Okay, good morning, everyone. I'm Sharon Zackfia with William Blair, and I'm pleased to have with us today from Potbelly, Bob Wright, President and CEO, and Steven Cirulis, CFO. Following the arrival of new leadership, to my right, in 2020, Potbelly's business momentum and foundation has dramatically improved, with a material increase in average unit volumes and unit-level margins. Additionally, a growing franchisee pipeline lays the groundwork for a multi-year ramp in franchise development, which is key to the company's longer-term growth plans. Before handing the podium over to Bob and Steve, I need to tell you there's a complete list of research disclosures and potential conflicts of interest at williamblair.com. Thank you. Thanks, Sharon. Thanks, Sharon. Am I on? Yeah. Good. Thank you. Welcome, and you know, hopefully, everybody got a cookie if you didn't grab one on your way out. My personal favorite's the sugar, but we all know the oatmeal chocolate chip's the number one seller at Potbelly. We love our food, and we're happy to share it with you here today. We also have our cautionary statements, and you've got this presentation posted on our website if you really wanna read through all of that. But just by way of opening, I know in Chicago, sometimes this feels a little perfunctory, but to acquaint you with the brand, there's some very special things about the Potbelly brand that we think are at the root of almost everything that we do. This is a brand that's been around since 1977, a 47-year-old brand that has had success through all of those years. We're also a brand that's got scale, and you find a lot of brands our size have scale, but they don't have scale across the country, 427 locations, 82 franchise locations of those, and spread from the East Coast to the West Coast and from nearly the Canadian border all the way south of San Antonio. So when you think about brands our size that are talking about growth, there isn't a proof point remaining for Potbelly that we can travel. This isn't a super regional that needs to prove that it can make its way into other markets. We've actually done that successfully. At the heart of everything that is Potbelly is the food: delicious, craveable, made-to-order food, hot sandwiches, hot soups, great salads, hand-dipped ice cream, milkshakes, and of course, our world-famous cookies. So the other thing about it is it's all done in an inviting atmosphere. Our textures are real wood. We have homemade decor. We have hand-framed items that we'll recognize as local to that particular neighborhood, and these are the types of quality cues, from the food, to the service, to the overall atmosphere and environment, that brings the Potbelly brand to life for our customer. Without that, this page wouldn't matter. Why invest in Potbelly if you don't check the box on the strength of the brand, then you shouldn't be looking at the investment. It's the reason most of our management team is here, by the way. We have a strong, differentiated, and distinct brand, and when you're working from that place of strength, you've got something you can work on. That's what we believe when we came in. Our leadership team, I believe, and I'll show you the slide in just a minute so you can see everyone's faces, is the strongest management team, the strongest restaurant and franchise restaurant experience management team Potbelly's ever had. I say that with all due respect to leaders that preceded us, but that really matters. The restaurant business is an execution-dependent business, and execution takes talent, and we've got it in spades, and not just at the senior level, but deeper into the organization. I already mentioned the proven success of the brand. The thing that really changed back at the end of 2020, shortly after Steve and I started working together, was our five-pillar strategy. I'll cover that in just a second if you're not familiar with it already. But we've got proven execution against that strategy over the last three years, and I think that's really important for our franchisees, and it should be for our investors, including the two of us. Sustainable profitability improvements that have grown during that period of time as well, and certainly something we have forecasted and guided to continued growth over time. The really exciting thing about the Potbelly story for an investor is the unit growth potential finally being realized with a strategic shift from what was primarily company unit development to franchising. It isn't just the idea of selling franchises. It's literally the reengineering of the entire organization to be a franchise growth-centric company. I'll cover a little bit of that in detail in the coming days, but our ability to grow the company for the investor is rooted in that unit growth, which we are super excited about where we are in that journey. Look, our brand is a unique brand. I talked about it a little bit. This is actually a rendering of our most recent prototype design. This was actually applied to a particular site, so not every prototype looks the same, but you get the themes, the look, the feel of what the Potbelly of the future looks like. But it's a sandwich shop. We're a fast-casual, sandwich-based restaurant, and often what we say, in a sea of sub shops. So this is a restaurant concept right in the sweet spot of that fast-casual occasion because it's rooted in that craveable quality food and those good vibes of that experience. I told you about our management team. I could go through and introduce every one of these folks. I won't do that today, but I'll tell you that what you're looking at on the screen represents brands like