COLUMBUS Ohio Max & Erma's Inc., operator or franchisor of 101 namesake casual-dining restaurants, posted a first-quarter profit versus a net loss in the same period a year ago, despite a 3.6-percent, year-over-year decline in revenues to $55.5 million.
The company said its improved restaurant margins and a 6.3-percent drop in total operating expenses led to a five-fold increase in operating income, to $1.8 million from $331,000 a year earlier, which helped its bottom line.
For the first-quarter ended Feb. 18, net income totaled $749,331, or 29 cents per share, versus a net loss of $31,756, or 1 cent per share, in the year earlier first quarter.
Max & Erma's said a 3.7-percent drop in same-store sales was "basically" responsible for the quarter's revenue decline. It said its customers felt "the effects of a soft economy," and that winter weather in the last weeks of the quarter cost the company $400,000 in lost sales.
Max & Erma's added that its newest prototype, which opened in late fiscal 2006, in Springboro, Ohio, generated annualized sales that were more than $500,000 above the chain average. The three restaurants that have been remodeled to the new prototype look, prior to the start of the first quarter, reported same-store sales that were 5 percentage points better than the chain average, the company also said.