Transcripts
The Marzetti Company's management answers for the business every quarter. These are the exchanges that explain it best — verbatim, from the call transcripts preserved in Sources. Each link opens the full transcript at that page in a new tab.
Q3 FY2026 Earnings Call — Q3 FY2026
Bachan’s closes and management names “authentic flavors” as a third growth leg beside legacy and licensed brands. · Open the full transcript →
Sauces, dressings and dips are now two-thirds of sales — the portfolio the company is deliberately concentrating into.
David A. Ciesinski (President and CEO): This acquisition strategically expands our portfolio of leading sauces, dressings, and dip brands that now represent twothirds of our consolidated net sales. It also specifically strengthens our portfolio of sauces, which alone account for nearly 40% of our consolidated net sales. In the era of M&A and GLP-1s, we believe consumers will continue to seek flavor enhancements for their meals. We believe our deep culinary expertise and focused scale in these categories positions us well to support the continued growth of Bachan's as well as our other brands.
p. 2 · Read in context →
How a soybean-oil spike travels: hedged coverage plus retail pricing, versus mark-to-market pass-through in Foodservice.
James Ronald Salera (Stephens); David A. Ciesinski (President and CEO): Can you give us a sense for the duration of the coverage in place right now? I know there are a lot of moving pieces, but it is an important input that we get questions from investors about. As you are doing demand forecasting and procurement planning for 2027, how does the recent run-up impact the mix and the margin outlook? […] We have what I would call intermediate-term coverage that takes us through essentially the end of the summer on board and basis, which should be more than enough time for us to be able to get into the marketplace and implement pricing. Our Retail team is in the throes of putting those plans together right now, and in the case of private label, we have already begun to see the market start to move within the last few weeks. We feel like we are in a much better position as it pertains to that than we were in 2022, the last time we saw a spike. On the Foodservice business, as you recall, it is a mark-to-market process where we have some of our national account customers that have taken positions, some that are a little closer nearby, but independent of that, the pricing differential is passed through. For you and others that track us, the key watch is our coverage on Retail, and we feel like we are in a strong position relative to where we were in 2022.
p. 4 · Read in context →
Why scanner strength and shipped volume diverged — weather, category softness, and lapping last year’s pipeline builds.
Alton Kemp Stump (Loop Capital); David A. Ciesinski (President and CEO): First, sell-through data was once again very strong for both your frozen dinner rolls and for Chick-fil-A, yet overall Retail segment sales were down. What were the key areas of weakness as you look at your just over 5% volume decline in the quarter in Retail? […] I will point to three things. One is January and February weather resulted in the Northeast being particularly hard hit. The second is category softness in both produce dressings as well as pourable dressings, where the category is down about five points. The third is that we are lapping the pipeline build of both Chick-fil-A into the club channel and Texas Roadhouse rolls. Those three things combined drove the volume decline. In terms of surprises versus our expectations, weather is difficult to plan for. Regarding the launch of our Roadhouse rolls, velocities in Walmart continue to be particularly strong. It has taken us a little bit longer to build the quality of distribution that we want in Retail, so those velocities are lagging a little bit outside of Walmart. But overall, I would ladder back to January/February weather, roughly five-point category softness in produce and refrigerated dressings, and lapping that prior pipeline build. The executional component we are focused on is continuing to drive improved velocities on Roadhouse in Retail in particular.
p. 5 · Read in context →
Club economics up close: a two-pack that sold consumers a year’s supply, and Costco moving Olive Garden to rotation.
David A. Ciesinski (President and CEO): Good eye, but that is not the cause. The new item is really the response. Within club, there were two points of noise. One, we are lapping a launch of Chick-fil-A sauce last year, so we had a big pipeline build in the period. We went out with a two-pack of 20-ounce Chick-fil-A sauce. Sell-through was strong; however, buyers did not come back as quickly. When we did the math, we realized we were selling consumers about a year’s worth of supply of Chick-fil-A sauce. In conversations with the buyers at club, what we have elected to do is come back with a three-pack: two smaller originals and one Polynesian sauce, and that is shipping into the marketplace now. The other thing that happened is that, as you recall, we have been in club with our Olive Garden dressing for quite a long time with the exact same offering. A couple of Costco regions, not Sam’s, elected to move us from full-time distribution to more of a rotation. In response, we have retooled the offering to a multipack with the Original plus the Zesty, which we are bringing to the marketplace. We are working with our club partners to innovate and ensure that the offering is relevant. The Zesty is part of the response.
p. 6 · Read in context →
Foodservice is a bet on which chains win: national accounts are 75% of the segment and growth came from a handful of them.
