There isn't a better team in the industry. When speaking of teams, success is not only about strong leaders, it's about consistent leadership. Which is why I'm thrilled that both John and Jay have committed to new three-year agreements that keep them at the helm of both our brands until 2025. That's a testament to their commitment to their brands and Dine's commitment to their savvy and steady stewardship of Applebee's and IHOP, particularly during the past two years. Finally, we've got a 98% franchised business model. We're the most highly franchised in our peer group, and this enables us to generate substantial free cash flow, which enables us to return significant amount to our shareholders while also investing in the long-term growth of our brands. During moments like this, when labor and commodity costs are rising, we deliver less volatile results from period to period than those businesses that are capital intensive. Most importantly, asset light allows us to invest in what we do best, menu innovation, marketing, technology, all for the benefit of our franchisees. I'd like to spend a moment on ESG. It's an increasingly important topic to our guests, to investors, to regulators and others. ESG, like everything that we do at Dine, is guided by our core values, and we're pursuing both ESG and operational excellence in a balanced, thoughtful way and with urgency. Our ESG ambitions fall into four categories, people, plant, planet, and governance. Did I get that right? People, planet, food, sorry, and governance. Last year, we focused on establishing baselines. This year, in 2022, you'll see us begin to set goals, and in 2023, you can anticipate that we will make ESG a component of executive compensation. We published our inaugural ESG report last year. It's available on dinebrands.com, and our annual report, published in May, will be up in a few weeks. I'll begin to wrap up by sharing why we're so optimistic, not only about Dine, but about the full service restaurant space. I'll start with full service restaurants. If you consider the market opportunity that's before us, first, the restaurant industry remains a $485 billion market, and the casual and family segments are expected to fully recover by 2023. Within that, U.S. consumers are increasingly optimistic as we emerge from COVID. You know, recent research tells us that 44% of consumers plan on going to restaurants more than they did pre-COVID, and 35% say they'll go just as much as they did before the pandemic. That's good news for us. The second is industry consolidation that we've seen for the last couple of years. It's created white space, and it's revealing new growth opportunities for both our brands. Pandemic driven closures, while unfortunate, are about 10%-12% of the restaurants in the U.S. That also creates new white space in highly desirable locations for our brands. Now, as we study the market, we see more than 200 opportunities for full service Applebee's. We see more than 350 market opportunities for full service IHOPs, and you'll hear about those growth plans from John and Jay. The third thing that's really changed over the last couple of years is guest behavior. The pandemic accelerated a number of trends, and it opened a new future, really, for the industry, such as we've got new transaction technologies that support the third-party delivery apps. We've got outdoor dining. We've got the surge in off-premise dining. We've even got alcohol to go as a fledgling opportunity. Now, fourth, virtual brands and ghost kitchens exploded during COVID, and that creates a highly incremental opportunity for our franchisees to leverage growth and to leverage the scale of our platform. You know, we really like virtual brands, and we're leaning in because they're low cost to develop and deploy versus building a bricks and mortar restaurant. They can be highly targeted to a consumer demographic or to a day part. It's easy to test and learn and improve as you go, and it's easy to turn them off and turn them on. International markets, like the Middle East, for example, are far ahead of the U.S. in deploying ghost kitchens, and we're looking to them for the lessons learned and best practices that we're bringing back to the U.S. You'll get some insight from Tony on that topic. When you think about that market opportunity, then think about Dine. I'll recap, you know, our strengths, and again, what makes us uniquely Dine. We've got the best team. We've got exceptional franchisees. We're the largest, and scale matters in this space. It matters for tech investments. It matters for supply chain. Scale matters for marketing and advertising, and it matters for growing a strong, healthy, robust, stable group of franchisees. Our 98% franchise model delivers robust margins and generous cash flow. Our scale and our asset-light model combine for meaningful return to shareholders. The industry's entered a new normal, and that presents a new normal for us at Dine. Consumers have pent-up demand for restaurants. They've internalized new habits for off-premise and delivery. Thankfully, IHOP and Applebee's have become prominent players in off-premise during the past two years. Guests today have a desire for great food, for experiences and gatherings that only restaurants can provide, only fabulous restaurants, only Applebee's and IHOP can provide. Before I move on to conclude, I do want to address the horrific events that are unfolding in Ukraine. I know that they're on all of our minds. While today is about promoting Dine’s wins and our optimism for the future, the weight of what’s happening in Europe is on my mind, it’s on our team’s mind, and I know all of you are thinking about it as well. I can tell you that we don’t have restaurants in Russia or Ukraine, and at the moment, we do not have plans or pipeline to build restaurants in those markets. We also have de minimis exposure to goods and services from Russia. So, you know, that’s our status as a business. But we’re all impacted in one way or another by these events, and we certainly remain hopeful for peace. So a reminder of how the rest of the day will unfold. Scott, our strategy leader, will be up to give you a deeper dive into our view of the restaurant space and why we see the opportunity for growth. We'll follow that by a video from our CIO. Justin is gonna talk to you via video so we can show you the technology in action. He's also here in person, so he'll be here for Q&A at the end. Followed by presentations from each of our business unit leaders. Then finally, Vance, our CFO, will bring us home. I'll wrap by ending where I began and telling you about my favorite brand and how I think about brands. My favorite brand is probably one you've never heard of unless you're from Westport, Connecticut, and know tiny Compo Barber Shop. This is a picture of Tommy. He started Compo Barber in 1958 after he left the Navy as a Navy barber, and passed away just a few years ago. Back when my son Scott was two and a half, 20 years ago, I took him to Tommy for his first haircut. If any of you have kids, and you can remember what that first haircut is like, Scott was not happy about getting his first haircut. A lot of screaming, a lot of crying, a lot of arms waving, and a very, you know, uncomfortable, overheated dad trying to stuff this kid into the chair. I said to Tommy, "You've probably only got like 30 seconds. Just, you know, 2 snips would really help." Tommy said, "Dad, go away." I said, "Go away? Do you see this mess that I'm leaving you with?" He said, "Go away." I walked away, and as I looked back over my shoulder, Tommy put his arm around little 2.5-year-old Scott, whispered something in his ear. Scott stopped crying, sat still, and got his first ever adorable haircut. You probably know the end of this story. For the next 20 years, until Tommy passed, Scott and I got every one of our haircuts from him at Compo Barber every month. We were loyal for life. We were loyal for life because in that moment, whether it was Tommy's quality haircut or in our world, our amazing pancakes or our amazing chicken wings at Applebee's, it's not about the food. It's not about the building. It's about that personal connection between our team members and our guests that happen in little 30-second snippets every day. That's what hospitality is all about. That's what Applebee's and IHOP do so well, is making those human connections happen between our team members and our guests every day. With that, I'm going to wrap, and I'm gonna introduce our next speaker. Scott is the Senior Vice President of Strategy. He's an alumni of BCG and Bear Stearns. He joined Dine six years ago to lead Applebee's strategy and development, and last year moved up to join our executive team and is now leading enterprise-wide strategy. One of Scott's COVID accomplishments is that he is on a 72-week Peloton win streak without a break, slightly a few more weeks than mine. And he claims to have never failed to solve Wordle. I can't claim that either. Scott, welcome, and talk to us about the market. Good morning. To clarify a few things, I'm not John's son, although, you know, the same name and a little jet lagged this week. We're coming out from L.A. I missed Wordle on Monday, but I'm back on my streak as of yesterday and no spoilers for anyone in the audience. With that, I'm gonna dive a little bit deeper into a couple of the themes that John described at a high level and give you a little bit more context to some of the brand plans and why we're doing some of the things that we're doing. To jump in, three key themes that we've seen during COVID and one of the my favorite quotes that I've heard, and I think a few people have said at this point, is that crises like COVID, they don't create new trends. They just accelerate existing trends. Everything we're seeing now are themes that we were aware of, that we were focused on to some extent before COVID, but it has advanced, you know, arguably 5-10 years over the last two. The first is around technology. Digital technology, pre-COVID, it really accompanied the digital experience. It was, I'd say a challenge in some ways to prove out a business case to make those investments consistently. Now, with the acceleration of so many consumer behaviors, there's an expectation that technology is really within all steps of the restaurant experience, that we enable both our consumers and our operators to engage more efficiently with the brand. The second is around off-premise. Off-premise has been growing for the last 10-15 years within casual dining. It's been really the growth engine of the segment, but growing at a fast rate on a very small baseline. Post-COVID, it's exploded, obviously by necessity. Guests had to order more online, more digitally. It's become a core habit. The benefit for our brands is that we're now in the consideration set for an occasion that, you know, was maybe an afterthought for some consumers. Now we can really more effectively compete with brands in the QSR and fast casual space. Lastly, delivery. Delivery, obviously a segment of off-premise. It was, there's a lot of unknowns with delivery, especially pre-COVID. Obviously explosive growth prior to the crisis, but questions as to whether that was sustainable. I think even as of last year, questions as will delivery remain when dine-in business comes back. We are seeing it remain, and it's really influencing new formats and business models as we reach our consumers and creating new sales channels for us to explore. The first theme, and I'll dive into each one of the three. The first is around digital. Digital has dramatically expanded consumer touch points. I think we're all aware of this as consumers. If you think about the journey, consumer journey with a restaurant brand, it's really in these three segments, and we'll repeat these segments in a couple of slides. There's a discovery phase. I'm hungry, I want to eat. Where do I go? You know, previously that was traditional forms of media, that's TV, that's radio, that's out of home, et cetera. Now, we all know there's a multitude of channels that you can engage with brands on, whether that's social media, whether that's different streaming services, et cetera. That all informs our marketing approach, right? How do we reach consumers in a more targeted way, in a relevant way, and meet them effectively at the point of decision making? The second is around ordering, hand off and payment. That's really within the four walls of our business. Again, it was really focused on that physical interaction, right? A physical menu, physical POP, that physical handoff. Now we're exploring new technologies and introducing technologies that makes it more efficient for our operators, right? Things like server tablets, things like bring your own device, where a consumer can view the menu in the future order and also pay on their own device. Then lastly, feedback. Feedback, we always wanna hear from our guests. You know, largely that was maybe word of mouth in the past. Now we all know there's a number of review sites, there's places we need to monitor with social media and lots of technology ultimately that powers all of that. At a high level, all these touch points, they add a lot of value, both to consumers and to our operators, and they really enhance this overall journey, but you have to make decisions and choices as to which ones to invest in as you go. The second thing on our industry is, the demand pools have changed, right? This is industry data. This is NPD CREST full-service restaurant industry. Obviously, as we all are aware, 2020 was a huge disruption, and you can see the overall demand dollars shrunk significantly. We saw those come back, and that was reflected also in our results for 2021. As John mentioned, we expect to get back to pre-COVID levels as we get into next year. The second thing is that those, again, those pools have changed, so the mix is different. Pre-COVID, about 20% of industry dollars went to off-premise. That then escalated significantly, and it's now at 40%. What's interesting is that while the mix is changing, right? As demand dine-in dollars come back, you see relative stability in off-premise dollars. Those dollars are staying fixed. Again, the brands have grown their off-premise sales dollars by over 2 times through the crisis, and we're not seeing you know much impact as dine-in comes back. What we're seeing is highly incremental business that provides us this tailwind as dine-in does recover. Lastly, around delivery, you know, it's somewhat of a controversial topic to restaurant operators and merchants. Are they a partner? Yes, they are a great partner. They provide us, again, with an incremental sales channel that we think is very important to our business. Are they a competitor? They are a competitor to us as well in certain ways, right? They compete for our guests. They have a lot of control over our placement within an app, and that can impact, you know, sales and performance over time. What we're doing is twofold. Ultimately is to partner with the DSPs, the third-party delivery companies, use our scale to negotiate the most favorable terms, to make sure we have the best placement within a delivery app. Ultimately, at the same time, try to trade those consumers back into our direct channels. What this slide shows is just that, you know, delivery is evolving in the same way that, you know, other marketplaces have. Maybe Netflix and Etsy aren't the first examples that come to mind. I think we talk a lot about hotels and what has happened in that industry. If you think about Netflix specifically, it's about content, right? Why do you go to Netflix? You want to see the next new thing. There's a lot of similarities, especially when you think about virtual brands. Think of food as content in a lot of ways. These DSPs trying to find new relevant ways in which to hook consumers, have them come back, put that new brand, that new menu item, a really well merchandised and showcased menu up in front. You can see here McDonald's, this is a little bit of a dated picture, but McDonald's has that top spot that's negotiated, and that's a way, you know, for them to drive more consumers into their platform. From those three themes, two key opportunities for our brands, and these are different, you know, these are emerging over the last couple of years. You know, one is around the business model. How do we get to market? How do we engage with our consumers? There's this emergence of delivery only facilities, right? Delivery is now a much larger share of dollars, and it's also an absolute dollar is much higher, so it can substantiate itself on its own within a facility. The second is around technology. How do we think about technology? How do we double down and ensure that we're developing that direct connection to our consumer? I'll dive into both. I'll talk about virtual brands and ghost kitchens first. We really see this as a, it's obviously emerging. We're in the early innings of how this whole piece of the industry evolves, but we're, you know, very positive on it, and we think it's something that does represent a new incremental revenue stream for our restaurants as we go forward. First, some definitions, because it's a little complicated. When we say virtual brand, what does that mean? We'll kind of talk you through kind of the four main players within this ecosystem. A virtual brand. What is a virtual brand? It's a brand with no visible brick-and-mortar footprint. It lives largely on the third-party delivery sites like DoorDash or Uber Eats or Grubhub. We have three brands at the moment. We have Cosmic Wings with Applebee's, and we have Super Mega Dilla. I call it Dilla. I've heard Dia, but however you want to say it, just order. Thrilled Cheese. We've got these three brands. At the highest level, what's important to know is that a virtual brand is a brand, right? It's a brand that has to have a purpose. It needs to be differentiated, it needs to be compelling, it needs to solve a need for the consumer. It's not just about pasting up a menu on the delivery platforms. We think we really have a you know, competitive advantage here because we know how to nurture brands and we know how to launch brands, which is critically important. Second is around technology. You got to make this the least complex process as possible for your operators. The technology that powers that is critical. We have the integrations in place. Now these orders look very similar to an Applebee's or IHOP order to our operators, trying to reduce as much of the complexity as possible, well-publicized in the industry around tablets and the complexities that introduced into restaurant operations. Those are now all out of the business. The third piece is around our operators. Ultimately we become more of a fulfillment center in a lot of ways. Our teams, we're able to leverage, in this case, our franchisees and their teams, cross-train their labor and get efficiencies and make this food. You know, with everything we do, all these new initiatives, they're all tested, they're all validated, and we seek the buy in from our franchisees. Our franchisees are very excited about these opportunities because they see the incremental sales dollars and flow through that they represent. Then lastly, a ghost kitchen. A ghost kitchen at the end of the day is just a facility. It's just where the food is made. You know, in this context of virtual brands, we are the ghost kitchen, right, or the host kitchen. Applebee's or IHOP Kitchen is serving as the ghost kitchen for a Cosmic Wings or Super Mega Dilla. There's also ghost kitchen facilities like CloudKitchens and others, where you can rent a space, and we can deploy our traditional brands and our virtual brands in the future. We'll talk about what that means for development. As an ex-consultant, I love two by twos. I'll walk you through this one, which has a lot of dimensions. It's actually maybe four-dimensional. On the x-axis is the type of kitchen. Is it controlled? What I mean by controlled is it dedicated to your brand? Is it like a freestanding Applebee's or IHOP? Then a third-party kitchen, which is one of these ghost kitchen facilities. As you go up on the y-axis, you know, the bottom left box, a legacy. Is it your core brand? Is it the core Applebee's or IHOP brand? Then a virtual brand. As you go to the right, those capital requirements get lower. A ghost kitchen is extremely more efficient to open from a capital perspective. You know, using round numbers, $2 million to open a freestanding restaurant, $100,000 to invest in equipment to get into a ghost kitchen facility. It significantly changes your return profile. On the X as you go up, it's operating requirements. Obviously there's a lot of labor that goes into operating an Applebee's or IHOP. To add on a virtual brand, it's you know, no labor, right? Or largely incremental, depending on sales volumes. For us, the implication is that historically, the way that we've gone to market and what is still a core piece of our strategy, so you'll hear more about this from the brand presidents, is our traditional restaurant brands, Applebee's and IHOP, in their own dedicated facilities. It's still a big piece of our business, but that was the only way we could really go to market, pre-COVID. Now, with the growth of delivery, there's two more ways we can go to market. One is virtual brands in our traditional spaces, and we have a huge advantage here. Again, the distribution points, 3,300 domestic locations with the ability to scale out operations, right? Which is hugely important. Our teams are used to running marketing campaigns six to eight times per year. They know what it's like to operationalize new menu items and new concepts. It's very differentiated from what you see from other players in the space. In delivery, you know, number of locations matters. You want to be as close to the consumer as possible, and we're the only one in full service dining that can do that. Now, second is traditional brands in ghost kitchens. Again, that returns profile is significantly different for a ghost kitchen versus a traditional, freestanding unit. This gives us the ability to enter trade areas that we weren't able to penetrate before, especially in urban. If you think about a place like New York City, where development costs are extremely high, this is a tool that we can use going forward. This is a huge complement to our development toolkit as we go forward. You'll hear from Tony about the efforts we've made internationally, which are making great strides with using this to enter new markets. I'll tell you a little bit now about technology. Again, we talked about the requirement to deepen that customer and brand relationship. Ultimately, if we're going to compete effectively with not only the competitors in a restaurant