Lou Whiteman

I think it kind of makes sense that if the consumer is stressed, they still do...

planned night outs or special occasion and you still on the fly, but that middle ground where you could go home and cook or to save a little money, but you know, you may just get carry out or something that that fast casual is what's suffering.

I do wonder though, I mean, that implies it's short term.

I do wonder if some of this is, is we're just so saturated.

We've talked about this before.

This category didn't exist when I was growing up.

It is from scratch and it has been nothing but growth.

Maybe we've reached the natural limit to this market and we have a lot of competitors here.

Maybe this speaks to a longer-term problem.

What I do know, fourth straight quarter of traffic declines.

The good news is, they are forecasting flat same-store sales in 2026, which would be better than down.

Down in 2025, Travis, last time they were down was the E. coli scandal a decade ago.

It was that time because they were young.

Here's my question.

They're talking about growth overseas.

That's the big thing.

Maybe Middle East wants this, Singapore, South Korea, and yes, Mexico.

I don't know if that's going to be the path forward the way from, say, 2016 to 2025.

things improve, you're still paying 30 times forward earnings for a mature business, period.

I'd rather get a burrito bowl right now from them than get a share of the stock.