And do you see a need to respond to the more aggressive couponing, discounting and messaging around that within a mid-scale at that concept?
Andrew H. Madsen
Well, we have three broad filters for when we think about our promotion plans and discounting and Clarence touched on these. We want to make sure that anything we do in that area contributes to profitable sales growth, maintains the integrity of our business model, and maintains the integrity of our brands going forward. And as we look at what we did in fiscal 2009, all of our brands, Red Lobster included, maintained their competitive level of out-performance of the industry in same-restaurant sales and so we don’t see a…as well as contributing to broadening the appeal of their brand, so we don’t see a need to dramatically change what we did in the advertising and promotion side. In fact, we’re not sure that would be the best thing for our brands long-term in any event.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Matthew DiFrisco of Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
Matthew DiFrisco – Oppenheimer & Co
Thank you very much. Clarence, I just wanted to get a little clarification on your guidance with respect to, you said that you are being somewhat conservative here but can you comment a little bit on did trends get worse as far as June or the underlying consumer trends you’re seeing? And could you put that in context with what we lapped a year ago with the influence from the rebate checks? Are you seeing as we get through the end of June the rebate checks having potentially less of an effect than they may have had in the beginning of May?
Clarence Otis
Yeah Matthew this is Clarence. I would say that we are not going to comment specifically on June but if we look at our fourth quarter, so March, April, May, each month was roughly about the same. I mean, when you look at the industry, May was slightly weaker but a lot of that I think had to do with the rebate checks year-ago. It was hard for us to get a real handle on what the contribution was. We talked at that time that maybe it added about a point to the comp side. Year-ago June, I don’t know that we saw a whole lot from rebate checks because June was also the month where gas prices spiked north of $4, and so I think whatever positive effect stimulus checks may have had, it was offset by that year-ago. And so as we think about the next 12 months, we are looking at what we’ve seen the last three to six, which has basically been, sales at about the same levels really. I mean, there’s a little bit of variation from month-to-month but that hadn’t changed all that much and so that’s what we are looking at as opposed to any deterioration in June. I think when you look at our brands, May, Red Lobster would have continued to outperform at about the level that it’s been outperforming at. Olive Garden, there was a little bit of shrink but a lot of that is just because they had such a strong year-ago May where I think they were up 11% on a same-restaurant, oh, I’m sorry, up 11 percentage points versus Knapp-Track which was fairly significant and it’s comp was about 11%, yeah.
Matthew DiFrisco – Oppenheimer & Co
Okay, and then also can you give us a little detail as far as what are you seeing regionally? There has been some industry commentary that Florida may have rebounded. Are you seeing any of that disproportionately recovering faster than say the rest of the country, or California particular as well?
Clarence Otis
I’m going to let Brad answer that one because I haven’t seen the numbers as recently as he has.
Brad Richmond
Hey Matt., this is Brad here. I’d say just broadly when we look at it in terms of absolute performance versus year-ago, the weakness still continues in the western part of the United States, the Pacific Coast and Arizona, Nevada. The stronger areas continued to be on a year-over-year basis the upper Midwest, kind of through that area and in the mid-Atlantic. If you look at how it’s trending from quarter to quarter, there’s not a whole lot of change. You specifically asked about Florida. You are seeing a little bit of improvement there but nothing significant. Probably the more notable one, and I mentioned this last time, was that Texas, which continues to be strong, but it’s trending down there as well. I think that’s the more notable trends that we see.
Operator
Our next question in the queue comes from the line of David Tarantino of Robert W. Baird. Please go ahead.
David Tarantino - Robert W. Baird
Good morning. Just a quick clarification question on the overall cost outlook for 2010, I was wondering if you could share what the overall net cost inflation or deflation might look like for the year when you add up all the components?
Brad Richmond
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