space, but also the third-party delivery companies, you got to give your guests a reason to come and give them technology that complements their experience or gives them a reason to come directly to your website and app. When we picked this photo, I didn't think of it as a technology photo, but it is in a way, 'cause you can see that blue disk right there. That's a QR code that's on the table of an IHOP that enters you into an experience where you can view the menu. Ultimately, as we go forward, where you'll be able to order, to pay, to leave feedback, and to do other things. Again, a way to launch a digital experience and make an unknown customer largely a known customer in our environment. You'll see a lot more of this from Justin in the video that comes right after me. To give you a little bit more context behind why we are making certain investments, again, across this guest journey, there's again, this discovery phase. We want our teams to have the ability to create targeted messages, to reach targeted segments, ultimately to drive incremental traffic and do so at a lower effective cost to offset media inflation. Really important for us to drive efficiency and ultimately to reach consumers where they are looking to make that decision on where to eat. Within this ordering and experience and handoff, you know, we're really trying to accomplish a few things. We want guests to be able to engage with our restaurant and our team members via their own devices, but not just for the sake of it, but in order to increase speed of service and to enhance that experience. If I wanna pay, if I want to, maybe, in the future, have a refill, if I want to order, that can all be done on my own device. We also want to empower our team members, and especially in this environment, we want to find ways to enhance service levels and increase labor productivity. Server tablets are a great example of that and something that has been rolling out through the Applebee's system and is also on the roadmap as we launch our new POS. Within off-premise specifically, we want to give guests the ability to order from anywhere, so we're agnostic as it relates to where they order from. We want those orders to come in seamlessly, and then we talked about integrations and why those are important. Lastly, we want to reinforce a quick and easy handoff experience. Guests in the off-premise world, they care about two things. One is a quick in and out, and the second is around an accurate order. There's technologies available to us that allow us to meet those needs of the off-premise consumer. Payment, again, briefly mentioned payment, but there's a multitude of payment options now. We want to be able to offer digital forms of payment, Apple Pay, Google Pay, et cetera. We want to increase speed of service and payment security, especially for chargebacks in the online world. Lastly, feedback. Find ways to capture feedback from consumers so we can deliver a consistent experience and empower guest recovery. You know, all these technologies, there's a business case behind them, right? There's either financial, there's either operational, it's about driving guest experience, and this is meant to highlight kind of how we are thinking about deploying those investments. This is a snapshot of our tech stack. It's not our full tech stack. It also doesn't reflect our full roadmap, but wanna highlight a couple of things. In order to power those experiences, we now have those technologies in place. If you were to look at this picture two years ago, you'd see some solutions, but there would be some gaps as well, and there might also be some other vendors in place. It's critically important that we didn't stop investing and launching these products over the last two years, and now we feel like we're really in a great place to offer these experiences to our consumers. You can also see we're picking best in class vendor partners, so people like Salesforce, people like Flybuy, people like FreedomPay. These are all best in class providers within our space, which really do give us a strong footing. The only thing to note here, and you'll hear more from Justin, you know that POS and point of sale, that's a big place, that's a big focus for us as we go through 2022 and 2023 for both of the brands. Both of the brands are initiating a POS migration that's gonna give us increased scalability and flexibility as we go forward. With that, I'm gonna segue to the video. Just want you to keep in mind those three themes that we talked about at the beginning as we go through the day. You know, one, this increase in digital technology and technology in general, how they're really within every step of the process now. The second is this significant growth and explosion in off-premise. Then lastly, how delivery is shaping and shifting the way that we're able to go to market. With that, I thank you for your time, and I'm gonna hand it off to a video with our CIO, Justin Skelton. CRM stands for customer relationship management, but specifically there are two components around CRM. One is our digital marketing capability, which is a fully integrated digital marketing platform that has integrations with social media, as well as offering things like push notification, email campaigns, digital wallet, those capabilities that allow us to interact with our customer. The second piece is loyalty. Like most companies, we're working on deepening our relationship with our customer, and we'll do so through execution and implementation of a loyalty platform this year. What that's going to allow for is a customer, for example, coming in, they've got their personal device. They'll be able to scan the QR code on the receipt, thereby collecting points. They will be able to redeem those points, and they can do it nationally. What's most important there is they have to complete a profile, which from our perspective allows us to gain valuable information about our customers such that we can actually direct these push notifications and other things to them later on. For the on-prem, we get into technologies that specifically are used within the restaurant. For example, we've got a new point of sale platform we're rolling out this year for IHOP. We actually pilot it in 2021, so this year is the year that we actually implement that capability. There are three components of that. There's the point of sale system, there is a KDS, which is kitchen display, and there's also the tablets, integrated tablets that will be part of that package, if you will, that we will be deploying for IHOP throughout the year. We're expecting a lot out of this, in terms of improved server efficiency, improved table turns. The tablets actually are integrated because they actually include payment swipe capabilities that are part of the tablet that the servers will be able to use. It's also one of the vehicles to allow for relief in our labor shortages that we're experiencing as well, because the servers will be much more efficient than where they are today. We're going to completely revamp and we're going to redesign the web and mobile app for IHOP, starting with IHOP in 2022, and then we'll finish up that rollout for Applebee's later on in the year. Compared to where it is today, it's going to be a whole new look and feel. The user experience, the user interface will be totally different. We're going to put in enhanced order flow capabilities, and then as I pointed out, loyalty, the web and mobile app is going to be fully integrated with loyalty as well as our Pay and Go and some of our other capabilities. Flybuy essentially allows a guest to go onto their mobile app, order their food ahead. It has geofencing capabilities which as they're en route to the restaurant, the restaurant can see specifically where they're at. What that allows us to do is to make sure that we time the delivery and make sure that the food is hot when it's brought out to the customer. The customer doesn't have to call when they get there and notify the restaurant that they're actually in the parking lot. We already know that, and we'll be able to bring that food out hot. BYOD stands for Bring Your Own Device, and essentially it's technology we're deploying for both IHOP and Applebee's. What they can do is they can scan the QR code, which will allow them to bring up the menu. They can then execute an order, and then when they get done, they actually can pay using their device. Then subsequent of that, they can actually complete a survey, and they're on their way. We took a collection of different technologies, enhanced those technologies to deliver the order ahead dining experience. Essentially, the guests will be able to order their food ahead, much like they do with the Flybuy that I explained. The difference with it is that with order ahead dine in, they will actually be dining in versus picking up the food. What it will do would be allow the guests to actually sort of get a head start, right? Go in, get seated immediately, get their food, pay, and leave. We know during that day part, it's a competitive landscape. People don't have a lot of time to eat lunch. We wanna be able to take advantage of that from a competitive perspective, and we believe order ahead dining will allow us to do so. It's in our DNA to think innovatively, and we've got a couple of things that are being tested right now in a few of our restaurants. Number one, we've got a location that's actually testing robotics. Then the other type of technology that's being tested right now is food lockers. We believe that these things will have merit going forward, but it's just in our process to make sure that we actually have a method for being able to test these technologies. Innovation is core of what we're doing, but not only focused on what we're gonna be delivering today, but also what we plan to deliver in the future. Thank you to Scott, and thank you to Justin. I like Scott's 4-by-4 box, and it shows you where the restaurant industry has been and the opportunity we have. With that opportunity and these new revenue streams comes complexity, comes a need for greater technology. I hope what you see in listening to Scott and listening to Justin is that we have deep thinkers on these topics, and we have real technical experts. Justin's our CIO. My boast about Justin is that last year, our tech team delivered 95% of its projects on time or early, and they spent over 95% of what they were supposed to spend. I've never had a tech team actually accomplish its entire budget in the year without carryover. That's how I know our commitment to have a new applebee's.com, ihop.com, flipd.com, the corresponding apps and the IHOP POS, as well as the infrastructure for our marketing programs, are all gonna be on time and complete this year with Applebee's POS to follow next year. Now we'll transition to Applebee's, and then we'll take a break. John Cywinski, who many of you know well, is a true industry expert. He was once a very successful franchisee of Dunkin' Donuts and Sonic restaurants in Chicago. He has been on both sides of the business. He's held key leadership positions at Brinker, at Yum, and at McDonald's. He's a board member of the National Restaurant Association. He's on their executive committee. Today, I don't know if you know this, is your five-year anniversary at Dine. Congratulations on that, and welcome. My, how time flies. Yeah, I think today may be that anniversary, John. Thank you for that introduction. Scott, great job. Justin, terrific job on that video. It's good to see all of you again. This is one of our first live meetings in a long time, and it feels really good. I have the privilege of sharing with you the Applebee's story, and it's not a good story, it's a great story. We're proud of it as a team. I'd like to paint a picture on where we've been because I think the foundation is important. More importantly, where we're going and how we plan to unlock the growth of this terrific brand moving forward. Excuse me. Chapter one, and I'll frame this in two chapters. I will go back to 2017 through 2021. I'm thoughtful. I look at Greg Flynn in the back of the room. This is my second stint, my second five-year stint, with Applebee's, and I'm very fortunate. The franchisees asked me to come back in 2017. The brand was challenged, as many of you know. We had a mission to turn this brand around and unlock the growth that we all knew was possible here. We, as part of that, established 8 strategic imperatives. Now I'll be quick here, but I think it's important to understand. The first one was reestablishing trust and partnership and pride in this brand, which was always there among the franchisees. Not sure it was there among the team. Then belief that we could indeed rather quickly accomplish something remarkable. I didn't want anyone on our team who didn't have that passion about franchisee collaboration and didn't have that commitment to accomplishing something special. We've done that, and we've done that in spades, and I'll provide some context on that. My candid belief coming back, and I did ask the board, Mike, when I came back in, for the ability to be completely honest, and my view was the brand had lost its way, and in particular, lost sight of its guest and maybe who the brand was and what it stood for. Embracing our brand essence, and I'll frame that for you. It's obvious. All you have to do is talk to a little focus group of folks across the country, and they'll tell you exactly how they think about Applebee's, and that's a good story as well. Building not just a good team, but a world-class, best-in-class leadership team was an imperative. It's something we did fast. In large part, that team is still here. They are remarkable. I'll reference a couple of them as we move through this, but that team and our franchise partners are the reason for our success. We love culture. We have a very unique culture at Applebee's, and we worked hard to reestablish that. It was very important that a results-oriented culture of accountability, something I firmly believe in, and our team believes in, was embraced by everyone on this team. We love being held accountable, and in particular, as we look back at last year's results. We talk to guests because the guests have different occasions and need states when it comes to dining behavior. You know that. You all live within this world where sometimes you have time to dine out, sometimes you don't. We have a tremendous insights and analytics team that provide us the insight that we need to make proper investments and decisions, and to be very successful in the execution of our initiatives. Everything we do is occasion-based and insight-driven. We felt it was important, way back in 2017, that we not just have an impact in the category, we disrupt this category. It's been around for a long time, kinda overdeveloped back then and mature, formidable competitors. You remember the Dollarita? That was an example of a form of innovation that disrupted in a really cool way and broadened our demographic in a very significant manner. I'll provide some other examples as well. I felt, and I was honest with our franchise partners, that we're gonna hold them accountable for restaurant excellence. This, at the end of the day, is a people business and a restaurant business, and it all happens under the tutelage and the kinda oversight of that restaurant general manager. We believe in restaurant excellence. It was very interesting to me and very telling that our best franchise partners, again, I'm looking at Greg, said, "Yeah, hold us accountable." Because we had a lot of variability back then, and our mission was to tighten it up and deliver on our guest expectations. The final point, and this, as I look at the portfolio, may be the most important point. It was imperative that we would eliminate restaurants that were not just low volume or underperforming, perhaps even brand damaging. I remember looking at a quintile analysis, and it was very clear that those restaurants should have closed probably a long time ago. Part of that candor in our dialogue with the board, and we were given permission. We closed 300 restaurants over a 5-year timeframe. By design, the great news is that's done. I look at this portfolio of 1,578 restaurants in the U.S., it's rock solid. Those P&Ls are healthy. Our franchisees, restaurant level and entity level, are better positioned than they've ever been, in my estimation, and Greg will share his perspective on that later. I should also mention with point number 8, it wasn't about just eliminating brand-damaging restaurants. We set very high standards for this brand, and not every one of our franchise partners, in my estimation, is capable of running as fast as we want it to run and delivering on those standards. We needed to make some changes in the franchisee portfolio as well. We've done that. I'm proud of this group that we work with. Our vision. Last time I was with you, and I'm looking at many of you here were here in 2018, our last investor day. We said bold goal for Applebee's. We're gonna generate an incremental $300,000 per restaurant over a 5-year timeframe. That was the vision. This is the slide that I presented back then in 2018. 2017 was a transitional year. It was essential that we build that foundation that I just spoke to. Generating relevance, maximizing relevance among our guests, reestablishing who we are and what we stand for, and maximizing cash flow was an imperative for the franchisees. We were successful in doing it. 2018 was a record year. 2019 wasn't far behind. Our mission was to accelerate that growth, profitable growth, again, entity and restaurant level moving forward. We were well on our way. You know, Greg and I talk a lot about mojo. This brand has mojo. Now, you know, the last two years have been unfortunate, maybe. John talked about this. You know, the Applebee's brand oftentimes is at its best when it faces adversity because we're entrepreneurial and our franchisees are not only tremendous partners, they're just resilient. We unleashed this entrepreneurial spirit and this can-do attitude and this little band of brothers on a mission. We were very successful in what I think would have taken 20 years to unlock, figuring, cracking the code on this brand's reason for being. Adversity did create a lot of opportunity. These are. I never thought I'd see headlines like this. These are front page New York Times Magazine from kind of that April-May-June timeframe, if you recall that in 2020. 2021 was a breakthrough doesn't do it justice. It was a remarkable year for the brand. Our average unit volumes, weekly volumes, restaurant level, $50,500. That's an all-time high for the Applebee's brand. 6.2% comp sales growth versus the last kinda normalized baseline year of 2019. If you wanna look at it versus 2020, we're up 38% that year as well. We are the category leader on attributes that are very important to our brand position: affordability, menu variety, convenience, overall brand awareness, and within overall brand awareness, I'd say to-go awareness and delivery awareness, piggybacking on Scott's points. When guests think about those things, they think about Applebee's. I mentioned that we have indeed completed this system rationalization. We've optimized the portfolio. Those 1,578 restaurants that we have are great restaurants. There are a handful probably that still need to close, but it's a very small number. I'll frame exactly what you can expect moving forward. Most importantly, average unit volume moved. I said we had a bold goal to generate another $300,000. We generated another $400,000. We moved from $2.2 million to $2.6 million per unit. That's our current AUV. Some of that because we pruned up the system. Some of that is just pure demand from the guests in organic growth, and we're very proud of that. In the words of, we have a song later in one of our videos, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, "You ain't seen nothing yet from this brand." This chart is my favorite chart, and it has two components. It's monthly comp sales 2019 or 2021 versus 2019. You have kind of the impact, I can't remember if that was Delta. COVID back in January, February impacted the entire category. Look at that remarkable comp sales consistency over time. Really from the middle of March, double-digit growth versus 2019. December would have been double digit had it not been for Omicron, which hit us in the last 2 weeks of the year. That's the picture, and that's the picture of momentum. What makes our team and our franchisees most proud is, kind of pisses me off a little bit that it wasn't 52 weeks, but literally, with one exception being the first week of 2021, Applebee's outperformed the entire casual dining category as represented by Black Box for 51 consecutive weeks. That's hard to do. I think in 2018, we outperformed for about 45 consecutive weeks. But not only did we overperform, we overperformed by 740 basis points. You're wondering perhaps, all right, well, if you cut that differently and look at it versus 2020, how did you do? We outperformed by 960 basis points if I look at it versus 20. Regardless of how you look at it's a remarkable performance. We're not satisfied. It's the tip of the iceberg. It does illustrate what's possible with a fully optimized brand, which is what we have here with Applebee's. Now, I want to talk a little bit about chapter two, what you can expect moving forward over the next 5 years, including this year. Unlocking our full potential, accelerating market share. We view this, and our franchise partners view this, as a tremendous market share opportunity. Post-COVID, my firm belief, and John and I believe this, we've talked a lot about it. Trust and scale win. I'd probably add culture to that. Those brands that over the past two years have earned the trust of their guests, perhaps more importantly, the trust of their team members, are gonna win. Guests do go through this process of thinking about whether they can trust a restaurant in this environment moving forward. There will be winners and there will be losers. This point about scale not only is scale from a brand perspective in the aggregate or the Dine entity, it's scale within the franchise community. I have 31 partners who have significant scale and culture and best practices and processes. They're sophisticated, they're savvy. I'll talk about them a little bit later. We are exceedingly well positioned for not just sustained growth, but accelerated growth. That's our expectation. There'll be two components, and I'm very happy to be talking about not only comp sales, but now new restaurant development. You can expect that from us moving forward. We've cleaned up the system. That run rate will be a 3%-4% annual system growth rate. Most of that coming from comp sales. Some of that as we move forward here, coming from new restaurant growth, and that will be sustained over time. We believe in differentiation. Winners have a clear brand identity, and they understand where they play really well and where they win. Here are six categories where Applebee's wins. Our brand essence is not only unique, it's almost perfect, and I'll dimensionalize that for you. Our demographics are they're really broadly appealing in such a good way. We are more affordable than virtually everyone. That was important pre-pandemic. Post-pandemic, in an inflationary environment, I believe that's a critical win for the Applebee's brand. We have variety, which means there isn't a veto vote when a group decides to dine out. Scott hit on the off-premise business. I will frame specifically where we are, and we're ambitious on this critical growth engine for the brand. Then my humble point of view as we innovate and execute with the best of them and perhaps better than everyone out there, and I will provide you some examples of that. When you ask the question: who are you, Applebee's? What do you stand for? More importantly, when you ask guests across the country, this is what you hear. "You're familiar, you're friendly, you're welcoming, you're inviting, you're really comfortable. I can kind of come as I am. You're not a pretentious brand." Many of them will actually... My lawyer in the room, Christine, won't like this, but a lot of them reference that television show Cheers and that lyric, "Sometimes you wanna go where everyone knows your name." That's how America views Applebee's, kind of like a good friend, which we view as a tremendous strength. We boiled all of that down to a brand purpose, and it's important brands have a purpose. Now, we have our overarching positioning, which is that wonderfully grammatically incorrect, eating good in the neighborhood, which we love, and more importantly, America loves. Our statement is this, and John touched on it. There's an emotional connection that happens every time a guest dines in with Applebee's, and oftentimes with that off-premise business as well. Applebee's makes it easy for family and friends to connect with one another, whether in our dining room or in your living room. We're that wonderfully familiar and affordable little escape from your everyday. We facilitate connection on premise and off premise. In a world where coming out of COVID, where everyone perhaps is connected via a cell phone, one could argue perhaps the world is more disconnected than ever. Those little moments that John referenced happen in our restaurants. America's hungry to dine out. They're happening more so than ever, and I'll provide some context on that as well. Perhaps the best representation of that recently, we filmed our guests 6-9 months ago in the middle of the pandemic, and we really felt in 2022 that we were gonna come out of this, and we felt an obligation to thank our most loyal guest, our guest we refer to as our regulars. They have such tremendous brand affinity. The ad I'm gonna show you is. There's a screenshot of it here. There's not an actor to be found. We kinda changed their life a little bit by putting them up on national television, and it reflects the essence of the Applebee's brand. Let's go ahead and run that 60, please. Morning. How are you? Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got. Taking a break from all your worries sure would help a lot. Wouldn't you like to get away? Make sure you make that corner nice and tight. Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came. You wanna be where you can see our troubles are all the same. You wanna be where everybody knows your name. You wanna go where people know people are all the same. You wanna go where everybody knows your name. My belief is, authenticity is important in communication, in advertising and merchandising. I think authenticity is a word that you find associated often with Applebee's. That wonderful young man, 94-year-old Chester, who you saw with a World War II cap. He is a great-grandfather. By the way, that was shot in Pittsburgh at one of Greg's. Actually, a couple of Greg's restaurants. Chester comes to Applebee's every week. They do know him by name. He's 94 years old. You saw some of his great-grandkids in that shot. I mentioned, and we're proud of that work. Our demographic profile. We are. Now, this is relative to the casual dining category. This is how I would suggest you think about Applebee's. We are younger, surprisingly so, more diverse, and we have more families. It surprises people to find out that 54% of our guests are Gen Z and millennial, but they are. I love that balance from an age perspective, from an ethnicity perspective, and certainly from a kind of with family and without family. I'll take that demographic profile over any brand out there. It's a strength. Affordability is important, more important than ever. You can see here average check. This is NPD CREST. We are at the lower end of that kind of $14-$15 spectrum. As discretionary income perhaps is challenged here moving forward, we like this position. Whether you look at it via NPD CREST or Technomic, we are that entry-level kind of value-oriented brand, and we find great strength and opportunity with that. We win on affordability. When we ask, and we have a brand tracker, and this represents 5 years, "Which brands," and the question is here, "do you find affordable enough to eat there often?" Applebee's wins consistently, head and shoulders above some other very formidable competitors that we respect, but we love that position on affordability. We reduced our menu. You remember way back in March, literally in April and May, we reduced. We went from 160 menu items to 100 out of necessity. At that point in time, when we had lean teams, the government said, "Shut down your dining rooms." We wanted to ensure that we could execute well, really well in our restaurants, so we made a change. That's something that would have taken 20 years. It happened in 2 months. Now it's time to bring back innovation, and we're in the process of doing so. This is our current menu, but it's that tightrope balancing kind of that simplification and our ability to execute really well for that guest and delivering innovation. Our teams know how to do that. These are some examples. When you think about culinary innovation, Applebee's is all about abundance, and we're about craveable indulgence and mainstream flavor profiles and recipes, products and menu items that you can actually pronounce. There was a point in time where Applebee's had stuff on the menu where we now have a policy that we put in place to look. If a guest can't pronounce an item, it's not gonna make its way onto the Applebee's menu. What you will find, and I'd encourage you to go out to an Applebee's, you will see these. Most of these menu items today, Sizzlin' Skillet Sensations are coming. Those Sugar Dusted Donut Dippers, we believe in four-word names for our brands, are to die for. We're gonna feed you later. I'm actually gonna feed you the Impossible Burger, our first plant-based burger, our Brewpub Loaded Waffle Fries, the Donut Dippers, and we'll give you a kind of a center of the plate Sizzlin' Skillet. I hope you didn't overindulge with your IHOP this morning. The part of the business that we love, off-premise, is represented here. It is on a pre-pandemic basis was 13% of mix, about $6,000 per restaurant per week. It's now 27% mix, about $14,000. Our dine-in business is coming back. We're not only holding the off-premise business, our dine-in business is coming back. Think about that when you think about average unit volumes. Our off-premise business is in excess of $1 billion. It's actually about $1.1 billion. That's larger than many of the brands that I compete with. Again, I'll tip my hat to scale on this point. It's gonna continue to grow while our dine-in business continues to grow as well. That's a Q4 of 2019 versus Q4 of 2021 look. Our objective here is not to simply compete and to be available. I think there was a point in time, I know this with certainty, a decade ago, where Applebee's was not really part of that consideration set. If you didn't have an hour and a half to dine in, and you're on the go, or you're at work, and no one wants to prepare a meal, you're probably thinking about McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King, and maybe a burger, fry, and a Pepsi, you know, through a drive-through window in a sack. Now, we are competing directly with QSR and fast casual, and we're winning, and we're stealing share, and our food is better. It's real food at Applebee's. John talked about our packaging. The packaging is exceptional. I gotta throw a shout-out to Scott. We got some resistance from franchisees like, "Can we bring the cost down?" We said, "No, we're gonna have best-in-class packaging because the food needs to travel," and we do that really well. We have more points of distribution than anyone. When you order to go, you wanna get in your car and just drive around the corner. You don't wanna drive a long distance. If you're gonna have it delivered, you don't want it sitting in some fella's car for 30 or 40 minutes, God forbid. Category-leading awareness on both to-go and delivery. There is no veto vote, given that varied menu that I just shared with you. I've Arrived notification that Justin has put in place, meaning when you pull onto our lot because of geofencing, we know you're there. Makes the experience that much better and easier. We are migrating aggressively all of our guests to digital, whether it's an online order, whether they choose to order through our call center. We want to handle that well. We don't want dropped calls. Our core competency, candidly, is not bartenders and team members answering phones. We want them focused on our guests in the restaurant, and so we take that out of their hands. We have tamper-evident packaging, which is very important from a guest perspective, particularly with delivery, and order accuracy stickers are now coming throughout. That may not seem like a big deal, but one of the biggest complaints that you'll find in the category is I get my food delivered, or I bring it home, and it's not the food I ordered. We're actually really great at this right now. We were good. Off-premise business at Applebee's is a core competency. It's a lever we're gonna pull. We're gonna lean in aggressively, and we love our position. The best representation of this one, and I can't remember if I shared it with you guys last time we were together. It's an ad we call Runaround Sue. It's pretty self-explanatory. It's. This is a 60-second story of how we integrate into the life of an everyday woman who is our core guest, and we love this guest. I would tell you that our off-premise guest, if you're wondering about cannibalization, this is highly incremental, and our most frequent guest and our most loyal guest is our off-premise guest. So have fun with this one. Let's roll it. Hurry up. I'm almost there. Come on. I adapt because you're kind? Okay, gotta go. Back again. See ya. Hi. Applebee's To Go. Now that's eating good in the neighborhood. Here I've got it. I've really got to provide a shout-out to our marketing team and our agency Grey in New York. Actually, all of our agency partners. Joel Yashinsky is our Chief Marketing Officer, and he's brilliant, and he's a great partner. You can get that sense of authenticity in how we communicate and convey this brand in a very relatable way that certainly resonates with our guests. Scott talked about Cosmic Wings. As much as I'd love to quantify that for you today, I can't, and I'm gonna resist doing so. We launched it in February of last year. It's only available via delivery, although we did put it into our restaurants in November, December. We did it for one specific reason. wanted to maximize awareness and trial, and then we moved it to the delivery providers. This is an example of a very specific target, a well-defined target, a very clear differentiated position, co-branded menu. You're talking about wing lovers and Cheetos lovers, and we've got great partners with PepsiCo and Frito-Lay. It's highly incremental, and we're currently in the process of integrating as we speak with DoorDash. We're gonna be up at about just shy of 1,500 restaurants shortly in Grubhub. By the time we get to end of Q2, we will be fully deployed. At that point in time, I'll be able to answer the question for you as to the size of this business. Don't wanna be premature on that one, but it is incremental. Our team members love it, and our guests, in particular those young wing lovers, love Cosmic Wings. We are introducing, and this is a big idea, drive-through pickup windows. This is not how you would think about a drive-through window at a QSR restaurant. You can't come up to our window and necessarily order through a speaker, and then pull up and pick it up. This is Texarkana, Texas. Allen Smith. All of our great ideas, by the way, come from our franchisees. Dollarita did. Drive-through pickup windows came from Allen down in Arkansas. This is his restaurant. This is the first one. He has built 2. We open our third in Columbia, South Carolina, next week. My expectation is that we'll have 15 by year-end. The outlay to the investment to build this depends upon your geography. Could be $100,000. The operational, the team member, the financial, and the guest benefits are significant. It's a small sample size. As we move forward, I'll begin to frame that for you in a very concrete fashion. Our franchisees are jazzed about this. It's significant. Think about this. I mean, it's snowing out there today or sleeting. You know, in cold weather climates, you don't have to deal with rain or snow or ice. Team members don't have to go outside. The order's ready, you pass it through. Then all those delivery drivers who've been queuing up in our bars waiting for their orders, they too can just move right through this lane. It does beg the question, with almost 1,600 restaurants, how many of these can you convert? We're gonna answer that question. I can't today. I suspect it's pretty sizable. You have to take away some parking spots. You have to have municipal approval to do this, but we have a strong argument for it, and we're leading the way, and we're gonna be aggressive on this front. I mentioned innovation and execution. It's a core strength. Not only do we love this, we do it really well, and we like to take risks. Sometimes it's new product introduction, sometimes it's co-branding with partners like Cheetos or PepsiCo, sometimes it's working with a film studio like The Walt Disney Company, sometimes it's leveraging our very important alcohol business with guys like Dwayne Johnson and Teremana Tequila. It's all represented here. We have $140 million of media muscle that we deploy nationally, annually because our franchisees believe that we are a marketing and an operations-driven brand. They contribute 4.25% to us, and they trust us to execute really well and to bring innovation to our guests. Our media strategy is, in my estimation, a core competency. I'd say about 60% of what we deploy is traditional media. About 40% would be emerging non-traditional. It is very scientific. There's a little bit of an art to it. Our objective is to maximize awareness and trial in this ever-evolving, highly fragmented media landscape. Scott put up one of his. I always give Scott grief for putting up slides that fill the whole slide from top to bottom. When you look at the number of content providers out there in the media landscape, it has proliferated significantly over the last decade. We are device agnostic. Whether, Ken, whether you're looking at your telephone, whether you're on your iPad, whether you're on a plane, whether you're at home, regardless of the device you use, we know how to find you and target you. Television, digital, mobile, social, display, search, CRM, and the list goes on. This is a place where we play really well. We have six distinct occasions. There are actually a few more beyond these six, but value is driven by price. Family is driven by kids. Cravability is driven by, "I'm hungry, and I want that signature menu item." Convenience is driven by the fact that I don't have an hour and a half. I need to pick something up and take it home. Social oftentimes involves alcohol and that emotional connection, oftentimes late at night or on the weekends, special occasion. Could be an anniversary, could be a birthday, could be date night at Applebee's. Date night is something that happens every night in our restaurants. I've just gotta talk about Walker Hayes. This is Walker. He's a country music artist, and his wife Laney. They have six children. He is a salt of the earth guy and a regular Joe, and I mean that in the most favorable way. He wrote a song with his writing partner. We didn't do this. We just rode on those coattails. He wrote this song Fancy Like Applebee's, because he lives in Nashville, and he's a country artist, and his friends used to say, "Well, yeah, you must have a pretty good lifestyle. Like you know, you live well." He said, "No, actually, we go to like Burger King, McDonald's, and Wendy's all the time. A great night for us is we go to Applebee's." He's genuine, and he's authentic, and he wrote a song about it, and we have a long-term partnership with him now. We felt last year when America was really dealing with the brunt of this COVID thing that they wanted to let loose. He and his daughter started to dance to this song and secured more than 750,000 TikTok video submissions, and we said, "We're gonna use the best of those. And we're gonna let America let loose, and we're gonna celebrate kind of our freedom and our independence." We did so with several ads. I'm gonna play one of them for you here. Let's roll that, please. Hey, hey. Yeah, we fancy like Applebee's on a date night. Got that Bourbon Street Steak with the OREO® shake. Get some whipped cream on the top too. Two straws, one check. Girl, I got you. Bougie like Natty in the Styrofoam. Squeak, squeakin' in the truck bed all the way home. Alabama, Chanel, she's my Disneyland delight. That's how we do, how we do. Fancy like. I tell you, I honestly can't remember in my career, and I've been around a long time, more buzz about a brand than we experienced through this and our guests and our team members. Don't forget that half the reason we produce the stuff we produce is for our team members. Let's go back one slide, please. Wendy, if you could. Thank you very much. I referenced that we are now moving into net new unit growth at Applebee's. We will achieve that next year in 2023. Our portfolio rationalization is complete. Think about this, we've contracted 15% by design. The category has contracted just through COVID over the past two years by about 11% or 12%. We know where these 250 very high volume trade areas are, and we're gonna leverage those with our franchisees in a multitude of ways. anticipate scaling up to 20 net new units moving forward. It's gonna take us a little bit of time to ramp up the full development pipeline. Last year, we closed 25 restaurants. We're not gonna do that again. I think my expectation here is that we close 15 or so, maybe less this year, and then my expectation is we'd get pretty close to zero in terms of closures while we're ramping up new units, non-traditional, traditional, and conversions. That number will be in excess of 20 as we move towards 2024. This is our new prototype. Our prototype, you know, sales to investment ratio used to be about a 1-to-1 ratio. This is a 1.3-to-1. Very favorably received by our franchisees. Our franchisees developed this with us. We have good guest insights. This is what's being deployed depending upon the circumstance. You'll notice there's a to-go lane and a drive-thru pickup window where we can implement that as well. This is how we plan to unlock growth and really the full potential of the brand and restaurant profitability. The late night day part is a significant opportunity. It's the only day part when I look at last year that didn't grow. We grew significantly at lunch, in the afternoon, and at dinner. Late night's gonna come back. That's probably the day part that's the hardest to staff, quite candidly. Then again, and maybe Greg talks to that, he's having some experiences there that are significant incremental growth opportunities to core equity for us. Late night, half-price apps at Applebee's is something that we do really well. Pay and go mobile payment is coming. Restaurant profitability. If you recall, 4 years ago, we retained PwC, and we went to work on restaurant-level P&Ls. We secured a 200- to almost 300-basis-point reduction in that P&L. We're gonna go again. Probably won't see the benefits of that financially at the restaurant level until 2023, but we're doing a lot of work now that will unlock that growth. New point-of-sale system is coming along with handheld tablets. We're looking at new kitchen equipment. Our kitchen line hasn't been redesigned in 20 years. We believe we can unlock significant amount of innovation there. Escalation on the new restaurant development front, and then best in class innovation and execution, which is what we do really well. Final point, our business model is unique. We only have 31 franchise partners. They are large. They are savvy. They're smart, sophisticated strategists. They know how to leverage scale within their entities. Best-in-class culture I find throughout, and I attend a lot of those GM conferences, and they're impressive. Their financial health is stronger than it's ever been. Any weak players, by the way, as I mentioned, disappeared quite a while ago. We have deep collaboration and partnership, and I thought rather than talk about that here today, if we can advance that slide, please, that I'd introduce my partner, Greg Flynn. Now Greg, this is almost overwhelming. Greg has 2,400 restaurants. He is the largest franchise operator in the world. I think in excess of $4 billion, Greg. Kind of, you know, about the same size as Applebee's within your own entity. Not just Applebee's, but Panera, Taco Bell, Wendy's, Pizza Hut, Arby's would be the portfolio. Greg is perhaps my best partner. He was Franchisee of the Year. We just recognized him for the fourth time this past year. He walks the talk on restaurant excellence. Greg, would you mind sharing your perspective on the business, please? Thank you. Is this on? Is on? Is this thing on? Hi, I'm Greg Flynn. I'm honored to be here. I think the fact that I'm here speaks volumes about Dine and Applebee's. I haven't spoken at an investor conference like this in any of our other brands, notwithstanding the fact we're, you know, the first, second, or whatever, we're large franchisees in all our brands. I actually was invited to