David A. Ciesinski (President and CEO): Foodservice had a solid quarter where volume and sales were both up. If you look at the whole industry, it is essentially flat versus three months ago. Pulling that apart, in national accounts it bifurcates into concepts that are emerging as continuous winners and those that are struggling. Within our portfolio, we have a handful of performers that continue to do well. One of those is Chick-fil-A, doing well on their base business and behind several of their LTOs, which we have been fortunate enough to support. Taco Bell has also continued to emerge as a winner even in this economic environment. We have a handful of others that we are continuing to win with. On the other side, concepts that cannot lead with price or have an offering that is not connecting with consumers are struggling. Net-net, for our national accounts, which are 75% of our Foodservice business, we were able to grow, really led by Chick-fil-A and other winners, offset partially by some others. On our branded piece of the business, that was flattish and would have been up more were it not for our exit of a very low-margin breadstick business. Overall, in a competitive environment, we continue to do well. Part of it is we sell sauces, which continue to be where our partners look to differentiate their menus, and part is we are fortunate to have partners with big, strong concepts performing best in this environment.
p. 7 · Read in context →
Bachan’s unit economics: accretive at gross margin, below Retail at operating margin because awareness is still being bought.
Thomas K. Pigott (Chief Financial Officer): That is total operating margin. Again, we are being a little conservative at the onset. As we get into it, we know they are an invest-to-grow brand, so there is a higher level of marketing spend as they expand into markets and build awareness. It is a fantastic brand and a top brand in barbecue sauce, but awareness is relatively low. Their operating margins are slightly below our existing Retail due to the level of investment to sustain growth and build it out. At the gross margin level, Bachan's is nicely margin-accretive to the business. As we get into next quarter's call, we will have completed the planning process with the team and will have more to share. Everything we see in terms of their performance gives us comfort in our business model for what we can achieve with that acquisition.
p. 8 · Read in context →
Management’s own three-chapter history of the company, and where the next decade of growth is supposed to come from.
David A. Ciesinski (President and CEO): I believe that the acquisition of Bachan's is an opportune time to take a step back and take an inventory of where we have been, where we are, and where we look to go. Over the last ten years, if you have looked at the evolution of our company, we started as a company focused on driving our legacy brands and then added to that with our restaurant brand licenses. Over the last seven years, we have built out our Retail business by leaning into the growth of those licensed restaurant brands. As we sit today, it is about $550 million or so of Circana sales and about $350 million more than that of net sales, and it has been an important driver of our growth story. At the same time, we have leveraged our strong balance sheet to make key investments in our infrastructure, retiring old lines and putting in high-speed, more efficient lines, and putting in place scalable IT infrastructure. What Bachan's marks for us is not only the acquisition of a phenomenal brand and the opportunity to work with tremendously talented people, but the first of what we believe will be more acquisitions in an area that we are calling authentic flavors. Ten years ago, growth was driven by legacy brands—Marzetti, Sister Schubert’s, and New York. The more recent period has been driven by that plus restaurant brands. As we go forward, we are excited to add a whole new growth leg to our story: authentic flavors. Our aspirations are to continue to innovate, market, and grow against our legacy brands and our restaurant licensed brands, and also to use our end-to-end focused scale—from culinary to product development through the supply chain—to help highly relevant brands like Bachan's achieve their full potential in the marketplace. As we learn more about Bachan's and get successfully underway, we will look for other opportunities to leverage our balance sheet and find other authentic flavors where those brands and teams can come and take their business to the next level. Over the next ten years, this gives us a platform for a more balanced pathway to grow in Retail and in Foodservice.
p. 8 · Read in context →
Q2 FY2026 Earnings Call — Q2 FY2026
The Bachan’s deal is announced and defended — what was bought, why now, and how the $400 million is supposed to pay. · Open the full transcript →
The demand model for Foodservice, spelled out: gas prices, tax refunds, and winners taking share in a flat industry.