Wendy's, McDonald's, Panera Bread, Dunkin' Donuts, Burger King. You've got CPG experience on here. There are more than one person on this screen that has international development experience, as well as domestic franchise development experience. Everybody's got franchising experience in their background at some point, and across all of our disciplines. Really genuinely excited. I left out Yum! Brands, not intentionally, but there's Yum! Brands on there, too. So, a lot of great experience, but more than that, a tremendous passion to work together and to build Potbelly into what it can be. Our strategy is a rather simple. If you are familiar with our space, and I know you all are, then it should look familiar. The first four pillars of our five-pillar strategy are very customer-centric: great food at a good value. We've got people that are creating good vibe service experiences that set us apart from our competition. At the end of the day, the center pole in the tent is all about that customer experience. I often say, and our Chief Operating Officer says the same thing, "It's the last bite that brings you back. It's not that first taste." The overall experience has to deliver, and it is a part of our strategy for a reason to do that. Digital, digital, digital. Not only driving awareness through our digital advertising, but those connections and the interface with our digital app, our website, and all the digital business that we've been doing over the last three years. And finally, the fifth pillar is that franchise-focused development. Look, those should look familiar because those are the types of things restaurant companies must be excellent at. But underneath those five pillars is where you'll find all our work that we've been talking about and continue to talk about over the last three-plus years and going on four years together now. It's the new menu that was implemented in 2021. It's the labor guide that supported the third pillar so that we could operate more efficiently. It's the new training materials that made sure that we could replicate that service experience, and so on, and so on, and so on. We try to tell our investors on a regular basis what we're up to, and then you can watch whether or not we're successful with that and continue to see the perpetual build of the strength of these five pillars. At the bottom, that's our mission and our vision. Very simple, delight customers with great food and good vibes. We don't wanna satisfy customers. We want that smile. We want. When you're delighted, it shows on your face, and not everybody delights you. Delight is slightly above satisfaction. That's how our ops team thinks about it, too. Ultimately, we plan to be the most loved sandwich brand in every neighborhood. There's a note there obviously about growth, but there is a distinction. We want to be that place that people talk about the way they do today. When I meet people, and I've been saying this since I came on board back in 2020, say I'm with Potbelly, their reaction is almost always the same: "Oh, I love Potbelly." And then they start telling me why, and it has something to do with the food or the service or their favorite sandwich or something. That's what we're looking for, and that's what we're expanding upon. Steve's gonna share some of the financial results with you, and then I'll come back and talk a little bit about our development and our marketing efforts. Sure. Thanks, Bob. Look, our recovery out of COVID, I think, has been strong, and it's been enviable. This is a view of our same-store sales and our system-wide sales growth over the last year. And you can certainly see that same-store sales growth, you know, starting with 22% in Q1 last year, and roughly flat, you know, Q1 this year, is strong performance. We're showing system-wide sales here because we're a growth company that will grow through franchise unit growth. And so while we're about 85% company-owned right now, we expect to flip that to 85% franchise units over the next several years. We will continue to see the system sales growth continue, particularly as we hit the latter part of this year, and Bob's gonna go into more detail, and we start to see some of the real ramp-up in opening those franchise units. Similarly, here, on the average weekly sales, you can see continued growth year-over-year for us. One of the things that's important to understand is that even though the first quarter was a little bit softer than we've experienced in the past, it still represented, you know, average weekly sales growth for us. For us, healthy growth is rooted in traffic. And throughout, even the quarter one, which was a little bit softer, we continued to take traffic share from our fast casual competitors, which, you know, it's, it's, it's not always fun to have a, a, have to leak a little bit of traffic, but to continue to take share, I think, just is a communication of the, the strength of this brand, and the continued momentum that, that the brand has. And as we head into, you know, into this quarter, there's a lot of exciting things that are happening as it relates to, you know, LTO efforts. You saw that image at the front end of our Jalapeño Popper sandwich, which, which was a quarter-one offer. We just launched our Cordon Bleu sandwich on our Underground Menu yesterday, a Cherry Delight cookie, and there's more to come, to continue to push, even in a, an environment like this, continue to push, increased, increased sales and to continue to delight the customers. It's one thing to grow top line, it's another thing to try to, you know, continue to expand margin, and we did that last year, quarter one over quarter