speak in 2018 as well. I had never been invited before 2018. What happened is, you know, we got into Applebee's in the late 1990s, and it was already the strongest, you know, casual dining brand then. Casual dining was, in my view, the best category then. Now, you know, it's become very competitive. All brands go through some tough times, and Applebee's went through some tough times. Honestly, it sort of tapped the wrong direction in the sort of mid to late teens. I think that was really because the leadership then didn't understand what America loves about Applebee's. Anyway, you know, the brand sort of has turned itself around, and that is due in large part to John and the team he assembled. The thing about John is he really understands the Applebee's guest and loves the guest and the brand. Like, he used the term many times today, authentic. Like, he appreciates how authentic our brand is and embraces it rather than fights it or tries to change it. You know what? That resonates. America, especially right now, America, they can smell fake a mile away, and they really love real. He's done that really well. He also has put together just a world-class team. You know, I have a pretty broad view on the industry, but also teams. John's is, you know, as good as it comes. You know, John mentioned he was here before. He was our chief marketing officer from 2000 to 2005, something like that. Those were sort of glory years, and it was partly because the advertising was so great and the marketing was so great. The best brand leads are marketers, in my opinion. So John has brought that back to this brand, this deep understanding of what guests love about us and how to speak to them and how to give them what they want. So that's good. The other thing is the effect of the pandemic. You know, it's very true that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. This is the best example I've seen in my whole career. Lots of things happened, and John's touched on lots of them, but three basic things happened. One, you know, one week ago or, sorry, 2 years ago this week, COVID hit. Our dining rooms all shut, and we kept all our restaurants open, but with skeleton crews and managers. That's when we went from like 160-something menu items down to the 100 that John mentioned. John said, "Oh, that would've taken 20 years." No, it would've taken forever. It never would've happened. Like, we have tried, in all of our concepts, we've tried to reduce our menus by a meaningful amount, and it's nearly impossible, and it takes a black swan event to do it. We got one. Now the complexity is reduced in our kitchens. Food waste is lower. Our cooks do fewer things better. You know, everything about it is better, right? That's a permanent change in our business. The second is growth in off-premise. I mean, you touched on it a lot. I'll tell you, I think what happened is, you know, we just got trial. We got millions and millions of people trying us because they were trying everything. A lot of people don't want to cook. If you don't want to cook, and you don't want to feed your kids fast food, like, we're a really good option because as John said, it's real food, right? It's convenient, it's not expensive. Of those millions of trials, some of you know, a lot of it stuck, right? It's also kind of sticky. You download the app, you populate the app, your credit card's in it, you can hit reorder. Like, it just becomes easy. We saw off-premise peak at, you know, over 50% of pre-COVID sales. It settled down to now just under 30%, but it's held for a year at that level as dine-in sales have come all the way back, right? That's it. The last thing that really happened because of COVID is the competitive landscape became more attractive. Especially in our category. You know, 10%-12% of all restaurants closed, but they were basically all sit-down restaurants, and they were basically all independents and small chains. I feel really bad because I love independent restaurants. I go to them all the time. You know, for our business, it's a tailwind, and it's got legs to it, like it's gonna help us for years. You add all that up, and Applebee's became a step function better business because of COVID, right? Let me just put some numbers to it. 2019 was a very good year for us. We did something like $72 million in EBITDA for Apple American Group. We did $115 million in 2021. 60% increase over our pre-COVID year, right? It's the best performer of our six brands last year and right now. I can't talk about like, you know, non-public information, but suffice it to say it's kicking ass right now. Like, I mean, really doing well. Okay, that's my perspective. You know, I am totally bullish on Applebee's, you know. Years ago, people were talking about the death of casual dining. You know, there will always be a large market for sit-down dining with liquor. It's an experience. Now there'll always be a market for good off-premise real food. The combination makes this just a very powerful place to be going forward. Thank you. I love that. You made some folks in the back room a little nervous when you started quoting numbers, but then when you said, "We're kicking ass," that suffices. Hey, I'm gonna close this, and I'm gonna close it with one statement. We are better positioned than we've ever been. I got to thank our team and the support from Dine, and in particular our franchise partners. I was trying to figure out the right way to send you to a break, and I thought, "Let's play you the best of the best." When we communicate with our guests, when we create content, we try to accomplish two things very simply, make them hungry and make them smile. Hopefully, this two-minute reel will do that for you. It's 11:05. We'll come back at 11:20. Susan, I believe. If you wanna know what eating good in the neighborhood is all about, you'll see it here. Let's roll it. Thank you. Back in black, I hit the sack. I've been too long, I'm glad to be back. Yeah, the sound was getting loose. Flying high. Can't get enough of your love, baby. Girl, I don't know why. Didn't have to mourn it, keeping me in the moment. I bet you haven't known it. Why don't you say so? Didn't even notice, no punches left to roll with. Good love. Now give me that good love. Good love. All I need is love. Good love. Good Good love, good baby. Good love. A little bit of chicken fried. Cold beer on a Friday night. A pair of jeans that fit just right. The radio Know this about the jungle. Everything that you see wants to kill you and can. Born to be wild. You've got your problems, small-minded. Yes, you're small-minded. Let's shine your light for everyone to see. Come to my window, oh. Crawl inside, wait for the light of the moon. Come to my window. Hey now, you're an all-star. Get your game on, go play. Hey now, you're a rock star. Get the show on, get paid. All that glitters. Simply irresistible. Oh, you're simply the best. the best. Better than all the rest. Better than anyone I ever met. Okay, folks, thank you. We're gonna take a quick 15-minute break. It's a hard start at 11:20 Eastern Time. Thank you. Say you gotta say. I'll go anywhere you go. Oh, oh, oh. I'll go anywhere you go. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, way-hey, oh, way-hey. I'll go anywhere you go. Oh, oh, oh. I'll go anywhere you go. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, way-hey, oh, way-hey. Na, na. Na, na. Na, na. Na, na. Na, na. Na, na. Whoa, oh. Na, na. Whoa, oh. Na, na. Whoa, oh. oh. Na, na. Whoa, oh. Na, na. Whoa, oh. oh. Na, na. Whoa, oh. Na, na. Whoa, oh. oh. Na, na. Whoa, oh. Na, na. Whoa, oh. oh. Na, na. Whoa, oh. Na, na. Whoa, oh. Na, na, na. Na, na. Whoa, oh. Na, na. Whoa, Na, na, na. Na, na. Whoa, oh. Na, na. Whoa, Na, na, na. Na, na. Whoa, oh. Na, na. Whoa, Na, na, na. Na, na. Whoa, oh. Na, na. Whoa, Na, na, na. Na, na. Whoa, oh. Na, na. Whoa, oh. Na, na. Whoa, oh. oh. Na, na. I used to rule the world. Seas would rise when I gave the word. Now in the morning, I sleep alone. Sweep the streets I used to own. I used to roll the dice. Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes. Listen as the crowd would sing, "Now the old king is dead, long live the king." One minute, I held the key. Next the walls were closed on me. I've stumbled but my castle stand. Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand. I hear Jerusalem bells a-ringing. Roman cavalry choirs are singing. Be my mirror, my sword and shield. My missionaries in a foreign field. For some reason, I can't explain. Once you'd gone, it was never an honest word. That was when I ruled the world. It was a wicked and wild wind. Blew down the doors to let me in. Shattered windows and the sound of drums. People couldn't believe what I'd become. Revolutionaries wait. For my head on a silver plate. Just a puppet on a lonely string. Oh, who would ever wanna be king? I hear Jerusalem bells a-ringing. Roman cavalry choirs are singing. Be my mirror, my sword and shield. My missionaries in a foreign field. For some reason I can't explain. Hear Jerusalem bells a-ringing. Roman Cavalry choirs are singing. Be my mirror, my sword and shield. My missionaries in a foreign field. For some reason I can't explain. I know Saint Peter won't call my name. Never an honest word. But that was when I ruled the world. I've been a dead end kids. Standing in dirty limbs. Listening to the music. Thinking 'bout this and that. She said, "That's that. I don't wanna chit-chat." Then he did a little bit and turned it down flat. Pump it up. When you don't really need it. Pump it up. Until you can feel it. Down in the pressure center. Hell-bent or heaven-sent. Listen to the propaganda. Listen to the latest trend. This happened then that happened. She wouldn't understand. Pump it up. Until you can feel it. Pump it up. When you don't really need it. Hey. She's been a bad girl. She's like a chemical. Oh, you try to stop her. She's like a narcotic. You wanna torture her. You wanna talk to her. All the things you bought for her. Putting up your temperature. Pump it up. Until you can feel it. Pump it up. When you don't really need it. Out in the fashion show. Down in the bargain bin. You put your passion out. Under the pressure pin. Falling through sufficient. Hit-and-run transmission. No use wishing now for any other sin. Pump it up. Until you can feel it. Pump it up. When you don't really need it. Pump it up. Until you can feel it. Pump it up. When you don't really need it. Pump it up. Until you can feel it. Pump it up. When you don't really need it. Don't really need it. No, you don't really need it. Don't really need it. In many ways, they miss the good old days. Some days. Yeah, it hurts to say, but I want you to stay. Sometimes. When we were young, how many did we have fun? Always. Promised every people they made. Sometimes. All my answers are lacking in this. I will do my best. You say you wanna stay by my side. Darling, your head's not right. I see the longer we stay together, we fall apart, yeah. I think I'll be all right. I'm working so I won't have to try so hard. Tables, they turn sometimes. Oh, someday. Now I ain't wasting no more time. Our session will continue in five minutes. They come to me in dreams so I sometimes think me and my friend can do really strangest things. I find sometimes all my assets are lacking in depth. You say I will try my best. You say you wanna stand by my side. Darling, your head's not right. I say, darling, we stand together, we fall apart. Yeah, I think I'll be all right. I'm working so I won't have to try so hard. Tables, they turn sometimes. Oh, oh, yeah. Are we wasting the one time? Freefallin'. I'm not gonna change till I want to. I'm freefallin'. I'm not gonna change till I want to. By the way she looked I should have calmed down. I went too far. Oh, that's all I've got to say. Our session will continue in two minutes. I should have calmed down. I went too far. Oh, that's all I've got to say. Freefallin'. I'm not gonna change till I want to. I'm freefallin'. Well, I built too many walls. By the way she looked, I should have calmed down. I went too far. Oh, that's all I've got to say. By the way she looked. Please take your seats. Our session is about to begin. As a courtesy to those around you, please silence your mobile devices. There you stand, find your man. Tell me something I'm saying. What is it about IHOP that you love so much? What exactly is it that our guests are so fond of that makes our staff show up with a smile? Guests say they love that IHOP is a place they can go to connect with family and friends. They said they love that at IHOP, made to order always comes with a side of smiles, and that our food doesn't just taste good, it feels good. That IHOP is a place where they feel like they belong. Franchisees love IHOP because IHOP is not only a brand, but an institution that they have been a part of building for 63 years. Team members say they feel like family at IHOP. They love having meaningful relationships with their customers, their coworkers, and their managers. That the people are the reason they come to work every day. That they feel so connected to IHOP, it makes them wanna build a career with us and even become franchisees themselves. All of these experiences reveal what it is that people love so much about IHOP and form the story of IHOP's True North. A story of shared heritage that connects many different lives. One of genuine togetherness and care for one another. A story of belonging and comfort that makes you feel as full in your heart as you do in your belly. Enjoying great food made the way you love, served by someone who cares. Food that really makes you feel good. When you put all this together, it becomes the recipe for joy. Now, the recipe for joy may seem easy to deliver, but in fact it's not. It requires custom orders, trained staff, insightful menus, and of course, certified pancakes. Creating joy and connection takes real effort and focus. It's what the smile on our pancakes has always stood for, and what the smile in our logo tells everyone as they walk through our doors. It's the story and the smiles we wear as we greet our guests, prepare their food, and say good morning to our teammates. You could even say the answer was right under our noses the whole time. The smile of joy. Simple, honest, heartwarming joy. This is something unique to IHOP. It's what we've always felt in our hearts. We believe that our job is to create joy. Nothing feels like it's too hard or too much, because joy is delicious, and we have the recipe for it. Thanks. Welcome back, everybody, for part two. Jay is up next for IHOP, another industry veteran with deep experience. He's actually our only executive who's worked for both Applebee's and IHOP during his 14-year career with Dine has great perspective for us at the enterprise level, and joined us after a long career at Fridays. Jay is a board member of the International Franchise Association. Fun fact, this is true, Jay is a nationally ranked horse racing handicapper. He can do regressions in his head. Jay, welcome. It's a little like handicapping stocks, right? You may want to talk afterwards. Hey, I hope you all enjoyed your IHOP breakfast this morning. You know, that menu back there, it actually included some of the best-selling items, obviously pancakes, omelets, burritos. It also had back there, if you noticed, it was the very first plant-based sammie only available at flip'd by IHOP here in New York, was back there as well. I hope you had a chance to try that. You know, when guests consider a brand to engage, dine, or interact with, there needs to be a purpose behind that brand. At IHOP, we believe a brand is a promise. A great brand is a promise that's well kept. Our promise at IHOP is when you dine with us, you experience this sense of comfort, togetherness, and belonging. Or as we like to say, "IHOP holds the recipe for joy." What does that mean exactly? Well, we have a great heritage that allows our brand to really transcend time. We're an integral piece of the communities that we serve in, and we provide a great experience with great food at a great value that brings joy to our guests' lives, whether our guests dine with us or take their food to go and enjoy with family and friends. Ultimately, our brand is a destination for joy. In 1958, the International House of Pancakes was founded in Southern California by two entrepreneurs. The simple mission was for providing a delicious and joyful start to their guests' day, with food that fueled their body but satisfied their cravings. You know, nearly 65 years later, IHOP is truly a brand that brings joy to a multitude of guests from every background and walk of life. Obviously, kids love IHOP. Their families love IHOP. Their grandparents love IHOP. College students love IHOP, too. That love for this great brand transcends generations, where these guests come back with their families or their friends to share the same experiences that they remember so fondly through the years. Starting with that very first location, that single restaurant in Toluca Lake, California, in 1958, IHOP now is 100% franchise brand with more than 1,650 restaurants in the U.S. and over 1,750 globally. Despite having one of the highest number of units in the family dining space, we still have a large opportunity to see this brand grow throughout the U.S. even more and worldwide. IHOP is also number one in our segment when it comes to brand awareness and affinity. In 2021, we held the top position for share of voice in our category. IHOP has a long history of growing the business. Our comp sales prior to COVID-19 had great momentum that was building. In 2018, 2019, the brand achieved 8 consecutive quarters of positive comp sales. In 2020, when the pandemic hit, our sales fell to only about $14,000 per restaurant per week as the family dining and breakfast concepts were hit particularly hard during the pandemic. By the end of 2021, we've been able to come back to at or near those 2019 levels. Our development story has been consistently strong for years as well. With a focused strategy, we've been able to redirect those numbers to pre-pandemic levels by focusing on three key areas of the business, which includes our comp sales growth, obviously, and what we're doing to protect and grow our current restaurants through marketing, menu, the guest experience, and technology. A strong focus on development and leveraging new channels for growth. The other key piece is ensuring we're always doing this in close collaboration with the heart of the business, and that's those franchisees. Now, let me tell you a bit about our franchisees. You know, they're really what makes our brand so special. Those folks that choose to invest in IHOP, their entrepreneurial spirits and their passion for the communities they serve. They're a core component to why IHOP is where we're at today, and the reason we continue to serve smiles daily in our restaurants. Our business is 100% franchise with nearly 270 franchisees across the U.S. Unlike many brands, we have a very diverse range of franchisees, really large and very small. About 75% of our franchisees have fewer than 5 restaurants. We also have very large franchisees that own 50 or more restaurants across our system, which provides stability with these larger organizations. We also have a very diverse set of franchisees, with more than 60% of them representing different ethnicities and cultures. We pride ourselves on being a brand that's relatable. A brand that not only bears a national logo, but it's also a small business that is a core part of each community that it serves in. IHOP's not just a big brand, a big corporation behind it. It's run by local entrepreneurs who are passionate about their businesses and the communities that they serve in. IHOP is ultimately a place where the owner often knows the regulars' names when they step foot in the door. I wanna share this video with you about one of our franchisees, Adena Bayu. She came to the United States in 1991 as a refugee from a war-torn country with the hopes of a better life. Let's take a look. My initial entrance in the restaurant business was I was working in my grandmother restaurant around the age of 5 and 6 years old. It was in a remote village in Africa. I remember my grandmother waking up very early in the morning to start the cooking process. When you're living in a village, usually the sunrise is like your alarm clock. There was a civil war in my country, and we sorta came in here as refugees. I came in 1991. I think no human being should ever experience that emotion of war. Coming here for me was like a blessing. My first introduction to IHOP was my dad when we were growing up. When I was in high school, it was like the place he would take us when we were good. I just always had this really fond memory of the pancakes. When I graduated from college, I sort of came back into my community, there was no IHOP. I just felt like, "Why don't I have an IHOP in Irvington?" It was that question of, why not, that led me into IHOP. My journey was not made possible without someone at IHOP corporate, her name is Nicole, that really advocated for me. She advocated for me as a minority woman to find someone to finance me because she believed in my capacity, she believed in my passion, and felt like there should be a space for me at the table. I was so happy because I get to bring this idea to life, and I get to also create this place in my community that a lot of people can go and experience that same joy. It also allow me the opportunity to create jobs for people in my community. There are a series of questions that I ask before I commit to a location. Is it impactful? Is it gonna solve something in the communities that I'm in? I think right now we have close to 200 employees. The most amazing thing is taking someone as a busboy and make him a district operations manager that essentially is running all 4 of those restaurants right now. For me, I looked at the franchise system as almost like my restaurant university. When I had this crazy, amazing idea of I wanted to start my own concept and I wanted to start my own restaurant, it was pretty much looking at the roadmaps I have been living for the past 10 years and following that. When they see IHOP, they think of this corporation, right? What oftentimes they don't know or can't really fully comprehend are these franchise systems are small, collective mom-and-pop individuals such as myself, that are from your community, that we are running small businesses that just have a national chain name on the door. At its core, we're entrepreneurs just trying to make it like any other small business. This building bears an IHOP symbol on it, but it's mine. I think Adena shows kind of the spirit of our smaller franchisees. They still wanna grow. She started with one, she's up to four now. We've