David A. Ciesinski (President and CEO): So at an overall industry level, I think the best way to categorize things is that essentially they're flat. We also saw a bit of a pullback in foodservice during the period of government shutdown. But there again, we saw an element of normalization. If you look at most of our large national accounts, we're continuing to win with those, AAA Domino's, Taco Bell, etc. I would say in those particular cases, you know, we were very satisfied with their performance and our performance. If you go back and you look at the script for probably the last couple of periods, we talked about the fact that we were going to be lapping a couple of limited-time offerings during this period that we thought were going to create a hole. I think that the setup that we used is we expected volume to be down a couple of points and for us to be able to get a little bit of pricing to get us closer to flat in the business. […] I think there are a couple of things that are working in our favor for everybody that services foodservice first. Gas prices are down year against year, which we know gives consumers discretionary spending that oftentimes comes back in away from home dining. The other thing that we're seeing here is like you, I think we're expecting income tax returns to be a little bit stronger this year than they were last year because of some of these changes. And those ordinarily hit around the time of President's weekend or so. So you put the fact that inflation remains relatively in check, gas prices seem to be moderating some. There's a case for slightly stronger income tax returns. I think the setup there for all of foodservice is at least for a flat scenario, if not for a modest improvement. And if past is prologue, what we see is that the winners continue to win in this environment.
p. 4 · Read in context →
The licensing engine in one number — Texas Roadhouse rolls tracking toward a $100 million retail run rate.
David A. Ciesinski (President and CEO): The business continues to maintain that same growth rate. If you look at it, you pointed out most recently, we exited about $20 million run rate. Actually, the five-week was better than the thirteen-week. And I think there's still room for us to continue to dial in the merchandising on the shelf. And, a range of other things. Parasitically, yesterday, I was on the phone with the team at Texas Roadhouse, and we were talking about partnership and how mutually excited we are about the whole thing. And we are also talking about other items that are in the pipeline. So, you know, you get to the end of our fiscal year, I think there's most certainly a case that this thing could be working towards a retail $100 million run rate. And this is an amazing brand. It's really one of those away from home brands that really connects with consumers in a good economy and in a tough economy. And, we feel like we're uniquely suited to work with them in their iconic role platform to grow the business.
p. 6 · Read in context →
Capital allocation after the deal: buybacks revert to attritional, dividend growth stays on its 63-year track.
Thomas K. Pigott (CFO): So, you know, obviously, with the stock trading off and with the rest of the sector, we felt opportunistically there was an opportunity to buy back. So we executed a limited number of buybacks during the quarter. Now, as you've mentioned, we were levering that balance sheet against the acquisition of Bachan's which, you know, as Dave articulated, will be tremendously positive for our financials over time. So I think at this time, it's safe to say we'll kind of go back to our attritional approach on buybacks. That said, on the dividend policy, we continue to expect to grow it consistent with our history even with this acquisition given the very strong cash position the company has developed over time.
p. 7 · Read in context →
Bachan’s is 100% co-packed today — the supply-chain synergy case, and why they intend to go slow to go fast.
David A. Ciesinski (President and CEO): So as it stands today, the business is co-packed 100%. And, obviously, that provides us with a pathway to integrate some of the manufacturing into our network. But this is one of those scenarios where we most certainly wanna go slow to go fast. We wanna make sure we understand the business. We wanna make sure we understand how to manufacture the business. They have a good co-pack partner that's out there right now. And the last thing we wanna do is to bugger this thing up. But as you think about over the longer arc of time, there is a strong case for synergies here throughout the supply chain, and then we talked about the gross synergy case as well.
p. 9 · Read in context →
Where the accretion comes from: a premium price point plus Marzetti manufacturing, procurement and distribution.
David A. Ciesinski (President and CEO): So this is a very high-margin business. The product sells at a premium price point. Justifiably. And the existing margins are accretive to our existing retail segment at gros margin. So we're starting off with a premium product. And as we look at it, we have opportunities not only in terms of utilizing our capabilities in manufacturing, procurement, distribution, is another drill site for us. So this is gonna be immediately margin accretive to us at the gross margin level. With potential to add to that going forward.
p. 9 · Read in context →
Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call — Q4 FY2025
The annual call that states the growth algorithm outright and explains the single commodity that matters most. · Open the full transcript →
Why an EPA biofuels ruling moves Marzetti’s cost base — soybean oil and renewable diesel.