one, about 150 basis points. And what's important to note is, is expansion across every, every major category, of that margin line. Where you see that, that 90 basis points, step back, that's primarily due to us upping the brand fund contribution, to, to spend on things like digital marketing, and other traffic and sales-driving, initiatives. So we wanna make it clear, we are now at 3% of sales for our sales and marketing fund. That's well below where the industry sits at about 4%-5%. So this gives us additional dry powder to continue to build the business over time. So let's double-click a little bit on that spend. As Steve said, you know, we never expect that investments in advertising or digital advertising can leverage on themselves. They leverage throughout the rest of the PNL. So we are very diligent. As we've marched our way up to that 3% spend, we've tested every initial or increase in investment against our expected returns, and we're looking for $3-$5 to $1 back on the top line. That's where the leverage comes from. We got some peeks at some of the things we've been up to more recently, when it comes to our investments. We do invest in digital advertising, but once we advertise the customer, we wanna have a first-in, first-class experience for them to come back to. Our Perks-... program is one of our big successes, and we continue to build on it. We launched the new program in January of this year. This is the second time since we've been working together as a management team that we've retouched the Perks program and made it a more important element for our customers. Previously, the program was very simple, very straightforward. You earn 10 points for every $1 you spend, and once you hit 1,000 points, you're gonna get a free entrée. Almost everyone got a free sandwich. Today, the new program has 3 tiers of redemption availability to you. In fact, 12 different menu items. There are different levels that one can achieve to accelerate your earning, and you earn coins now, not points, because that's a lot more fun. You can redeem something as low as 200 points or 200 coins for a pickle, all the way up to 1,500 for a big sandwich. Give you a little more graphic representation of that. The old program, as I said, 1,000 points would get you an entrée. Everybody got a sandwich, almost everybody. Today, what we've seen since we rolled this out in January is a 36% increase year-over-year in the redemption of those, the active members within the Perks program, which reflects a lot of success in this area. We see balanced redemption across all three categories: entrees, sides, and desserts. And then we also see additional balance once you get double-click into those categories for all the, items that you see on the screen. This is just an example of how we continue to find ways to provide the kind of advantage for the customer in our programs. I think one of the things you'll see in great loyalty programs, and we believe ours is, is it's brand right and brand-centric. Our brand is rooted in our food. The number one thing we can do as we engage with our customers is continue to find ways to make food the hero of the relationship, and this has opened that door wide open. We see people that are still earning a lot of coins actually like the idea of getting a free cookie every two or three visits that they come, even though they may have been able to order or earn a free sandwich. By the same token, others like the fact that they can bank those, those coins and, and get something for themselves later on. When it comes to franchise development, we often get asked about, you know, what makes Potbelly exciting for a franchisee? Why do you believe you can continue to grow through franchising? Where is the upside when it comes with that? And our intent here is to kind of outline that for you. We often talk about, first of all, the way we've organized the company is we have a leader that's responsible for franchising that reports directly to me, and a different leader with role clarity that is responsible for development. That's from real estate all the way through opening. We believe those are the two pipelines that have to continue to get healthier and healthier and healthier over time, and they have, and we think that focus has really helped us. But at its core, franchisees start where we started as a management team. Is this a brand that I see a future for? Is this a brand I want to invest my hard-earned dollars in, and a brand that I think has staying power? Have you really been around that long? Have you been successful in my territory? Have you seen the kind of growth that makes me excited about your company? And the answer is yes. This is actually a brand franchisees are very excited about. And they make those determinations because they're making, you know, 10-, 20-, 40-year commitments. Many franchisees are thinking about generational businesses for them and their children or the rest of their family. We have, as I indicated, world-class franchise growth company. Everything we do now is franchise-centric. We even reengineered our company P&L to look exactly like a franchise P&L, with the exception of the royalties that they pay to us. Why do you do that? Because you want them to be able to look at the performance and then model their own performance after that. Everything we do in terms of marketing, every shop gets it. A shop is a shop is a shop, regardless of who owns it. And franchisees have not always seen that in other brands, but they do see it with us. Our systems, our tools, the labor guide, the marketing, the operations, the training materials, everything is across the system, and they