got a system with great stories like that. There's a lot of very similar stories. Our Franchisee of the Year last year in 2021, Bernardo De Jesus, came from the Dominican Republic. He started his career with IHOP as a dishwasher, and now he owns two restaurants of his own. We have one franchise group that started with one restaurant and is now our second-largest franchisee with over a hundred. These franchisees are what makes us who we are. They're different, they're better, and they're special. They have great passion for this brand and the folks in the restaurants that bring joy to each of their guests every day. Look, our strategy is focused. As we expand on how we're gonna grow this business through comp sales, development, and new channels, I wanna break it down a little bit more for you. First, we look to grow through comp sales. You know, this really comes down to the work we're doing inside the restaurants, communicating our brand positioning, the menu optimization and customization, and sustaining and growing our off-premise businesses, growing our non-breakfast business, and really creating that one-to-one relationship with our guests. First, I'll start with the brand positioning. You know, we recently selected a new agency of record to harness how our recipe for joy comes to life in everything we do and the messaging we share across channels. You know, as we look at the way we approach our marketing, everything is done through an omni-channel lens. The easiest way, you probably heard that term, the easiest way to think about what's omni-channel is think about how you interact with your personal phone every day. How many apps do you use, spending time on Instagram or buying things on Amazon or ordering from Uber Eats, watching TV shows, Sunday Night Football. You get the picture. Omni-channel allows us to reach many different guest segments with different messages in those spaces, not just broad national TV. Our media strategy is all about meeting our guests where they are, more specifically, where their eyeballs are, and on what channels that influence them. Not just when they dine with us, but when they're making decisions immediately about dining. You know, our positioning will be pulled through all of these messages, whether it's on TikTok, Hulu, YouTube, or still we'll do broadcast television as well. We'll segment the message to the type of customer we're reaching on the channels we're leveraging to reach them. Now with that, I think we could all use a pancake. Right about now, we could all use a pancake or two. 10. Pancakes with omelets, burgers, burritos, and occasionally with faces. For parents who've been making their own pancakes, and for night owls who miss staying up till dawn, for nosy neighbors, and for smooth operators. That's what I'm talking about. Because right about now, we could all use a pancake. The second piece, and probably maybe the most important piece of our strategy is really optimizing and modernizing the menu. You know, food is at the center of everything we do. As we look at our menu, we want guests to think about it as a destination for everyday dining rather than just a place for special occasions. In the next 12 months, we're gonna roll out healthier or lifestyle options that include things like protein pancakes, fresh berries, and we'll start testing new protein options like plant-based breakfast sandwiches like you had this morning. We'll also infuse new and unexpected ways to enjoy classic IHOP favorites, like a new twist on French toast and pancakes. We know that customization is highly desirable at IHOP. It's my choice, my way for our guests. More than 80% of our orders are customized by our guests off of what's listed in the menu. We know our customers love to mix and match items. A pancake with bacon and eggs, pretty common. A burger with hash browns or even a burrito with a side of mozzarella sticks. With these insights in mind, our teams are working on menu strategies that allow for even more customization and options for our guests 24 hours a day. We're also looking at the ways guests dine with us today. Obviously, COVID changed a lot about the way guests use us. Off-premise is something we've continued to focus on and grow. We now look at off-premise, that business and menu a bit differently than we used to in the past. Today, our to-go business is over double 2019 levels, and it's held there now for 15 months. We've been able to hold on to it by marketing a bit differently and introducing new menu items that are a little more portable and easier to enjoy on the go. For example, during the pandemic, we introduced new burritos and bowls and handcrafted melts. Those two menu items collectively make up about 5% of our sales mix currently, and they've helped drive additional everyday occasion guests into our restaurants. Our PM business is the next component for our comp sales growth. You know, we know we need to expand beyond breakfast and focus on providing guests with all-day options at a great value. Of course, everyone knows us for our delicious pancakes. We all enjoyed them this morning. We're focused on being more than just a breakfast destination. Our PM focus really kicked into high gear with IHOb and the launch of steakburgers in 2018, and since has expanded with Buttermilk Crispy Chicken, Burritos and Bowls, and most recently, those handcrafted melts I talked about. They cater to all day parts. At IHOP, we provide a great experience with great food at a great value that brings joy to our guests. Value. About half of our guests make under $50,000 a year household income, which is why value is a key component to round out what the menu offerings are. You know, in late 2020, we launched IHOPPY Hour, our brand's first ever PM value platform designed to drive incremental traffic and sales at hours when we're really just not that busy. That menu includes full entrees with sides and snacks starting at just $6 from 3 to 9 P.M. While this platform continues to evolve, we're pleased to share that it currently drives about 8-10 percentage points of incremental traffic during that time, and for a full week system impact of +1% in comp sales. We'll continue to offer everyday value platforms and pricing to ensure that we can reach those particular guests for more occasions. The last piece to wrap up our comp sales growth is that need to create that one-to-one relationship with our guests. Early April, we're launching the brand's first ever loyalty program. It just got announced broadly today. You may have seen it already. The International Bank of Pancakes. Come on. It's kind of fun, right? We know loyalty programs, you know, they're what customers expect right now. They want to be rewarded for their loyalty and the money they spend with the brands that they love. As you look across industries, whether it's airlines, hotels, or even quick service restaurants, these brands are leveraging loyalty programs and incentives to grow share of wallet from people. The International Bank of Pancakes is a true earn and burn program designed to enhance our direct relationship with our guests and ultimately drive additional visits to IHOP. It allows our guests to collect what we're calling PanCoins. You get it. For example, three PanCoins will get you a free short stack at IHOP because a PanCoin is a pancake. Understand? I thought you would. PanCoins can be redeemed for several items on our menu. We'll even have a Stack Market where you can trade PanCoins for things like movie tickets, IHOP swag, and more. This program is one of a kind and first in our category. It will allow us to deepen our relationship with our guests and build brand loyalty. As we turn to growth outside of our four walls, we're doubling down on development. The past 2 years, we're one of the only brands able to keep opening new restaurants. In fact, we opened 37 of them last year just in the U.S. We even opened 2 of our new concept, flip'd by IHOP in Lawrence, Kansas, and New York City. Our approach is bullish. Our goal is to more than double our historical unit rate of 40-50 openings per year. This will take our domestic unit count from 1,657 restaurants today to over 2,100 by the end of 2026. To do this, we have four different vehicles for developers to invest in IHOP, which include our traditional IHOP restaurants. That's our legacy method of development. You know, we've opened over 400 restaurants in the last 10 years using this method, and are proud of the work we've done together with our franchisees to achieve that. The second is our nontraditional development, which is a segment of our business that's been gaining traction in recent years. The nontraditional audience is captive, and the primary method of development is really in heavily concentrated places like travel centers, malls, airports, entertainment venues, or casinos. The third vehicle is our new small prototype, which is another great example of IHOP responding to the current marketplace. Excuse me. It's become apparent that the need for a 4,000+ sq ft IHOP is no longer the mandate in every single market. Especially with the expansion of off-premise dining, there's some benefits to this. The biggest benefit is a small prototype has lower rents on average, and in addition, at the lower cost to build it for developers. The fourth and final method of development is our new Flip'd by IHOP brand. We opened 2 in 2021 and are looking to open more this year. Our plan is to test this brand in urban, suburban, and nontraditional markets to see where it resonates best. Flip'd by IHOP is really our fast casual version of IHOP, if you think of it like that. It's got a faster, more on-the-go menu. We know our guests crave that iconic food that they love from IHOP, but a traditional IHOP is sometimes not the service style a guest wants or needs for a particular occasion. With guest needs evolving, this is the perfect time to test and launch this new concept. Right now, we're really focused on two key areas, where the brand is going to perform best, and specifically what about it performs best so we can test and learn. As we start to open more locations, we'll continue to determine and grow what that development approach will be with this new brand. I do think it's important to note that all four of these methods of development are all available to do in conversion opportunities, where we take on a closed down restaurant of some other concept and turn it into an IHOP. We're very good at this. We got about 600 of them in our system right now. These conversion opportunities are clearly increasing post-pandemic. We're seeing this in real time as about 50% of our incremental openings that the franchisees are bringing to us for sites are indeed conversions. The economics are typically very attractive and a way to hedge against some of the current inflated construction costs on new buildings. As we shift to new channels of growth for us, we've learned guests are leveraging restaurants differently obviously. We see a huge, huge opportunity for IHOP with virtual brands, considering our footprint and our kitchen capacity. You know, a large% of our business is done at our peak A.M. hours for breakfast, especially on the weekends. You combine that with the fact that we have about 1,000 of our 1,650 restaurants across the country have two full kitchens to handle that weekend crush, but they sit absolutely dark most of the week. You see the opportunity our brand has to execute virtual to-go businesses. We have tremendous capacity to generate more business out of these kitchens, especially at P.M. and overnight hours when we're slower. We met with several potential providers and landed on one that fits our business vision and goals. I'm pleased to share that we recently entered a testing phase with Nextbite. Nextbite owns various delivery-only brands which send orders to our kitchens to fulfill. Their business model is pretty simple. Our staff makes the orders, and the delivery service drivers pick them up for the customers. The current test includes two concepts. The first is a quesadilla concept, Super Mega Dilla. We offer this. The second is a grilled cheese concept, Thrilled Cheese. We chose those items because they fit what we do best, cooking on flat top grills. We're really griddle masters in our restaurants. We make our signature pancakes, our omelets, our burgers. Almost everything we make, we do on those griddles. Quesadillas and grilled cheese sandwiches were the perfect fit operationally from that perspective to adapt in our restaurants for lunch, dinner, and late-night business. We're currently in the beta phase of the testing, and we have 48 restaurants that have both of these brands in their restaurants right now, available in Lexington, Dallas, Phoenix, D.C., Columbus, Las Vegas, and Providence. Next month, we'll expand our test to 31 more restaurants in Dallas and D.C. To date, we're seeing about $1,000-$2,000 in incremental sales per week at these locations. I might also add one thing is that those particular locations have not even touched that extra kitchen that can be turned on to do these brands. This is through the first kitchen only right now. We've also received great franchisee feedback, with many of them requested, "How can I get in? How can I be part of the test?" Or they're in it, and they say, "How can I expand this to more restaurants quicker? Let me have it." We're excited about this new relationship with Nextbite. Big opportunity. The future is bright for IHOP. We're a destination for joy. We have a solid strategy to set our business up for success in 2022 and well beyond. We're investing in key growth categories, including new technology platforms, a new loyalty program, new point-of-sale and kitchen display systems, new development vehicles to build restaurants, and new channels like virtual brands. We're doing all this with the goal to drive additional sales and traffic to our restaurants, so franchisees can make more money and continue to invest in building more restaurants with us. I'd like to leave you with a short from Karl Jaeger. He's from our largest franchise group, Argonne Capital. They have over 250 restaurants. And like Adena, he's passionate, driven, and a key reason this brand is so special. Let's take a look. first entered the IHOP system back in 2004 when we acquired a longtime franchisee in Texas. With that acquisition, we signed an exclusive development agreement with IHOP for the eastern half of Texas that required us to open 21 new units over an 11-year period. Shortly after that, in 2007, we had an opportunity to acquire the Florida market from a family that had been in the IHOP business, really since the IHOP business was started. With that acquisition, today we're now up to 271 IHOPs across the country. By far, the largest IHOP franchisee in the system. We believe in the brand because everybody loves IHOP. Everyone has an IHOP story. We're involved at Argonne Capital with a lot of different investments, a lot of different businesses. When I tell my family and friends what we do, always without hesitation, when I get to IHOP, everybody responds positively. The brand has shown resilience through economic cycles, through natural disasters, through Gulf oil spill, and then most recently, the pandemic. We provide great food at a great value. We have, you know, a wide demographic. We appeal to a wide demographic. We have seniors that come after church. We have young folks that come late night during the weekend. Interestingly, if you looked at our demographics, 51% of our customers are under 35 years old, which is, you know, huge in terms of we are starting our customers at a young age, and our hope is that they stay with us for life. Our culinary team has consistently created innovative new products, new promotions over the years, and having a large advertising budget like we do, that has enabled us to communicate those promotions to our customers, you know, on a daily basis. We realized early on the importance of sitting on and being active on committees formed by IHOP Corp. We have a seat at the table when it comes to big decisions. We define mutual success as growing profitable sales and continuing to develop the brand and running great restaurants. Having developed 110 restaurants since our inception, since we've got into the system, we would obviously not have done that if the unit-level economics were not strong. As I said before, we're involved in a lot of different investments, a lot of different businesses. Diving into all these concepts, I can tell you that the IHOP unit level economics are some of the most attractive in the industry. Not only has our development been accretive to our equity value, but it also has been accretive to our leverage ratios, which historically we have been conservatively leveraged. That's meaningful that we're able to add these new units and grow both equity value and reduce our debt ratios. We've built 110 restaurants since we've got involved in the system back in 2004. That's over 6 new restaurants on average a year. This year we're really excited. We're gonna build 9 this year, which is higher than our average. We believe that we're gonna be able to continue to grow at that pace in the foreseeable future. I just wanna say thank you. We're looking forward to a fantastic 2022 and beyond for this great IHOP brand. Mark your calendars. New campaign, new creative, and the launch of International Bank of Pancakes in April. Mark it down. Thank you. Yes, please. Wait. Or all you can eat pancakes for $5.99? Well, I know where I'm headed. To All You Can Eat My Heart Out. Thank you, Jay. We're super excited about what's going on at IHOP, and in particular, the International Bank of Pancakes. Some of you may know I came to Dine after almost 20 years at Starwood Hotels. I ran the SPG loyalty program for a couple of years in the mid-2000s, and loyalty matters. Loyalty makes a difference. This currency, I think, is terrific. The exchange rate makes sense for our customer, and I think it's gonna do a lot to move share and grow share of wallet. We're excited for that. We're onto international. Tony joined us in early 2020, just in time to manage the impact of COVID overseas, which was even more impactful and lasted even longer in terms of affecting the business than here in the U.S. He's now just getting to talk about growth and strategy after two years of playing defense. He came to us from Church's Chicken, where he led international development, and from a long career at Burger King, where he spent 17 years in development and legal roles. I'm told that Tony was so beloved at Burger King that the company still uses his photo in their recruiting brochures, and he left years ago. Tony, welcome. Thank you, John. I was. Thankfully, you didn't put a photo up there. I was much younger back then. Good morning, everyone. It's still morning, isn't it? I think so. I'm happy here today to talk to you a little bit about the international business. The key to international growth and creating value for our shareholders is to work closely with our franchisees to unlock the potential of our core markets. Our plan leverages our presence and our potential for sustainable long-term growth and shareholder return. It builds on our strengths because we've learned to stay agile and adapt. We've learned from the past, and we understand we need to do things differently, and that's the cornerstone of how we're growing internationally. As John mentioned earlier, what we're seeing take place in the Ukraine is. Well, it's heartbreaking, and we're all watching it very closely. Just as a reminder, we don't have any restaurants or any team members or franchisees in the Ukraine or Russia at this time, and we don't have any development plans for any of these markets as well. Just our hearts go out to all of those who have been affected. As of the end of last year, we had 201 IHOP and Applebee's restaurants and 21 ghost kitchen locations in 20 different countries and U.S. territories. These restaurants and our network of franchisees, well, they're supported by a diverse and highly talented team located in the U.S. and many of our international markets, including Canada, Mexico, and the Middle East. As you can see, ours is a prioritized portfolio of geographies that are reflected in four core markets. These core markets represent 85% of our total restaurant count and 90% of our total system sales. First, Mexico. Mexico represents 43% of our units and 37% of total sales. Next, we have Canada, representing 20% of international restaurant count and 19% of system sales. Our third core market is the Middle East, with 15% of the international unit count and 19% of sales. Then lastly, we have Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, which represents 7% of the restaurant count, but 15% of our overall system sales. Now, IHOP and Applebee's are either the number one or number two American family dining or casual dining brand in each of these four countries. We have successfully offered local consumers a taste of Americana, which, by the way, they crave, while adapting our menus to meet their taste preferences, so they ultimately become loyal customers. While this may seem like a decent accomplishment, it's not. It doesn't even scratch the surface of what's possible. We know these core markets are under-penetrated, and that we need to expand access to both brands with new restaurants. We firmly believe there's plenty of juice left in these markets, and we plan on leveraging our base to build the international business going forward. Using the same growth framework you've seen today, the internationals division is to grow revenue at a compounded annual growth rate of about 25%. Our strategy is primarily focused on expanding our footprint using traditional and nontraditional facilities while driving comp sales via investments and innovation. We aim to drive additional revenue without adding much incremental G&A because our infrastructure is already in place. From a marginal perspective, international growth remains a very attractive option. There are four key critical elements that will enable us to achieve our growth objective. First, we're taking a new approach to traditional brick-and-mortar restaurant development. Second, we're embracing ghost kitchens. The final two enablers, well, they involve strategic investments on our part. As we've been saying, 2022 is an investment year. Internationally, we're allocating our resources to deepening relationships with franchisees and consumers to deliver a differentiated experience, one that is second to none. We're also making targeted investments to ensure that we are relentlessly committed and focused on innovation across multiple consumer touch points. We're confident these investments will pay off in 2023 and beyond. Now let me share with you more