00:00Are you seeing any trends when it comes to how people are spending their money when they go out?
00:07Certainly people are being a bit more cautious and I think that for us the challenge is to make
00:11sure that we're catering to our people as best we can, right? You're going to make friends right
00:17now in difficult times that are going to stay with you for a very long time. You know, we have
00:23a tremendous database of regulars that we count on night in and night out to fill these seats.
00:30In every city that we're in, not just in the States, but beyond a network that is incredibly
00:36important to us. And I think they're very loyal and we're grateful for that. And then for those
00:42new customers out there that may be, you know, looking to, you know, still have a great night
00:48out and still have a great experience. That's what we're here for. We're here for the fine dining,
00:54the fun, fine dining for the special occasion, the anniversary, the wedding. You know, that's a
00:58really important role that we still play.
01:00Yeah. And I always wonder, you know, when we're talking about going out, fine dining,
01:05truly fine dining, how much you lean into the experiential side of things that, you know,
01:10it's not just having great food. It's also having that great lived experience and, you know,
01:15making it more than just dinner, for example.
01:18It has to be, especially this day and age. It has to be more than just dinner. For me, it's
01:22the closest cop to what we do is the theater. I think you've set this, you know, very believable
01:27stage. We're in costume. It starts at the same time every night. The only thing that changes for
01:33us is the audience. And, you know, opening them up to this little portal of this universe,
01:39the transportive thing that we're doing, whether it's mid-century Italian-American at Carbone,
01:44or it's a, you know, it's a, you know, 1950s sort of madman at the grill, but giving them
01:51something that they can't possibly replicate from, you know, DoorDash on their couch, that we have to
01:57be experiential. That's part of the DNA of what makes Major Food Group up.
02:02And I just want to walk through some of the locations you have, obviously flagship here in
02:06New York over in Greenwich Village, but Miami, Vegas, over internationally in Dubai, Hong Kong.
02:12Are you noticing different trends with different regions? Is the American consumer holding up
02:17better or worse than some of the international consumers?
02:20I'd say certainly New York is probably the outlier of numerically right now, where they're
02:26still incredibly strong. You know, I still continue to be super bullish on New York. Miami still doing
02:33really, really well. Obviously, very proud of our team in Dubai for how they're handling the
02:38situation and our partners there at the Royal Atlantis. They're doing an incredible job of managing
02:42you know, what is obviously a terrible situation right now, but very, very proud of that team.
02:47And I think, again, going back to what we do in the luxury market and this little sliver of the
02:52luxury sector of the food and beverage world, continuing to deliver on experiential dining.
02:58Those birthdays are not going to go away. Those celebrations are not going to go away.
03:02Being your first choice and then catering to your regulars.
03:06They're not going to forget it now and certainly, you know, for the next generation of regulars to
03:11come. Just pivoting a bit to the jarred sauces. How do you think about advertising? Are you focusing
03:18on spending with influencers, spending on things like TikTok as opposed to maybe traditional TV
03:24media or radio media?
03:26Yeah, we still let most of our spending go into the actual product that's in the jar. I think the
03:32very, very best advertising, and I still continue to believe that, is the quality of the product.
03:36We don't spend any money really on influencers at all. We're not on TV. We're still, you know,
03:4480 to 100 percent year over year growth, fifth year in a row. We carry the lion's share of the
03:49growth within the sector of this thing. You know, we're adding over 150,000, 160,000 households a
03:55month right now. I mean, you know, the sauce is really absolutely a rocket ship, and I think that
04:01that's because we just continue to reinvest in what's in the jar. And when it comes to what's
04:05in the jar, I mean, a conversation we've been having in the context of what's going on in the
04:09Middle East, what's going on with fertilizer prices. The consensus is, you know, those rising prices
04:15are eventually going to work themselves into food prices. It's going to work themselves
04:19into what consumers are actually paying for what is on the shelf. So how are you approaching pricing
04:25right now? Have you taken any action when it comes, you know, to your jarbed sauces, or do you
04:31anticipate doing so in the future? Yeah, very different than the restaurant product, right? So I think
04:36within our, at least our section of the restaurant product section, there's an elasticity, I think,
04:42to what the consumer is willing to pay for that experience, for that, you know, Colorado lamb
04:48chop. I think there's, there's an elasticity there that my customer is going to assume that I've made
04:54no, I've made no decisions about the raw ingredient that we're using at the restaurant based off of
05:00price. We're giving them still the absolute best product possible and not changing the recipes at all.
05:07Very different when you get to the jarred sauce where there, there, there really is no elasticity in
05:12the price. So for us right now, you know, absolutely watching it, monitoring tariffs every day and
05:18doing everything we can to hold the line. We've, we've had no price increases so far. It's certainly
05:23getting more and more difficult the longer and longer. These sort of tough times are, are, are,
05:28are lasting, but we've made no increases and we're trying our very, very best to hold the line there on,
05:34on, on, on price.
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