David A. Ciesinski (CEO): It's a significant element of our commodity basket. I'll start, and then Tom can provide more specifics. Over the last seven to eight years, we've seen soybean oil take on a larger role in renewable diesel. Towards the end of the Biden administration, there was some uncertainty about the volume of Renewable Volume Obligations as it pertains to renewable diesel. Earlier this summer, the EPA released guidelines that increased the diversion of soybean oil to renewable diesel, which resulted in a price spike. […] Typically, exceptions are made for small refiners, and if those exceptions continue, we could see commodity costs for soybean oil decline a bit further. Overall, this aligns with our expectations, so we do not anticipate it being a near-term obstacle for our business. We also hedge with our suppliers on this.
p. 4 · Read in context →
The marketing case in numbers: household penetration up 8 points on Texas Toast with a near-60% repeat rate.
David A. Ciesinski (CEO): We're currently seeing positive progress under our new marketing leader, who is effectively analyzing our data and utilizing our digital tools. We invested in targeted programs that enhanced our household penetration. Our market share increased in five out of our seven categories. For instance, our Texas Toast brand ended the quarter with a 43% market share, and its household penetration rose by 8 points, with a nearly 60% repeat rate. We believe that strategic marketing investments at reasonable costs can boost household penetration, which in turn helps retain consumers and supports sustained business growth. We applied this strategy across various products in a targeted way, and alongside innovation, we see it as crucial for achieving profitable volume growth.
p. 5 · Read in context →
What “cost savings” concretely means in FY26 — closing Milpitas, commissioning Atlanta, shifting volume to Horse Cave.
Thomas K. Pigott (CFO): The team performed exceptionally well in '25 by focusing on several key areas: achieving procurement savings, negotiating better contracts, and implementing value engineering to enhance product efficiency and reduce production costs. We also gained valuable insights into our costs thanks to the SAP implementation. Looking ahead to '26, we will add the network reset to our cost-saving initiatives. This involves closing the Milpitas facility and increasing operations at College Park, which will provide additional opportunities for cost savings. Currently, we are in the midst of this transition, decommissioning lines in California and commissioning new ones in Atlanta, while also shifting volume to Horse Cave. There's significant change happening in our networks, and we are managing it well. As we move into the latter half of fiscal '26, we expect to start seeing more benefits reflected in our margins as the year goes on.
p. 6 · Read in context →
The growth algorithm stated plainly: low-single-digit sales, ~50bps of gross margin, mid-single-digit earnings.
Thomas K. Pigott (CFO); David A. Ciesinski (CEO): I'll just add, overall, I think we expect '26 just to be a continuation of our growth algorithm where we see revenue growing in the low single digit, really driven by volume in retail, and some pricing for the Ag commodity. Foodservice, I think we're looking at more of a flattish profile in '26. And then on the gross profit, we expect to continue to grow our margins probably in the around the 50 basis point range and SG&A, as I mentioned, growing with inflation. So that's kind of the broader outlook to how we're forecasting '26. […] Which gets us overall to low single digit on the top line, mid-single digit on the bottom line, sort of a continuation of our outlook for this year.
p. 7 · Read in context →
How to read Retail margins after a marketing step-up — no reset, flat to up in line with productivity.
Thomas K. Pigott (CFO); David A. Ciesinski (CEO): And you're right, we did choose to take advantage of some good potential programs to invest in, in the quarter, and it did impact Retail's profitability. There are a couple of other things I'll mention, and then I'll let Dave talk a little bit about the marketing spend. The other thing on Retail is we had a very difficult comp this particular quarter. The prior year quarter was a record Q4 on operating income for the Retail segment. And the other thing that impacted the profitability was this particular quarter, PNOC was a little bit negative due to the ag inflation in time, we expect that PNOC to balance out. […] So Scott, bringing around it, we don't expect a reset on marketing for the Retail segment. We saw an opportunity in this period to raise it. And I think as we continue to generate cost savings in other areas of the P&L, I think we're going to look for opportunities to plow some back into the business longer term. And I think, to Tom's point on this business, I would expect our operating margins to remain in line here. So if you're looking at both gross margins and operating margins over the foreseeable future, we expect those to be flat or grow in line with our productivity programs.
p. 8 · Read in context →
Q4 FY2024 Earnings Call (Lancaster Colony) — Q4 FY2024
The fullest account of how licensed products and limited-time offerings actually earn their margin, and where private label bites. · Open the full transcript →
Why limited-time offerings carry above-average margin — proprietary R&D up front and no competitive bid.