on how each of these four elements contribute to our growth plan. We've been thinking about traditional development differently. Right? We're now focused and strategic, but we haven't always been that way in the past. Right? We're making sure that we're not being opportunistic and flag planting. We're being intentional and disciplined, right? We don't add any new markets until we stand up and grow to scale healthy brands in our existing markets. We conducted a headroom analysis on the potential of our core markets. What we learned is that we could achieve our growth objectives by expanding with existing and new franchisees in our current core markets. Accordingly, we plan to add between 50-60 new restaurants and 40-50 ghost kitchens per year over the next 5 years by focusing on our core markets of Mexico, Canada, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. There's no need to add new geographies where, quite honestly, the response to our brands is unknown. The markets we're in today, they have significant upside. We just need to make sure we realize their full potential before expanding to new geographies. Now, we haven't just been creating the strategy over the last year or so. We've actually delivered some wins. I'm happy to share that we have great new franchisees that have joined Dine Brands. We entered into new groundbreaker agreements consistent with our strategy for new restaurants in the UAE, Egypt, Canada, and the English-speaking Caribbean. These new agreements represent 32 new restaurant commitments for future growth over the next few years. There's more on the way. Traditional restaurants, they'll always be our lifeline, but we wanna complement our brick-and-mortar development by leaning heavily into ghost kitchens. Ghost kitchens internationally are well established. They offer a low cost, low risk vehicle to make our brands available to consumers in markets and trade areas where we currently do not have an international presence. Ghost kitchens allow IHOP and Applebee's to support high delivery trade areas as well as untapped markets where the economics may not support a traditional restaurant. We anticipate adding, again, on average, 50 new ghost kitchen restaurants over the next five years, generating significant incremental sales and profits for the international business. We're taking an entrepreneurial approach by expanding in core and non-core markets. Adding ghost kitchens to new geographies, it allows us to assess brand performance with minimal risk and cost while seeding potential new brick-and-mortar markets in the future. One of the distinct advantages Dine Brands offers investors is the existence of two brands whose relative strengths, well, they complement each other nicely in terms of day parts. From the outset, right, our vision was to create a ghost kitchen space that could support both brands. We designed a ghost kitchen facility that is around 130 sq ft, so that both IHOP and Applebee's can operate out of the same space with team members who've been cross-trained to deliver our exceptional products. We believe Dine Brands is uniquely positioned among all of our competitors to offer this dual brand model, making us an attractive option to ghost kitchen operators globally. As with our conventional restaurants. We see significant momentum and early wins with our ghost kitchen business. We established relationships with three leading international kitchen operators, Ghost Kitchen Brands in Canada, Kitopi in the Middle East, and foodpanda in Southeast Asia. We opened 20 ghost kitchens across 6 different markets in 2021, and we plan on more than doubling that number this year with many new partnerships, markets, and units to come. Ghost kitchens represent an exciting new frontier and a much needed change to our overall conventional approach to growth. While these are our development goals, we also have sales goals, and we plan on having a very strong 2022, and then we plan on growing on average about 2% comp sales every year on average over the next 5 years. We'll do this by allocating additional marketing dollars. We'll also focus on deepening relationships and a commitment to innovation. Now let me dig into each of these areas. First, deepening our relationships. We're making critical investments to obtain consumer and market insights in Mexico and the Middle East to better understand our strengths and opportunities relative to our opponents, to our competitors. We're adding resources to collect data and build our own insights to drive brand relevancy. When we enter new trade areas, we've set aside funds to co-invest with franchisees, so we double down on local marketing efforts to increase brand awareness and drive trial. By the way, just as we need to serve our guests, we also need to serve our franchisees if we're going to drive scale. We know to be successful in a market that's not up to scale, you need franchisees with common goals and a shared focus on how we can grow together. To do this, we'll emphasize more frequent interaction and increase our levels of support to better understand their challenges and their future plans. This will allow us to strategize how we can work together to expand our footprint. Finally, we're making smart investments that enhance the guest experience through a blend of established and new innovative solutions so guests can enjoy our brands on an international scale. Our investments in innovation are focused on the following three areas. First, technology. There's a need for a modernized point of sale platform to support future growth. We'll be rolling out a new POS system later this year. We'll also launch a new website and app for guest ordering. These investments will allow us to consolidate technologies and enhance our CRM capabilities while giving us better insights into restaurant-level profitability, cost savings, and traffic drivers. Second, culinary. We are innovating our menu and expanding our culinary teams to create new offerings that better meet the expectations of our international guests. Third, new restaurant prototypes. We're testing a new dual brand restaurant in late 2022 to assess the viability of operating both brands under one roof, utilizing the same kitchen infrastructure and resources while preserving brand identity. We're constantly learning, innovating, and adapting with technology, culinary, and restaurant design to better engage with our guests and provide them with the experiences they expect when they visit us. Now, our new international playbook is discipline, and it leverages great insights on how we grow in each of our core international markets. We're committed to making targeted investments to ignite and support our growth and produce significant returns for Dine Brands and our franchisees. We see an opportunity to grow, especially in our core markets. Those markets have driven strong performance in the past, and we know there's plenty of opportunities to expand our existing footprint. We have a clear plan for growth and one that is grounded in reality and already producing results. That's why we believe we will seize the incredible opportunities in front of us. Thank you. Well done. Thank you, Tony. As you can see, we're leaning into international in a big way. Tony has really made his mark in the last two years, not only in managing with our franchisees who were struggling during the past two years, but really helping to craft a strategy focused around these four key markets and leveraging ghost kitchens to drive our growth. We're planning for much more growth internationally than we have in the past. It's time for Vance to help put a bow around all of this and tie all the financials together. Vance joined us after spending the last 20 years in both investment banking and also building high-growth consumer and healthcare companies. He's a high-impact CFO. That's why we asked him to join us, because he's got a track record of driving both innovation but also focusing on execution and delivery. That's exactly the profile we need as we pivot from the defense of the last two years to innovation and accelerating our growth. Vance, bring us home. Thank you. Thank you, John. You know, I feel like you've all seen my section already, so I don't know if I have to deliver this, but Good afternoon, everyone. We're very excited about our business prospects, and we have a unique opportunity to accelerate the growth at Dine going forward. Now it's my intent to share with you today how our plans and investments in 2022 will translate into financial objectives and value for our shareholders. Today I have four key topic areas that we'll cover. First, I will share with you our investment highlights and our commitments to create shareholder value. Second, I'll review our historical business and financial performance and to help you understand the benefits of our highly franchised business model and how we have recovered from the pandemic. Third, I'll provide details on our longer term financial projections and as a result of the investments that we're making in 2022, and the capital allocation strategy. Finally, I'll tie our growth plan together with what's in it for the investors, which is a compelling total shareholder return. We have a scalable platform with two iconic brands that are very well-positioned to take advantage of the restaurant renaissance that John has been talking about. The pandemic has impacted the competitive landscape, removing approximately 10% of the casual dining restaurants, which presents an opportunity for us to gain share. The pandemic has also accelerated a need for technology and those with scale and capital like Dine are best positioned to win. We have very specific plans in place to grow our revenue, our EBITDA, and our EPS through the key strategic investments that we're making today. Additionally, compared to our casual dining peers, we're more highly levered—I mean, franchised at 98%, which means we generate higher EBITDA margin and we have higher cash flow conversion than the rest of them. Now, this model allows us to return a significant amount of capital back to our shareholders and then very strong total shareholder return in the next five years as a result of the five-year plans that we laid out for you today. The key to creating incremental value for our stakeholders, including our shareholders, is to generate consistent long-term organic growth. We accomplish that by investing prudently in high return projects and initiatives. In our case, we're currently focused on technology, on franchisee support, on development and new revenue channels. Now, because we have a very high operating leverage, we can fund these investments with our self-generated cash flow. However, a key reminder is that we're also committed to returning capital to shareholders. Now, we've had a strong recovery from the pandemic. The total consolidated revenues have grown at a CAGR of 5% since 2017, and we have recovered close to 100% of pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2021 despite the restaurant closures during COVID and the Applebee's store optimization program that John C. had talked about earlier. Our adjusted EBITDA has also recovered approximately 92% of 2019 level and growing at a CAGR of 3% since 2017. Because of our asset-light model and our low CapEx requirements, we continue to have very high quality adjusted EBITDA. As an example, our 2021 CapEx is only 7% of our adjusted EBITDA in line with our 2019 level. Roughly half of that $16.8 million in CapEx in 2021 was related to investments in strategic IT initiatives. Adjusted free cash flow has grown at a 32% CAGR to approximately $191 million in 2021. This is well above the 2019 levels. Now, partially due to the repayment of the franchisee assistance program during the pandemic, which had a $30 million benefit on cash flow for the year. As I mentioned earlier, one of the key benefits of our asset-light model is our high operating leverage. We generate higher adjusted EBITDA margins versus the rest of our CDR peers. Another benefit of the model is that we have less exposure to commodity and labor cost fluctuations versus brands that own and operate their own stores, their own restaurants. That insulation has allowed us to take a longer term view in how we built our brands and invest in the infrastructure on behalf of our franchisees to better serve our guests. As you can see with the chart on the left, consensus estimate for 2022 adjusted EBITDA margin shows Dine in line with other highly franchised concepts, and 14% above the fast casual group, and approximately 15% above the CDR peers, which are primarily company operated and asset heavy. Additionally, our free cash flow conversion is significantly higher than company operated peers and more in line with our casual, with our highly franchised peers. Now moving forward, here's a recap of our 2022 financial guidance, which we issued last week in conjunction with our Q4 earnings release. As a reminder, 2022 is an investment year for us. Our guidance reflects the upfront costs associated with the incremental investments in G&A and CapEx to unlock and support the sustainable growth for the next five years. Dine has a strong track record of diligently managing our G&A. Even with the planned increase in G&A in 2022, our cash G&A would only increase by approximately 2% CAGR since 2017. Why are we investing in G&A? It's to build the people capacity that we need to execute the growth plans that we have laid out for you today. As you can see on the G&A bridge from 2021 to 2022, the higher performance compensation from last year will be offset by the critical positions and spend that we cut during COVID. Which will bring us back to par, right? Beyond that, we're increasing G&A in the areas of technology initiatives, in franchisee support and unit development. The largest component of our G&A investments is in technology, okay, which is primarily tied to new hires in IT to implement and support our CapEx projects. There is a small portion of our technology spend that's non-recurring once projects are completed. Regarding franchisee support, this relates to operations headcount to support unit development growth, as well as adding talent to our business analytics, consumer insights, and marketing teams. We expect these growth investments to deliver growth in revenue, in EBITDA and EPS over the next five years, which I'll go through in a few slides. In conjunction with planned increase in G&A, we also have CapEx investment projects in 2022. Historically, our CapEx requirements have been lower than our peers, both in terms of CapEx as a% of revenue and also as a% of EBITDA. Frankly, they have been a bit too low. By allocating a modest portion of our cash flow to high return projects in 2022, we can accelerate the growth potential for our brands. CapEx projects are mostly related to design and the implementation of various technology initiatives that we have planned for the year. We broke out the 2022 CapEx plan by three buckets. The first bucket is projects that can help us drive growth. The second bucket is projects that can help us support the growth once we achieved it. The third bucket is projects that are maintenance related. A little more than half of our 2022 CapEx spend is gonna be in the first bucket. Includes a lot of the initiatives that Justin mentioned in his video earlier today. These investments will allow us to have more targeted campaigns, marketing campaigns, and loyalty programs for customer acquisition and guest retention. They will improve our guest experience, including ordering, pickups, dining, paying, and increase the lifetime value of each one of our guests. The second bucket is for projects that we need to support the growth, right? They help with compliance, reporting, analytics, training, enterprise planning, just to make sure we have the foundation in place to support our brands and our franchisees as we grow. Growth costs money, right? The people we're hiring and the projects that we're implementing will set the stage for accelerated growth, realizing attractive return over time. We're gonna monitor the progress of our growth initiatives very closely. We'll make appropriate adjustments to dial back the infrastructure costs as necessary. Now, these are relatively low risk investments that will help with growth, protect our downside, and make a stronger platform in the long run. For those of you that are new to Dine, I wanna highlight our diversified revenue streams and the general trajectory of these revenue streams over the longer term. The core of the business is our franchise revenue, which consists of royalties, franchise fees, and advertising. That represents approximately 70% of our total revenues. For us, advertising is a pass-through cost for us. The sizable advertising dollars that we have available to spend for our brands speak to one of the scale advantages that we have over some of our smaller peers. For Applebee's, we currently generate revenues from also from 69 company-owned restaurants. We acquired these restaurants from a distressed franchisee back in December of 2018. At the time, these restaurants were some of our lowest performing restaurants, and now they're currently the third ranked portfolio in our system. While our strategy is to remain asset light, we feel like this is a testament to the strength of our team and our operational capabilities. IHOP has three unique revenue streams that I wanna point out, which are dry mix, rental, and financing income. Now, we earn a spread on our proprietary pancake mix, the leases that we sublet to our franchisees, and equipment that we have financed on behalf of our franchisees. Specifically, the rental and financing income are tied to our legacy IHOP business model. The rental and financing income are leases that will wind down over time, which is why the long term trajectory of these revenue streams will decline. As you have heard from the team today, we're optimistic on the growth of the brands and have plans to grow our royalty streams at a faster pace and generate margin expansion over time. Here's the money slide. This is our five-year projected revenue goal. This is without advertising revenue, which is a flow through line for us. You have heard from the brand presidents today on their plans to hit this target. The model drivers for the revenue growth are the following three things. First, comps. Assuming no further disruption from the pandemic, we're aiming for both brands to generate comps of approximately 2% a year as a run rate in a normal inflationary environment. Second is development. Over 1,000 net new restaurants globally, including ghost kitchens to be built over the next 5 years. Approximately 70% will be traditional restaurants in various formats, and 30% will be ghost kitchens. Third is new revenue channels such as virtual brands to add approximately another 1% of revenue growth. There's upside to our plan as we build incremental virtual brands to further leverage our global footprint and restaurant capacity for different day parts. Combined, we're targeting 4%-5% CAGR in revenue growth over the next 5 years to $750 million by 2026 without advertising revenue. Now here's a summary of the rest of our financial goals over the next 5 years. We just discussed the revenue drivers on the prior slide, but including advertising, we have a goal of achieving $1.1 billion by 2026. We expect approximately 60%-65% of the incremental revenue to flow through to our segment profit on average. This will drive EBITDA from $253 million in 2021 to $350 million plus in 5 years, with margins expanding from 40%-41% to approximately 47%. Because of our strong cash flow conversion, we anticipate our free cash flow to hit over $225 million by 2026. As for EPS, our goal is to achieve a high teens growth rate from $6.54 a share to over $14.50 a share through a combination of profit growth and share buybacks over time. What happens to our G&A post 2022? You know, as we talked about before, 2022 is the foundational year that will set us up for longer term growth without another step function increase thereafter. As we discussed, we have a very high operating leverage model that generates a lot of cash. All the investments that we've talked about today are being funded by our cash flow. We also know that capital return has been and will always be a key part of our capital allocation strategy. The priorities for us are, one, investments in the business and technology and other growth initiatives. Two is debt management, and also making sure that we maintain financial flexibility to address any remaining uncertainty from the pandemic, from the war, from inflation, from labor and supply chain issues, all these things going on in the world right now. Third is returning capital to shareholders. Last is we'll continue to explore opportunities to leverage Dine's scale, our national franchisee footprint, and our shared services platform to generate revenue and cost synergies through corporate development initiatives, and acquisitions. We have been and will always continue to be very disciplined with this approach. Let's start with investing in the company. You know, as I had mentioned, 2022 is projected to be higher than historical levels in CapEx because of the key investments for growth. After 2022, we do expect CapEx to moderate to a more normalized level to approximately $20 million a year, given our asset-light business model. The core part of our capital plan is to maintain a strong balance sheet, so cash gets factored into our net leverage calculation, as you know, and we're currently at 3.86 times the lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2015. While we feel comfortable operating at higher leverage levels if needed, we're currently where we should be in terms of net leverage given the current environment, right? As shown on this slide, we're currently more levered than our CDR peers because of our asset-light model, but we're less levered than our highly franchised peers, even though we have a very similar business model. Going forward, our target net leverage is 4-4.5 times, and as we balance our cash between capital returns and net leverage levels. In Q4 of 2021, we announced a reinstatement of our dividends at $0.40 a share, and we noted that was a starting point for us to grow from. Now in Q1 of 2022, we announced an increase, a 15% increase of the quarterly dividend to $0.46 a share, which is currently a 2.5% dividend yield. This is an attractive dividend yield relative to our peers, and we have plans to gradually further increase our dividends over time. We also recently announced a new $250 million share repurchase authorization. We do believe that we're undervalued, and we're trading at a significant discount to our peers, and we will use the share repurchases