BJ’s Restaurants continues traffic-led growth in Q2

BJ's Restaurants' momentum continues to accelerate as the casual-dining company reported 6.5% same-store sales growth for the second quarter ended June 30, driven mainly by 8.3% traffic growth. CEO Lyle Tick emphasized in Thursday's earnings call that BJ's continues to outperform its peers in the casual-dining sector, with eight consecutive quarters of sales and traffic growth. He attributes the company's new marketing strategy and menu innovation to the ongoing quarterly wins.

"While the environment remains dynamic, we enter Q3 with strong positive momentum, clear plans, and significant outperformance versus Black Box casual dining benchmarks," Tick said during Thursday's earnings call.

Menu innovation is an ongoing strategy for BJ's, with highlights including the Biscoff Pizookie, which doubled Pizookie purchases over the past year, as well as the Pizookie meal deal. Tick said that the company is testing out a premium tier of the Pizookie meal deal to drive more engagement and encourage trade-ups to increase average ticket.

The company is also continuing to refresh its main menu with a focus on the sandwich and burger categories. Executives stated that the menu innovation brings in more customers, leading to higher sales and average ticket.

Another focus is the new marketing strategy, which shifted expenditures from Q1 to Q2 to support the "high-volume celebration season" of the second quarter.

BJ's continues to invest in its ongoing growth plan with new leadership hires like the recent hiring of brand president Monika Saxena from Darden Restaurants and chief technology officer Birju Prakash Amin from Taco Bell. The company is planning two new unit openings later this year, and will continue to build its pipeline with a new prototype, allowing flexibility in figuring out the right size store for different markets.

"Two years into our journey to unlock the full potential of BJ's Restaurants and Brewhouse, our performance speaks to the progress we've made," Tick said.

For the second quarter ended June 30, BJ's Restaurants reported a 6.4% increase in revenues to $388.9 million, up from $365.6 million the same quarter the year prior. The company reported net income of $18.8 million or $0.86 per share for the second quarter, down from $22.2 million or $0.97 per share the same quarter the year prior.

BJ's operates 219 restaurants across its portfolio.

Contact Joanna at joanna.fantozzi@informa.com