A quarter of The Cheesecake Factory Inc.’s restaurants have reopened dining rooms as of June 2 as local coronavirus restrictions allow, the company said Tuesday.
The Calabasas Hills, Calif.-based company, which also owns North Italia and a number of other casual-dining and fast-casual brands, said that it continued to reopen dining rooms “with limited capacity in accordance with local mandates.”
The company expects to have about 65% of dining rooms across its concepts that closed due to COVID-19 reopened with limited capacity by mid-June, including an expected 124 Cheesecake Factory restaurants.
The company, in a business update, said the reopened Cheesecake Factory restaurants have recaptured, on average, about 75% of prior-year sales levels.
“For The Cheesecake Factory restaurants that are continuing to operate an off-premise only model at present, current weekly off-premise sales would equate to nearly $4 million per unit on an annualized basis, on average,” it said.
Same-store sales for the fiscal second quarter to-date through May 31 were down about 63%, “including the impact of 87 full or partial closures due to demonstrations across the United States this past weekend,” the company said.
In May, The Cheesecake Factory told investors that it anticipated its large capacity dining rooms to be an advantage as restaurants reopened for dine-in service amid coronavirus restrictions.
The large size of Cheesecake Factory units — between 7,500 and 10,000 square feet — and “our flexible seating layouts will uniquely enable us to ensure ample levels of social distancing while maintaining sufficient seating capacity to generate what we believe could be meaningful sales volumes,” the company said.
For the first quarter ended March 31, Cheesecake Factory’s swung to a loss of $3.9 million, or nine cents a share, from a profit of $27 million, or 60 cents a share, in the prior-year period. Revenues rose 2.6% to $615.1 million from $599.5 million in the same quarter last year, reflecting acquisitions.
Same-store sales at Cheesecake Factory restaurants declined 12.9% in the first quarter with the COVID-19 impact.
The Cheesecake Factory owns and operates 294 restaurants throughout the United States and Canada under brands that include The Cheesecake Factory, North Italia and a collection within the Fox Restaurant Concepts subsidiary. The company licenses 26 Cheesecake units internationally.
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