as a key part of our overall strategy to increase shareholder value over time. As of Tuesday, we have repurchased 392,000 shares back at $69 a share for a total of $27 million since we reinstated the current repurchase program back in November 2021. The successful execution of our strategy will drive our projected annual shareholder return. When combined with adjusted EPS growth in the high teens and attractive dividend yield, our current plan provides for a compelling total shareholder return. With that, I'll turn the presentation back to John. Thank you. We're gonna move to about 30 minutes of Q&A, and we're gonna set up some chairs behind me, and the team will join. While we're doing Q&A, we will also start to prepare a delicious Applebee's lunch for you that John will explain and invite you to enjoy that when we finish Q&A, and then we'll be here during that as well. I'm gonna invite up the leadership team while we're setting up our chairs. For those in the room, we'll have a mic, somebody with a mic on both sides of the room. Before you ask your question, please wait for the mic. I'll do my best to remind you to wait for the mic or to say your question again if you start to speak. If you are watching us on the broadcast, you can enter your question into the chat box, and Ken Diptee, who is our leader of IR, will share those questions with us on your behalf from the room as well. Okay? Why don't we have the team join us? All right. The light is a little bit bright, so I can't totally see. Yep. Lauren, we're going over here. Go ahead with the questions. Good afternoon. Jeff Bernstein from Barclays. Thank you very much for the presentation this morning. Two related questions related to franchising. The first one being in the U.S. Well, first of all, a contrast between your competitors who don't typically franchise in casual dining, but even within your systems, you have 30 franchisees on one system, you have 270 in the other. I'm just wondering how you think about that, whether one migrates towards the other. Presumably, there's benefits to one versus the other, so just wondering how you think about that. My follow-up question is just on international and the franchise system. International hasn't really been much of a growth vehicle for you, but seemingly it's a huge opportunity. I'm just wondering how you think about the franchise partnerships internationally, whether you are just talking about master franchisees or how you think about it country by country, 'cause that would seem like that's the big growth opportunity? All right. Thanks, Jeff. I'll take it at a high level, and I will ask each of the business unit leaders to talk about the dynamic of their franchise group. Yeah, 30 Applebee's franchisees has its benefits, which are you can get 30 franchisees in a room, and you can align on strategy, and you can have a debate like that. They also have deeper resources. They, you know, are consistently financially sound. One of the benefits that John enjoys is he can move the brand forward with 30 partners. There's no good or bad model there, right? The alternative model is Jay's model, right? Where he's got 270 franchisees that range from some franchisees that look like large Applebee's owners and others that are, like we heard in our video, someone who owns 4. You know, we love that as well because the energy and commitment you get from somebody who owns 4 Applebee's, it's 4 IHOPs, it's their family business. You know, that's an incredible motivating factor that keeps them very close to their businesses, right? In terms of do we think one model is better than the other? No. Do we think we want one to look like the other? No. They're uniquely Applebee's, and they're uniquely IHOP, and you know, we're proud of both. Would you like to add anything? Yeah. Jeff, I think it's a terrific question. I love the Applebee's business model. We operate in very different categories. Think about casual dining. It's 205,000 restaurants dominated by independent players. The top 20 brands account for about 10% of the units, probably 50% of the dollars. John's right. That group, Greg included, of 31 partners, we gather frequently. We talk all the time. Those are really highly strategic discussions around investments, return on investments. In particular, when I think about the last two years, we're just really agile and nimble, and we can move quickly, which is one of the benefits of that model. I do believe scale in that instance within their entities allows them to attract and retain talent and to share best practices and deploy those best practices pretty quickly. I like the model, but keep in mind that we operate in a very different category than Jay. Yeah. It's interesting. That's like a high school debate team question, you know? Which is better? 'Cause I could argue either side. There's pros and cons of both styles. I love the mix of our franchisees. We do have those very large strategic franchisees, and they serve on all of our councils and committees and such. But we also have this entrepreneurial spirit of an individual franchisee that started as a dishwasher, and there's something powerful about that in your culture. About hey, I can you know even if you work for one of the larger franchisees, they see all these other franchisees and understand that I could own a franchise one day. I could do this. There's an American Dream thing there that is powerful for the culture of the business and how they work. That transitions over time too, right? You have some people that wanna keep growing, some people wanna grow fast. It's no different than people managing a portfolio, right? What's your risk tolerance? How quick do you wanna grow, et cetera. There's a lot of growth opportunities, obviously, in the IHOP business, and I think that you can grow faster sometimes when you have more people, right? You get 270 franchisees. If 75 of them open one restaurant a year, I got 75 new restaurants real quick, right? There are pros and cons either way. When it comes to international, you know, yes, I'm new, Jeff, Tony's new, and it was an opportunity for us to take a fresh look at the opportunity. When we looked at our relatively small footprint versus the opportunity, we think it's time to lean in, but do it in a focused way. Clearly, Tony, we're doing that. You want to speak to the models we're looking at, masters and things like that? Yeah. I mean, I think whether it's a single franchisee model or a master franchisee model, the important thing is to match the model to the market, right? Every market has a unique set of circumstances that would dictate one model over another. For example, I mentioned the new agreement that we have in the English-speaking Caribbean. That happens to be a master franchisee model. We'll build in certain safeguards that protect us, that give us the control that we need in the particular market, but you know, we're somewhat agnostic when we look into a new market, and we're gonna let the circumstances and the conditions of that market dictate which model we use going in. With that said, our preference is to have more control rather than less control, so we'll be very judicious in using the master franchising model. Hey, Jeff, May I make one more point? I think this is important for both brands. Franchisees on the outside looking in want into these brands right now, and we're in a position where we can be very selective. You know, we brought in Jim Long, Apple Mountain, into Utah, I think it was 4 years ago, one of our newer franchisees. He was our number one ranked franchisee in the system and loves the fact that he chose to invest in Applebee's 4 years ago. There's big demand right now for both Applebee's and IHOP in the market. Thanks. Jake Bartlett from Truist Securities. My question is on the long-term growth algorithm, and I just wanna make sure I understand the components. Two percent same-store sales, and I think 1% from virtual brands, but that would be part of same-store sales, just to kind of clarify. We're really looking for 3%. I wanted to understand how the development, you know, 30% coming from ghost kitchens, are those stores counted as units, you know, as we see them, you know, your unit count is one question, but how do we think about the volumes coming from a ghost kitchen versus a traditional store, just as we kind of build up that? I don't know if I'm on. You're on. Yeah. The ghost kitchens are not in our current count right now. Going forward, when we have more volume, we will disclose that separately. They don't. It'll mess up our AUV and restaurant count, et cetera. In terms of economics, I think, you know, Scott, let me know if I'm wrong, but a typical ghost kitchen restaurant volume is probably half to less, a little bit less than half of a traditional brick-and-mortar. Well, I think. In terms of. I think it varies. At Applebee's, we have two ghost kitchens open, both in Philly. We're opening our third in Miami. With a $125,000 investment, it's not inconceivable that you could have a $1 million revenue asset on a $125,000 investment. But there's gonna be a lot of variability depending upon location, concentration of demographic. We just don't have enough on the ground right now. We're accelerating. Yeah, I mean, just to add, I've got 21 ghost kitchens, and we're definitely in a test and learn phase, so it's probably a little early to talk about bottom line contribution from the ghost kitchens. What we have learned, we've learned a few things. One. By the way, most of the restaurants at the ghost kitchens that we've opened up, 20 of them opened up in last year, and most of those opened up in Q4, so it's relatively new. What we have learned is that the sales from the earlier units continue to grow, and they continue to grow despite adding new ghost kitchen units into the marketplace. We've learned that at the point that we talked about seeding markets, one of the reasons we're able to attract a new brick-and-mortar franchisee into UAE is because of the success that we've had with our ghost kitchens. We were able to attract that new franchisee. Finally, we've learned that there's an opportunity to potentially charge higher royalty with respect to those ghost kitchen units. The key to success is marketing ourselves and merchandising ourselves on the delivery apps, right? Because that's where Applebee's and IHOP will show up. They're gonna show up via the delivery apps. The investments we're making in our CRM and our technology to do that and the building back of some marketing resources that we lost during COVID are all to help fuel the ghost kitchen growth. Thank you. Jake, I think, Vance, we're not incorporating into our unit projections ghost kitchens because of the variability in that volume, right? There will be a significant component of our growth from that. As an example, I anticipate a balanced mix of traditional and ghost this year from Applebee's. Sir. Yeah. I have two questions. Gregory Francfort from Guggenheim. Scott, first, you talked about trading customers on the third-party apps back to your channels. Can you maybe talk about how you're gonna do that? Then my other question was for Vance. Your projections include a 2% baseline comp in a normal inflationary environment. It feels like it's gonna be a pretty heavy inflationary environment going forward. Like, why not go out with something a little bit more aggressive just under that assumption, given what we're seeing right now? Just the thought process through that. Thanks. Yeah. Let's start with Scott and I know we're gonna conclude with Jay. Yep. On that one. I'd say the questions around trading a third-party delivery customer into your own channels, you know, driving them into Applebee's or ihop.com. Two components. One is probably marketing, the second is technology. For marketing, it's just there's a big awareness play. We got a big benefit from COVID, but you'd be surprised when we do the research, the gap between the awareness of the core brand with their to-go offerings. Most consumers, they haven't historically thought about it in their consideration, so we need to remind them. There's a number of. We think about marketing it. It's about building awareness. There's also kind of more street traditional tactics. It's as easy as putting a bag stuffer in the bag with an incentive that said to a DSP customer, say, "Hey, next time, get X off when you come to our channel." That's one piece. On the technology side, you have to give a reason to the guest to come to your channel. DSPs have made it very easy to create a sticky customer because it's a, it's an app, I've downloaded it. I've got all my account information saved, it's got my payment, and it's got a lot of options, et cetera. I think IHOP Loyalty is a great example about how we're trading guests into the ecosystem. Because now I have an incentive to go to IHOP where I'll earn points that I can't otherwise earn on the DSPs. There's a number of different features and initiatives that kind of on the longer-term roadmap to do more of that. that really is the key point, right? It's the loyalty program and how that's gonna- Which is exactly the point I was gonna make, because I'll give you an example. One of the things we talked about, You Join Now, we're inviting our kind of our online email club people that we've had forever. They're the first people we're targeting to convert them to the new program. Well, if they convert and join now, they're a founding member. The benefit of being a founding member, you get free delivery for life if you order through our channel. There's a prime example. If they're a member of the loyalty program, we know them, we know their phone number, we know their email address, and we can market to them in a way that we can't if they're exclusively ordering via the third parties. On the inflation point, look, I think first of all, our franchisees control menu pricing, so it's not us deciding that. You know, I think that the way we've been very disciplined, our franchisees have been very disciplined with how they control their menu pricing. It's a way to gain share at this point. When everyone else is raising, they're being disciplined and they're gaining market share as a result. As far as our projections going forward, you know, obviously, we're not economists. I'm not gonna sort of claim where I think inflation will be. If it turns out that there is more than what's in our model, then that's upside for our plan. Thank you. Brian Mullan at Deutsche Bank. Thanks for everything today. You're making significant investments into the platform. You've discussed the benefits of scale. With that in mind, can you just give us your current thinking on M&A and your potential willingness to grow via that avenue? I know it's not something you've discussed today, but you have discussed it in the past. You know, and if it is something you're still interested in, maybe could you discuss the parameters around what you look at? Does it need to be full service? Does it need to be franchised, and how you think about that? Sure. I'll take it from a high level, and then I'll ask Scott to talk about some of the parameters that we're looking at. We get opportunities that come to us all the time. The phone rings, and we take a look at them. We also are diligent, and one of the reasons why we elevated Scott to the enterprise level is also being diligent about looking at what's out there so that we're aware of opportunities. Whether it's inbound or we see something, we're taking a diligent approach to looking at those opportunities. There's nothing on the table right now that we're active in, but we never say never. When we do look at something, you know, our screens, Scott, you can share some of the way we look at that. Without being too specific, you know, ultimately if we were to do an acquisition, we look to change the growth profile, right? We would wanna find something that has a growth profile that we find interesting and that it's not only about acquiring that growth, but also that we're able to add value to, right? There has to be a level of synergies there, either from the revenue or cost side for us to justify the investment. Category, you know, relatively agnostic. Obviously don't want to compete with our core brands, but we're open and would be looking at various concepts, again, that would kind of be able to fit a certain growth profile. I think from the franchising standpoint, you know, it's hard to find, you know, fully franchised concepts outside of our own, right? We are not looking to change the model. We wanna remain highly asset light. That may require us to, if we were to acquire a concept, refranchise, or grow in a franchised way from a corporate base. You know, that would be something we assess, but we wouldn't be looking to change the overall profile of the company. From my perspective, you know, we evaluate each internal or external projects using opportunity costs and return on capital requirements, right? Look, currently, you know, look at the plans that we laid out for you today, they're just lower hanging fruits right now. Internal organic projects that we're working on that can get us higher return, lower risk. These are the top projects that we're tackling right now, and we think ultimately we can get investors the attractive total shareholder returns that we want, that we sign up for. Great. Hi, Michael Halen, Bloomberg Intelligence. I have two questions. They may both get rejected, pun intended with the BIG EAST tournament and ACC tournament here today. The first one I want to build on Jake's question, right? With more unit development coming from some of these smaller format stores, is there any other targets between now and 2026 you can share with us, whether it be system-wide sales growth or square footage growth that might help us model this out? The other thing is, you know, if there's any other data points in terms of unit economics that you haven't already shared, that you'd be willing to give us, that would be a big help. Thanks. Let's start with Vance on what we can share. Well, I would say that of the call it $200 million of incremental revenue growth that we shared with you guys, half of that is from IHOP, 30% of that is from Applebee's, and 20% of that is from international, just broad buckets. I don't think we have shared unit economics, specific unit economics in the past publicly, so I don't know if there's much I can say at this point on that other than the fact that John and Jake both talked about in terms of the health of the franchisees and what you heard from Greg and Carl in the video earlier. John's leaning in, but you're gonna be- Careful and judicious in what you say. John's always coaching me on that point. Unit economics, restaurant level economics. I would just say moving from $2.2 million AUVs to $2.6 million AUVs and leveraging scale from both a labor and a food perspective probably tell you all you need to know about franchisee financial health. It is. You know, if I were to pull Greg back up here, it is substantially better than it's been at any point in the last five years, and their willingness to invest is very high, and their confidence in our future is very high. When I say we're poised for growth, a lot of that comes right back to the unit. It doesn't work well if unit level economics aren't working. I think from the IHOP standpoint, you know, I would just say our franchisees probably don't have a record year going on last year like John, but they're coming back very nicely from this, and so is their profitability. You know, when you think about the opportunities I talked about with virtual brands, that's all incremental sales and profits for franchisees. They're really excited about what that's gonna do to their four-wall profit. Ken, you've got some questions from the chat? Yes. Hold on one sec. Can we turn up Ken's mic? Regarding 2022 EBITDA guidance, what are the embedded cost assumptions for IHOP and Applebee's, and what does that assume for off-premise sales versus dine-in sales? We haven't guided to that level of details. I think we talked about G&A as a whole. As you can think about going forward, I mentioned IHOP is, you know, half of our growth is from IHOP, so a bigger portion of the G&A is from IHOP. Respectively, sort of versus the growth plan that I mentioned earlier. I think that's probably a broader rule of thumb that we can use, but we haven't guided on that specifically. Ken, is that the only question? Fear always could make up the question also. Ken, just one added point, with respect to kind of the off-premise growth and the on-premise growth. We moved from $6,000 to kind of almost $14,000 per restaurant per week if we look at Q4 of 2019 versus Q4 of 2021. We genuinely expect that to be a sticky component of our business, and we love it, and our guests love it. Think of that, then the dine-in business coming back, and that'll give you some perspective on how we view that on-premise, off-premise mix. They're both gonna be growth engines for us. Hey. Hello? Okay. Hi, it's Eric Gonzalez from KeyBanc. You mentioned about 10%-12% independent restaurant closures. I'm wondering if you're factoring in the replacement cycle and what you're really seeing out in the field right now in terms of, you know, independents coming back, or is this more about the conversion opportunities that you're seeing a lot of those independents being replaced by large chains such as Applebee's and IHOP? Yeah, Eric, I wouldn't, you know, on the Applebee's front, I wouldn't comment on independents versus chains other than to say casual dining, 11% contraction in units throughout the pandemic. It's gonna be fluid. It'll be interesting to see. There'll be winners and losers, and draw your own conclusions on that front. There will be opportunities. Certainly, there's a lot of white space out there just via our own planned contraction. Given the category contraction, there's gonna be even more. Conversions will be a part of that. We just opened our most recent restaurant last week, for those of you here in New York, many of you are, in the Bronx, Riverdale, Roy Raeburn, Zane Tankel. It wasn't a traditional box. It wasn't freestanding. It's an end cap, 4,000 sq ft. It's got actually a walk-up pickup window. It's a beautiful restaurant. would encourage you to see it. You'll see more of that kind of non-traditional application of finding a new restaurant opportunity in this space. Maybe if I can throw another one in there on innovation. Seems like it's been a big part of the story, but so is also streamlining and simplification. You talked a lot about how Applebee's went from 160 to 100. I'm wondering if we could think about or tell us where that is today and how you're balancing the innovation versus keeping that menu lean. Then maybe a similar question for IHOP, if you could talk