love it. The economic model, of course, is one of the primary reasons that they might get into a brand, and it's certainly the primary reason they would avoid a brand. With $1.3 million in average unit volume that we closed out the year last year, our FDD has the investment costs at ranging as low as $650,000. You're talking about a 2-to-1 sales to investment ratio. And so the economics on that investment are very, very strong for franchisees, and not only on the investment side, but on the operating economics side. And when they're calculating their returns, they're pleased with how all of that comes together. One of the things we're excited to announce in Q1, too, is the unveiling of our 1,800 sq ft prototype. Now, this is a prototype that takes into account all that we've learned over the last 3, 4 years on how we operate the line, how we operate the digital line, where we place our drink station, the digital flow for customers that are coming in and out. Our own learnings about how to operate the line using the labor guide and the efficiency and capacity studies on all the equipment, as well as the dining room. The fact that 40% of our business is digital today had us reassessing the number of seats that we would need. You put all that together and all that learning, and it was clear it was time for us to start working last year on a prototype that reflected all of that learning. The output is a targeted build that's about 1,800 sq ft. The history of our fleet, the existing fleet, is about 2,300 sq ft. So those 500 sq ft help us offset all the inflationary pressure that's come in construction for these last 3.5 years. But just as importantly, and for franchisees, they tell us more importantly, those 500 sq ft at the average triple net rents in suburban locations where a lot of our builds are mean hundreds of basis points of occupancy cost improvement that just give the- that's the gift that keeps giving to them. So we're very excited about the power of the, the new prototype and the ability to build. Last thing I would say about it, is it also opens up real estate opportunities for franchisees because they can, they can widen their net as they look for places that are a little bit smaller as well. One point of emphasis on the prototype. It is a prototype in a fast casual brand that uses lease spaces to grow. So the other thing we deliver to franchisees is flexibility. This unit's designed to be a kit of parts: the kitchen, the back line, the back of house, the customer area where the drink station and the digital pickup area is, and then, of course, the dining room. Those can all be fit together in various places and ways. Some lease spaces are triangular in shape. Some are a little bit longer or a little bit wider than others. And when you add that to our custom decor inside, Potbellies aren't gonna be carbon copies of one another. But the engineering work and the architectural work that is the foundation of every one of those builds is done. So franchisees have that common starting place as they're growing. They're very excited about it. About half of our builds for the remainder of the year will be rooted in that prototype. We've let franchisees in on that as we started finishing the work earlier this year and last year. Look, the growth you see here is where we have all of our new commitments. Hopefully, what you see is a lot of yellow states that aren't all clustered, and certainly a lot of green states where we have tremendous availability in areas that make a lot of sense for a brand like ours. The Southeast has traditionally not been an area of focus for Potbelly. It has been for us. Florida has been very, very exciting, but we've also franchised as far west as Washington and all the way up into New York, and we have activity and an active pipeline along the way. I mentioned earlier, we have franchising as one function and development as the other. This is an indication of the success of the franchising function. This is the work of Lynette McKee and our team to fill the pipeline with qualified, signed-up, multi-unit development franchisees, and that's why we're talking about these numbers the way we do every quarter. Open and committed shops. The open are the two parts of the lower bar. That's the yellow, that's company, and green is franchise. You can see that green's gonna keep growing, and then the vast majority of those committed shops are also franchise, and that's where all the growth is gonna come from. This is our proof that we're ahead of the necessary development to keep on that 10% unit growth rate. We've shared in Q1 that we can see 30 of our units this year, that includes the ones that have already opened, in some stage of their 2024 development pipeline. We can also see another 10 units that could, is just as easily fall into 2024 as they do into 2025. Just depends on exactly how they finish up their construction and when they get open. The most important thing I'd share with you is, as we exit this year, we will be well into the double-digit growth rate territory, and we do not start again in 2025. We continue and build from there. So we are very excited about this unit growth engine finally getting moving for Potbelly. Okay, so this is the guidance that we shared during our Q1 earnings call. And we're making no adjustment to it in this set. We still are in a situation where the 0%-2% same-store sales growth is in play, as well the Adjusted EBITDA of $7 million-$8.5 million. And you can't open up your phone, you can't hear the news, CNBC, whatever you listen to or watch, without hearing about the consumer and the value. We heard value wars already in a few of our