David A. Ciesinski (President and CEO): When you look at our LTOs, they're usually at or better than our line average because of all of the proprietary R&D work that goes upfront and ordinarily for those sorts of items, we wouldn't be bidding against other people. So as you think about that stream of work versus our base business, they're typically going to be margin accretive to what we're doing. I'm glad you asked the question about the dialog with our operators, as you might imagine.
They're focused on really two things. They're looking at their bottom line and cost — but I think they're really looking at what needs to be true for them to accelerate their traffic trends. And fortunately, we tend to get calls that are more focused on exciting menu items that they can feature in their advertising to drive traffic. And to that end, I would tell you that our phone is ringing as hard as it's been in any time in the recent past, because the number of people that we work with are ones that we have and are looking for things that they can talk about in their advertising. Most don't want to be discounting on their menu because their margins are already under pressure, because of labor and other things. And I think they're trying to figure out how they drive traffic through menu excitement and it really plays into our wheelhouse.
p. 5 · Read in context →
A category-by-category read on private-label exposure, from refrigerated dressings to croutons.
David A. Ciesinski (President and CEO): More broadly, as we're looking at our price points, I think you're precisely right, we're watching private label, so we watch our gap versus private label. Then in key seasons like Sister Schubert, we're looking at those promoted price points. As we scan across all of our categories, what I would tell you is if you look at refrigerated dressings, private label really isn't much of a threat. If you go to pourable salad dressing, we've continued to hang in there. We're continuing to outperform the category and we're growing share in the period. Private label is growing. But what we're probably seeing in that case is a trade down from some of the other more value oriented brands to private label, which doesn't seem to be impacting us. You go around, you look at Toast, we feel like we're well positioned. Sister Schubert is a brand that we'll watch. We'll watch croutons as well. Refrigerated dips, we feel like we're insulated there. So generally, I continue to feel like our exposure in private label is more modest than our peers. But we still need to keep an extremely sharp eye on value to make sure that we're relevant.
p. 5 · Read in context →
Two years before Bachan’s, the stated preconditions for M&A: ERP live, Horse Cave running, cash building.
David A. Ciesinski (President and CEO): If you go back over the last two years, we've gone live on ERP, we finished all of our waves; we lapped the last wave, our fifth wave in September. So ERP is, as Tom mentioned, essentially drawn down. Horse Cave is up and running. You look at our cash balances for the end of the quarter, they continue to build. This business generates — has the ability to generate a lot of cash. I think we're in a position now to lift and shift our focus and start to look at that source of inorganic growth. You can expect to hear more from us on that as we progress through this year, because we feel like we have the team, we have that strong balance sheet, we have assets that will allow us to pursue focused scale that will allow us to compete against even the mega caps within narrow categories like sauces and dressings and we're looking forward to that next chapter of our growth.
p. 7 · Read in context →
The consumer thesis behind the pricing discipline — and the refusal to win on price alone.
David A. Ciesinski (President and CEO): Look at what underlies this whole thing: I think broadly is that consumers are in the midst of a sustained unrelenting squeeze. That affects 60% of households, including households making over $100,000, where after years of inflation that exceeded wage growth, they found themselves upside down and they bridged it initially with COVID savings. Once those were extended, they turned to credit cards. Credit card debt has grown now on average to about $6,000. The interest payment on that per month is about $200. Put that all together and consumers are really trimming their sails and trying to balance their sources and uses, and they're looking for value. But they're also looking for affordable luxury in small things to make their days go better. Our view internally here i that we think we're going to be in this environment for some time and nothing magically is going to fix it. So it's a combination of watching value, but we're not going to win solely on price. We will leverage our innovation as a means to continue to bring good items into the marketplace at the right price point that allow us to outperform peers over the long haul. It feels like an appropriate strategy in this environment.
p. 10 · Read in context →
The continuous-improvement program sized: historically about $20 million a year, now targeted above that.
David A. Ciesinski (President and CEO): What I'm prepared to share is if you go back to the early days of our continuous improvement program before COVID and before ERP, we used to talk about saving $20 million a year. Then we suspended that as we focused on construction projects and ERP, and now we've brought that back. We've taken the target up that our team is pursuing north of what we used to pursue and we feel like it's achievable.
p. 11 · Read in context →
An innovation with IP behind it — why patented gluten-free Texas Toast is incremental rather than cannibalizing.