about the journey there from when things were first shut down, and where you're balancing innovation versus streamlining. Eric, on the Applebee's front, we, you know, the brands tend to, over decades, proliferate. Greg talked about it. It would've taken a long time to get to 100. We're kind of right there right now. We added a few products with Cosmic Wings, but a very single digit small number. Then Kevin Carroll, our Chief Operations Officer, is our czar for discipline. When we add products, we will have the discipline to remove products based upon all the data that we have. So we have no intention of scaling back up to anything north of 110 menu items. That 100 to 110 allows a. That's the sweet spot in terms of execution and still allowing for occasional innovation. That's the key point. I'll jump in before Jay comes in. As I've been visiting restaurants across the country, one of the questions I ask every general manager and every kitchen manager is, "We've reduced our menus, whether it's IHOP or Applebee's, by about a third. What are you missing? What's the impact? What are guests asking for?" I literally get the same answer every time, which is our kitchens have never been more efficient. They've never been able to manage food waste as well as they can, and that their guests, we did it obviously using data and metrics. We pulled out the right items. Guests aren't asking for anything to come back. They say to us, "Don't change a thing." With the exception of knowing both brands have a strategy of rotating through innovations and LTOs along the way. Ditto. The only thing I would add to that is that you heard me talk about one of the things we do need to do is if you wanna become an all-day breakfast menu that's driving traffic and more than just breakfast, we've got to expand some of that non-breakfast menu. That doesn't necessarily mean your count has to go up, but it means you've got to be disciplined. I equate it a little like a water balloon, right? It's the same amount of water in there, but you're gonna move it in different places. You're gonna move those quantity of menu items around a little bit to achieve strategic traffic. I think that's the important thing, is how do you become more contemporary with your menu, not lose all the great breakfast things you have, but we have so many things at breakfast, it can probably even go back a little more to open up some space for some other things that help us at other day parts. I saw the mic go this direction. Okay. Hey. Thank you. Nick Setyan from Wedbush. You know, the guidance is obviously very, I mean, it's incredibly good guidance, right? I mean, in terms of your long-term guidance here. When I think about kind of the trajectory from 2022 to 2023 and across all the years through 2026, should we think about it in a pretty consistent way? You know, 2023, we're talking about $8+ in EPS. You know, we talk in terms of five years on average, so that we don't get into specifics each year, it's consistent. I think that's how the model works. Now, if new projects come up that generates high returns, it's not like we won't take it. Yeah, I think we don't foresee anything to disrupt sort of the gradual flow. Also, I would say that this is not guidance. It's our long-term goals. Guidance was for 2022 calendar year, more of a technical. I did notice that John didn't step in to coach you, Vance. No answer to that, but that's a great answer. Just as a follow-up, you know, obviously, even if you do, you know, some percentage of what you say you're gonna do, your stock's gonna be much, much higher. Given the cash that you have on your balance sheet, why not do, like, an accelerated repurchase plan now before your stock goes up a lot? Yeah. You know, our cash is higher than historical levels right now. You know, we announced a new dividend. We announced a new repurchase program. We're actively exploring different ways to hit that total shareholder return, you know, however way we do it. The you know, the stock valuation will determine, you know, the split between the dividends and buybacks, right? If the shares are undervalued, traded at a discount, I think that we'll lean heavier on buybacks. If not, we'll lean heavier on dividends. It's that total shareholder return that we're going after. We're gonna go here, and then we'll go to this side again. Jeff Bernstein from Barclays. Vance, just wanted to follow up on the long-term guide. Me? You know, we talk about the mid-single-digit revenues, which seems pretty straightforward with 2% comp and presumably some unit growth. To get to the high single-digit EBITDA growth, which I think you show in a slide going from 41% margin to 47% margin. That's right. The G&A all in from 2021 to 2026 is growing at 6% per year. Not just the cash, the full G&A, including the big jump up that you're doing in 2022. If you're growing revenues at mid-single-digit, you're growing G&A at a higher rate than that. Just trying to figure out conceptually how we're getting this margin expansion and high single-digit EBITDA growth. That's really the only line you guys have to play with there. Right. You know, I think G&A, the 2% CAGR we talked about is cash generative, right? That's the piece that gets factored into our EBITDA. That's the first point I wanna make. If you're looking at total G&A, there's depreciation, stock-based comp, et cetera. That's not part of our EBITDA. The other thing is, there is leverage off of our G&A over time, but one piece of it is what I talked about earlier, which is the declining of rental financing income, but the increase of royalty income, which is a higher flow through rate. That mix change contributes to our EBITDA margin expansion too as well. If I could just follow up. My other question was just the differential you guys see between royalty and marketing fees between the two brands. Seems like IHOP pays a much, a higher royalty fee, a lower marketing fee. Are those negotiated periodically? It would seem like there's an opportunity to presumably raise the marketing contribution that IHOP franchises are paying or raise the royalty that Applebee's are paying. Like, how do you think about those two rates for each brand and where they go over the next few years? Why don't we talk about the marketing fee first and how that works in sort of periods of time. You wanna talk about Applebee's, and then we'll talk about IHOP. Yeah. Jeff, with Applebee's, I didn't put it on the list, but one of the first things that I did in partnership with the board and our franchisees back in 2017 was to declare that their 3.5% advertising contribution was not sufficient. That we were a big brand. We needed to express that brand very visibly. We demonstrated over a six-month timeframe what that overinvestment would lead to very tangibly. Franchisees said, "We're all in." They've been all in at 4.25%. I would use this as a plug with my franchise partners to say, "We may even look at something higher at some point." I wish Greg was in the room so he could smile back at me and say yes. May look. That's a maybe. May. At IHOP, the actual franchise agreement is less than 3.5%. In fact, we go get an amendment done with the franchisees for periods of time to get an agreement to maintain it or go up at that point. We just redid this for additional 5 more years starting this coming January. We're all the way through 2028, I think now with 3.5%. We do have that committed. We won't be going back down on that, which is great news. Now can it go up? Yeah, it could, but we just now got the deal redone at 3.5%. I don't see that going up anytime soon. You know, business conditions could change that. It was business conditions that changed Applebee's at some point when that happened, right? Nothing says that wouldn't happen, but I wouldn't bank on that. I wouldn't put that into your model. We do charge 4.5% royalty, which is a half point more. I don't see that changing right away either, at this point, unless, as Tony said, you know, you start getting into different models, now you may have an opportunity to charge a different royalty rate, et cetera. That's way down the road after you test those kind of things and figure out what that looks like. When you think about it all in, the slight difference between the two royalty rates, both an owner of IHOP and an owner of Applebee's is in for about the same total cost to the brand parent. I think we're out of time, so Ken why don't we finish up with what's on the. You wanna keep going? Good. All right. Ken, we will take another one from the remote. Sure. Great. We've got one more in the room too that I see. Can you provide the domestic unit growth profile for each brand? What was that one more time? One more time. We missed it. Can you provide the domestic unit growth profile for each brand? Sure. Jay, your domestic growth plans. Profile? Domestic growth profile. Profile in numbers or? You know, it's not clear from the question. Meaning like what of my four different kinds are they going to be or? Well, the question is, can you provide the domestic unit growth profile for each brand? Well, unit growth, I mean, if you just look at the numbers that you've got there, I think what does that come out to? Like 400+ restaurants over the course of that time. You know, I said numerous times we're gonna double our historical growth rate, which has been 40-50 restaurants a year. If you double that, you're at 80-100 restaurants, 90, 100 restaurants in that range on new openings. We've also said that right now, that traditional, remember I said we have four different types of vehicles for investors to use. Right now, the majority of those are still gonna be our old traditional type prototype. Probably get more of them that are conversions right now just because it's opportunistic at the moment. We've always had quite a few of those. We'll get probably more conversions of all types, even smaller units. We're getting some folks that are looking at Pizza Huts, fast food restaurants, et cetera, that because we have a small prototype design now, we can now make that into an IHOP as well. I think that mix will keep shifting over time, less of the big 4,000+ sq ft traditional restaurants and more of the non-traditional, more of the smaller prototypes, and then more flip too as we get that matured. With Applebee's, we've conducted a full U.S. market analysis. We know where the sites are, and there are very conservatively at least 250. We know that with precision. We did hire a very talented development leader, Vice President of Development for Applebee's in October, Don Rayburn. We hired him from Brinker. Don is in the process of rebuilding our pipeline. We opened five traditional restaurants last year. We will open more than five this year. In addition, we'll have ghost kitchen units, and then we'll scale from there. Ultimately, we'll achieve or attain net new unit growth from a traditional restaurant perspective next year in 2023. Our objective is to attain 20 net new units on an annual basis as we move forward. Perhaps a greater number, time will tell. We're gonna be aggressive, and we'll do so with our franchise partners. Okay. I think I got two questions left on this side. Yep. Brett Levy, MKM Partners. Two questions on the technology front. Yes. Yes. Thank you. They're also sales related, so don't get overly excited. Uh. When you think about technology, we'll start with the loyalty program. As you roll out across IHOP, given the heavy concentration across Applebee's, what do you really need to see within IHOP to accelerate the implementation across Applebee's, and how quickly could you get that rolling? Just across the technology front with all of the other initiatives, how should we think about it in terms of what you can do to drive operating productivity and possible cost savings for the franchisees, as well as how much of that can be incremental to free up the pipeline to drive incremental sales growth? Thanks. Got it. All right. I might have hugged Justin too soon. Yeah. Yeah. I think there was some of that. Let's start with IHOP. I think the first question is about, you know, when you think about the loyalty program and the technology that's supporting it, what is the incremental business that, you know, we're thinking about as a result of the program? Well, you know, we've got kind of a math model in our head. Remember I said the first people we'll try to convert are the people in our loyalty program already. That is not the same kind of program. It's more of an email couponing discount type program that is old school, so to speak. We've got a little under 10 million people in that program. If we can convert even a third of those people and then convert those people into being what we call active members that are engaged. Again, we haircut it, we haircut it again and then say, can I get 1.5-2 more visits per person of those folks? You're talking high, little under $100 million that you can get in sales across the system. We looked at this as conservatively as possible to go, "Okay, we're gonna haircut this." We think it has the potential to be much higher than that, but we didn't test this in great detail because we didn't want it out there. We kept this under lock and key, so we're going to launch it in pretty much real-time and engage our current loyal guests as much as possible to drive as much incrementality as possible. John, do you wanna talk a little bit about between new point of sale, new specific kitchen technology, the ways in which we're thinking about handhelds, you know, of the operational impact in Applebee's? Jay, if you got anything to add, you can do that. Yeah, Brett, from a data perspective on that point, we've had significant investment in our ability to market with you one-on-one from a personalization perspective. We have ways to grow that database and acquire more. The new point of sale system will not only help us understand guest behavior, we can tokenize that and apply it in a very customized CRM manner. That's all headroom and opportunity for us moving forward. The other technology investment that we find extraordinarily beneficial is handheld server tablets. I think John referenced it. You know, if you're a server at Applebee's and you now have a tablet, which we have in 600 restaurants, and next year when we fully deploy point of sale, we'll have it in all 1,600 restaurants. I can cover more tables. I don't have to run to a point of sale terminal. It makes my life easier. Most importantly for me as a team member, I can make more money. As a franchisee on my P&L, a lot of those drink orders today, because of the way our system operates, don't get captured as revenue generating. Franchisees end up making more money with tablets as well. It's probably the one thing Justin and I have talked a lot about is probably the lowest hanging fruit for us, and our franchisees are anticipating that investment. It pays dividends. Yeah. For us, we're a little behind where they are on tablets and ahead obviously on the POS, developing it. That's a little bit on purpose. We knew we were moving to a new POS, so we didn't wanna engage the franchisees, get them to all go buy tablets that worked with the old POS. Let's get the new POS system and then go to tablets. We're gonna be doing the same thing. Most of the franchisees will go at the same time or briefly thereafter to roll out tablets when they get their POS. You don't just a POS system at 16 or 50 restaurants, you know, this doesn't just happen, okay, we're done in a quarter. This is gonna take a year and a half to implement this across the entire system. They'll get a new POS, they'll get tablets, and you'll see that going throughout the system, across the system at the speed as fast as we can do it that makes sense, that the franchisees feel supported, and that it goes very smoothly. We're rolling it out beginning now, but we're somewhat slow-rolling still and getting that out there and getting our. It's kinda like you're also working on the ramp-up speed on how fast can you. How many can you do in a week? How many can you go at that rate? In essence, the POS test was done. Now the implementation is being tested right now. We've got our third largest franchisee will be completely finished with doing all of theirs in 60-plus restaurants in the next few weeks. He's gonna help us figure out how fast can you go in this implementation, and that'll help us understand the full implementation over the next year and a half probably. Yeah. Yeah. I'd say it's essentially this three-legged stool of what we're putting in the restaurants from a tech perspective. I and both Jay and John covered it, right? You've got the point of sale, you've got kitchen display system, and you've got tablets with card swiping capability. That's sort of the three-legged stool, if you will. Those are the big three that are gonna be impactful from a technology perspective within the restaurant. Okay, final question. All right, Jake Bartlett from Truist Securities. I've been sitting here trying to think about how to cloak this question, to make it seem like it's not asking 2022 sales guidance. But I'm gonna fail. So the question is. I'm trying to understand. It feels. I know you're not giving the actual guidance. I don't think you're gonna in your response, but maybe just some of the moving pieces and how you're thinking about them. It seems like, for instance, the virtual brand contribution of 1% over 5 years would be more front-end loaded. It's not gonna continue to grow after it's been rolled out kind of abnormally. So that would be, you know, closer to the 5% near term. The other moving pieces, and I'm, you know, just to your broad thoughts, as we come out of the pandemic, seems like there's a lot of people that have been reluctant to go out to restaurants, are gonna be going out. It seems like there, you know, just that alone could be a really big tailwind in the near term. And then also with pricing being a little higher. Maybe just, you know, and maybe in answering that question, you know, was traffic in 2021 higher or lower than it was in 2019? Is there some kind of traffic layer to regain that we should think about? the other is, you know, it's a big question on people's minds right now, but the lower income consumer, you talked about being an affordable brand. I think, you know, that means you're more exposed to a lower income consumer, you know, concerned about gas, you know, gas prices, other non-discretionary expenses, you know, being up. How do you think about some of those moving pieces, you know, in the near term? I'll address the second point first. Lower income consumer, it makes up a big part of our demographics. But I think if you look at- Grocery inflation compared to our menu pricing, it's comparable, if not a little lower than grocery store inflation. From that perspective, I feel like it's, you know, people have to eat and we offer great value, great technology, which reduces friction of how they interact with us. All those things will help. In terms of how we think about 2022 revenue, like you said, we didn't guide on it, but I think that the framework I would put is what Jay and John both talked about, which is off-premise being steady and then on-premise gradually returning. That will drive a lot of the same-store sales growth. Development will happen over time, right? That's not gonna hit right away. We hired our VP of development. You know, we turned on these initiatives, you know, in the beginning of the year, and then the growth projects will happen throughout the year. That's why there is a timing mismatch, if you will, for 2022 guidance in terms of EBITDA. Really, I think I ask everyone to think about this in a longer term perspective. You know, in five years, I think our target is to hit our 20% shareholder return. And there are a lot of different levers we can pull. I think we're, you know, don't judge us on one quarter or one year, judge us on five years. Jake, I'll give you three examples quickly with Applebee's. I alluded to two in my remarks. The first one is off-premise. It's a growth engine, it's incremental. Virtual brand Cosmic Wings have yet to fully deploy to DoorDash. We believe there's incrementality there for obvious reasons. They're the largest player. I referenced that when I look at last year, and I look at growth across day parts, lunch was up, afternoon was up, dinner was up, late night was not. That was a headwind. Difficult to staff Friday night, Saturday night after 10 or 11 o'clock for all the obvious reasons. Now we jump to where we are now, looking forward. Our franchisees look at that late night opportunity as a tailwind. They'll staff it properly, and we'll leverage it in a meaningful way. That's another growth engine that could emerge. Yep. That tailwind late night is true for IHOP as well. All right. If I'm reading the signals from the back of the room correctly, we have timed this perfectly. We invite you to stay in your seats, and we're gonna serve you Applebee's at the table. First I wanna just say thank you to all of you who joined us in person. I wanna say thank you to those who participated remotely. We're gonna put up a slide here and share what lunch in the room will be. If you're watching remotely, we hope that you go on the app and order it because it's gonna look really good. If we have that slide. John's gonna just take a moment here to explain to the room, but we'll sign off remotely. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you to the team for all your hard work to share our story. Thank you to the team in the back of the room for all your hard work to make this happen. Thank you all for coming out for what I think is one of the first in-person investor days we've had in two years. It feels good just to see everybody. If we have the slide of- Yeah. Wendy, let's pull up the slide with the tasting photo. If you're wondering how much time it's gonna take, it depends on how fast you wanna eat. This is gonna come out rapid fire. The two things that you have right now on your plate are a plant-based Impossible Burger that's new, it's on the menu, as well as a sampling of our Brewpub Loaded Waffle Fries. Very indulgent. The next item that's gonna come out, and will come out in five minutes, is a Sizzlin' Skillet Sensation. We're producing this here in the hotel, so I don't know if the sizzle will be there as you would find within Applebee's. It's a tremendous. Can we bring up that slide, please, Wendy? They're working on it. Oh. Thank you. Really I'd encourage you to stay 'cause you're gonna get powdered sugar all over your nice white clothing. It is Sugar Dusted Donut Dippers. It's our new dessert. The buzz on this is tremendous, so enjoy it, and it's coming out fast as well. It'll all be to you within the next five minutes. All right. Thank you, everybody. Appreciate it.