earlier conversations today. So it's not. It's certainly not something that's lost on us, and as we've discussed in prior conversations, we have seen a change in behavior right within our customer set. You know, over half of our business is digital now, and what we have in that set of digital transactions is a large segment of Perks members, right? Bob mentioned the revamp of the Perks program. That gives us a huge advantage in this environment. But where we're seeing the customer behavior change has been with what we and by the way, the Perks member is logical, right? Is a higher frequency customer, as it should be for any high-functioning loyalty program. And so where we've seen the change in behavior is really in the lower frequency customer, the one that tends not to be digital and certainly not a Perks member. And so that, that's the segment where we feel like we have the ability to do some things to change the behavior. So you may have heard about, you know, we're doing some testing right now in terms of everyday value. This is in addition to the everyday value that we already offer on our menu. You know, we offer a Skinny Sandwich, which didn't exist before Bob and I joined the brand, to offer an entry point into Potbelly. As well, we have, you know, a Pick Your Pair, where you can have a half a salad and a half a sandwich, you can have a soup and a half sandwich, any sort of combination you want. As well as a Meal Deal, which already allows you to add a, you know, a beverage and chips at a discount. So the new work that we're testing are price points all below $10, and again, it's meant to work against what we feel, you know, we have the ability to affect, which is that lower frequency, kinda non-digital customer. There's. It's too early in the process for us to share any detail about the performance. We're only in about 2.5-3 weeks into the test, but what we can share, you know, anecdotally, we've seen feedback on social media, we've seen feedback through some of our own kinda direct listening channels, and what we're hearing from customers is enthusiasm. We're, you know, hearing messaging of the tone of, "Hey, thanks for doing this. Thanks for doing this for us." Where it's something that I'll come back for, right? Which is kind of what you wanna hear when you're, you know, putting these kind of things in play. But the value platform that's being tested, certainly the Perks, the Perks revamp, and all the benefits that Bob described, in terms of the ability to directly market to some of our folks with some really engaging, higher frequency driving kinds of rewards is a benefit to us. I already mentioned, you know, our LTO strategy with sandwiches and cookies. I don't think we have the Cherry Delight in here, but if you want one, that gives you a reason to, you know, come into our shops. So that's 20... that's the Q2. For 2024 full year, same thing. We're making no adjustment to our full year guidance. The move on same-store sales from low single digit, you know, into our long-term growth algorithm of low single- to mid-single-digit on a sustainable basis, that just is, I think, a communication of the promise of this brand to continue to grow, for us and this management team to continue to find ways to win in the marketplace. Similarly, Bob discussed our unit growth of about 10% for this year, and then moving in and continuing with low double digits, you know, into that long-term growth algorithm. The adjusted EBITDA growth rate for this year, mid-single- to high single-, and then steady state, kinda low double- to mid double-, is what we're working toward. Let's keep in mind, even though there's, you know, some potential softness on that top line through the year, we have the ability to manage profitability, right? Through metering out investments in a different way, continuing to put effort behind the growth areas that will ultimately deliver against that, that EBITDA growth, in the mid double digits, you know, over the long term. So, this is a, this is a, I think, an equation that gives the, the shareholder value accretion, the legs that it, that it needs. We believe in this brand. We've got, I think, in the future, a lot of promise as it relates to leveraging our menu, leveraging our digital, and obviously, with the new unit growth, this is a brand that is, you know, transitioning from, you know, from where we've been historically into kind of that highly accelerated growth brand. Yeah, just to reiterate the double-digit unit growth target, like I say, we expect to exit this year at that rate. You know, if you think about the units that we talked about already, that would, that's gonna be a little bit backloaded. We expected that. We always said it, but we don't have to start again when we begin next year, and we think we can keep that running for a long time on our way to our 2,000-unit target. Look, I'll finish where we started, and I think these are, you know, these are kinda the high, high points for us for an investment decision in Potbelly, but strong, differentiated brand. We've got the right brand, we've got the right team. We certainly have the right strategy and the proof of execution against that strategy, and that's far more important than the strategy itself. Sustainable profit growth as a company, that's the foundation of the valuation of our company, but the real acceleration in valuation comes with unit growth development. And finally, you know, after all these years of being a company focused on company development, putting our foot in the ground three years ago, turning the other way to franchise growth is the key. So we're excited about it. Thanks for joining.