David A. Ciesinski (President and CEO): Maybe starting first with the product: it's amazing. It's a product that we developed and w actually got a patent on the technology, because if you've tried gluten free bread products, a lot of times they're very spongy or they have an off note in the flavor. These taste nearly identical to our current item, and that's part of the reason why we're so excited about it. Versus private label, this is one where I think we're somewhat isolated. For us, these are consumers that were gluten intolerant or had celiacs where they weren't able to buy our products previously. So for us, it's incremental. The items that are out there today, both the brands and the private label, generally don't taste very good. I've spent a lot of time in the last quarter sampling Texas Toast, gluten free and non-gluten free as we've gotten the products ready for launch, and these are really great products. I'm thrilled to have IP and the flavor. The pricing on this thing is very much in line with similar gluten free products out there. So I think we can win on taste and on value. We're also looking for a platform opportunity to potentially use this technology or similar technologies we're patenting to look for other gluten free items, because it's a very big addressable opportunity that we just haven't played in before.
p. 11 · Read in context →
Q3 FY2024 Earnings Call (Lancaster Colony) — Q3 FY2024
A post-mortem on two acquisitions that failed, plus the clearest statement of how licensed brands are actually managed. · Open the full transcript →
The structural hedge between segments — and why slowing restaurant traffic generates innovation calls rather than losses.
Dave Ciesinski (President and CEO): One is, as consumers become concerned about away from home dining and they eat at home, it typically endures to the benefit of our portfolio. As we look at what's happening away from home though, importantly, as traffic starts to moderate at any one of our concepts, or really any operator's concept period, they typically will back off and say, what do we need to do to drive traffic back into these stores? And it really creates an intense period of innovation for a lot of these operators. And if passed this prologue, we get those calls, and we work with them on signature items, signature sauces that they can advertise to drive traffic back into the store. What I would share with you, Connor, is that, we're already starting to see that activity happen and we're already engaged in those sorts of discussions with our operators.
p. 7 · Read in context →
How commodity deflation gets recycled into trade spend, and why household penetration is treated as an annuity.
Dave Ciesinski (President and CEO): A couple of things that we'll share with you. Tom, I think nicely pointed out that we are seeing favorable PNOC as commodities have backed off. That's given us the incremental firepower to step into the consumer part of the business, the retail business, and to do a couple of things. I mentioned the fact that in these times consumers take themselves off autopilot and they start to look at more carefully what they're buying. In some cases it's a price point, in other cases it might be a gap versus private label or even a promoted price point. And what we're doing is using the benefit that we're seeing from the PNOC deflation to strategically invest back to make sure that as consumers come off autopilot and they're making these choices, we're still getting converted into the basket. So that was really one component of the spend. But the other thing is, really as you look longer term, we have some great brands in our portfolio, both our own core brands and our licensed brands that we think have the opportunity to drive significantly more household penetration. So some of the investment that we're driving this period behind a range of brands to include things like Chick-fil-A and others were intended to help us drive household penetration, because if we can get it into the basket and we can get it at home and get consumers to try it, our repeat rates on these products are extremely high and we think it's in our strategic best interest to continue to drive that process. So really two components of what we're doing ultimately funded by PNOC deflation. One part is just being really shrewd about managing our price points. But the second is, while we have the opportunity, let's invest to drive that penetration, because we know once we get them converted, it becomes — if we treat them right, it becomes an annuity.
p. 7 · Read in context →
Foodservice concentration and the chicken megatrend — why customer mix, not share gains, drove the growth.
Dave Ciesinski (President and CEO): Maybe I'll start by setting the context. About 75% of our business are large national chain restaurant accounts. And we enjoyed growth in the period both on the branded side, which is our own products, where we are picking up share. This would be Marzetti items sold up and down the street. As we look at what's happening on the restaurant side, what I can tell you is that, we continue to believe that we have a favorable portfolio of customers that's allowing us to grow better than the average today. That's what's really driving it. As far as sort of an account by account basis, are we picking up share, are we not? There really haven't been many changes there. And I think really the bigger point that we're seeing, and then Jim, this is an important way to think about it going forward is that, we continue to believe that chicken is having its moment. If you look at the mix of growth that's happening in QSR today, it's really focused around concepts that are selling chicken and whether it's Chick-fil-A which has been doing it enormously well since 1982 or any one of a number of other operators. That seems to be where the growth is. If you sort of pull apart and we have the data, we looked at sort of the share of pizza and burgers and chicken. Even if you look 52-week, 12-week, and 4-week, chicken continues to drive share even within the year. In one of your reports, you did a nice job of pointing out the long-term trends towards chicken. We're seeing that even in a little bit more of a challenging environment continuing to play out. And we believe that we sit in a good spot. We have the right capabilities and those are capabilities we want to continue to leverage with those operators so they can offer consumer relevant items to their customers.
p. 10 · Read in context →
The headroom argument for licensed brands, measured in household penetration rather than shelf space.
Dave Ciesinski (President and CEO): I mentioned that if you look at Chick-fil-A, one of the important points we would point to, on a 52-week basis today, Chickfil-A's household penetration is only 10.5%. Our own New York Bakery garlic bread is almost a 19% household penetration. So we feel like there continues to be a lot of opportunity to drive household penetration. If you look at the number of consumers that visit Chick-fil-A restaurants, I mean, it's probably three times what that number is, if not higher than that. So again, just taking that brand close in, we believe there's plenty of room to continue to build household penetration on the core. We think that Chick-fil-A brand has big shoulders and there are other sauces and dressings that we could launch behind that.
p. 12 · Read in context →
The brand-management playbook applied brand by brand: penetration for one, assortment for another, sizing for a third.
Dave Ciesinski (President and CEO): Really early days, we launched into Italian. Then we moved into ranch. As we entered into ranch, we were able to get more facings on the shelf, which improved velocity for all of the items. We came out behind that with Caesar, which has performed very, very well. And then most recently out with a Balsamic. So in some brands, it's just driving penetration and getting sizing right. I think that's the case with Chick-fil-A, because that brand just has big shoulders, like a Heinz Ketchup, for example. In the case of an Olive Garden, the way you manage a brand like that is, you drive assortment. And we think that the Olive Garden brand continues to have more room to continue to grow as well. Buffalo Wild Wings, it's kind of a combination of the two. We think there's more different flavor dimensions that we can go out with, but most recently now we're taking some of their best selling items and we're converting those to larger sizes. So whether Tom or me or any one of a number of people on our team, we all grew up managing big brands. I spent time at Heinz and Kraft and worked on Blue Box and Heinz Ketchup. And most of our team comes from bigger companies like that. And in essence, what we're doing is we're using the same sort of playbook tailored for each of these brands to help them uniquely grow. But with our existing partners, we think that there's plenty more room to continue to grow.
p. 13 · Read in context →
More calls
Q1 FY2026 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2026 · 6 pages · Go here for the mechanics of Foodservice pricing: quarterly mark-to-market on key ingredients across the 75% of the segment that is national accounts, plus the five-year arc of the Chick-fil-A license. · Open →
Q3 FY2025 Earnings Call — Q3 FY2025 · 8 pages · The best competitive walk-through in the set: private-label threat category by category, why a yellow shelf tag fails the return test while an end cap does not, and what the club channel is worth to a mature sauce brand. · Open →
Q2 FY2025 Earnings Call — Q2 FY2025 · 11 pages · The rationale for buying the Atlanta sauce and dressing plant — capacity, customer proximity and business continuity — and the pension termination that distorted reported EPS. · Open →
Q1 FY2025 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2025 · 12 pages · Read this for why Foodservice segment profit lagged its volume — labor, outsourcing and trade-system investment — and how a twelve-year-old Olive Garden license still growing is used as a pitch to new partners. · Open →
Q2 FY2024 Earnings Call (Lancaster Colony) — Q2 FY2024 · 11 pages · The origin story of the licensing model, from Olive Garden onward, and a rare look at surgical price-point management: the Olive Garden 16-ounce entry price, the Sister Schubert’s promoted price point, and roll down-weighting. · Open →
Q1 FY2024 Earnings Call (Lancaster Colony) — Q1 FY2024 · 7 pages · The moment the inflation cycle turned neutral: management explains why retailers were asking for promotion rather than list-price cuts, and what that meant for the margin outlook. · Open →
Q4 FY2023 Earnings Call (Lancaster Colony) — Q4 FY2023 · 15 pages · The peak of the pricing-led era, and the cost of building it: SAP go-live distortions and Horse Cave start-up costs that held back gross profit. · Open →
Q4 FY2021 Earnings Call (Lancaster Colony) — Q4 FY2021 · 13 pages · The baseline for the pricing playbook: how retail price increases were negotiated ahead of the 2022 inflation spike, and how Foodservice contracts adjust for commodity and freight. · Open →