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Good morning. My name is Chris, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Conference Call for Recipe Unlimited Corporation 2021 Third quarter results. [Operator Instructions] Today's conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]Before turning the meeting over to management, please be advised that this call contains certain forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations and are subject to a number of uncertainties, risks and other factors, which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Recipe to be materially different. Further information identifying risks, uncertainties and assumptions and additional information on certain non-IFRS measures referred to in this call can be found in the company's Management Discussion and Analysis and the Annual Information Form available on SEDAR.I'll now turn the meeting over to Frank Hennessey, Chief Executive Officer of Recipe Unlimited Corporation. Mr. Hennessey, you may begin your conference.
Thank you, Chris, and Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining today's conference call. On the call with me today is Ken Grondin, our Chief Financial Officer. And we are once again presenting via webcast. So if you're following along, Ken and I will do our best to call up the slide numbers as we go. And I think we'll start on Slide Page 3.So as you may have seen from our release last night, we had a good quarter. Our teams and our franchise partners are continuing to operate in a difficult environment and they have proven their ability to adapt quickly to changing conditions and patterns. Total System Sales in the third quarter were $834.2 million compared to $676.4 million in 2020, representing a year-over-year increase of 23%. You will note that we are also showing 2019 as a comparable.Our EBITDA for the quarter increased 18% to $50.3 million compared to Q3 2020 and even surpassed EBITDA of $49.5 million prior to the pandemic in Q3 2019. And we achieved these results with significantly less reliance on subsidies than in previous quarters. We believe that these results demonstrate the resilience of our business model, including the disciplined focus on our 4 Pillars and our agility to quickly pivot to the changing condition and customers' preferences.Turning to Slide 4. All regions of the country returned to close or slightly above 2019 levels with the exception of Ontario, which you may recall, still had mandated dining room closures for the first few weeks of Q3. For the quarter, 31% of our operating weeks were impacted by some level of restriction.On Slide 5, our e-commerce business continue to grow, even with the return of dining rooms. E-comm represented 18% of our total restaurant sales in the quarter and was up 17% versus Q3 2020. An important note is that 67% of our e-commerce business is coming from our own first-party apps, created by our in-house development teams. E-comm is being led by Swiss Chalet, where 43% of their total sales were digital, followed by St-Hubert at 32% and East Side Mario's at 22%. We believe that Swiss Chalet is the leading full-service restaurant company in North America for digital. Based on the current trend, we expect that e-commerce sales for Recipe could surpass $700 million this year, which would place Recipe in the top 10 e-commerce companies in Canada.Turning to Slide 6. This week we announced that we had closed on the acquisition of the minority position and the original restaurants in Fresh. Fresh is a vegan concept with an exceptional reputation in the GTA. This cuisine does not target only vegans, but instead, it's food and beverage that everyone can enjoy. It is very timely and on plan with how many Canadians, especially younger Canadians choose to eat. This menu appeals to vegans, flexitarians or anyone who simply wants a great tasty meal. We know the potential of Fresh since we have been operating them at Ultimate Kitchens since the very beginning. In the Ultimate Kitchen, Fresh sales are equivalent to that of Swiss Chalet, which demonstrates its future potential. We are looking forward to our new flagship full-service Fresh opening next month at Sherway Mall, along with an additional location on the Danforth coming early in the new year.Turning to Slide Page 7. The acquisition of Fresh, combined with our recent acquisition of the minority interest in Burger's Priest, our earlier acquisition of Blanco Cantina and our exit from the 1909 joint venture now has Recipe fully owning all of our businesses. The simplicity of ownership structure should enable us to accelerate the growth of these brands. We believe that Fresh, Burger's Priest, Blanco and Ultimate Kitchen offer an exciting new lineup of brands that can deliver significant future new restaurant units as we expand them across Canada. And speaking of Ultimate Kitchen, we will be opening 3 new Ultimate Kitchens in Q4 and the beginning of Q1 and having the works development plans for significantly more units. We still believe that Ultimate Kitchen offers a great alternative for customers to access their favorite brands in a more convenient way.As we move forward with our portfolio, we will continue to focus our business and acquisitions on large and dominant businesses that generate significant free cash flow and younger brands that can offer a long runway of new restaurant growth. All sectors will continue to be powered by our strong central shared service teams that bring economies of scale for our franchisees and for Recipe.At this time, I'll turn it over to Ken for a review of our financial results.
Thank you, Frank, and Good morning, everyone. At this time, I'd ask everyone to flip to Slide #9. For the first part of our financial review, I will focus on Recipe's 2021 third quarter consolidated results. And I will finish with a summary of our segmented business performance as reported last night and posted on SEDAR.Total gross revenue for the third quarter of 2021 was $308.1 million compared to $243.3 million in the third quarter of 2020 and $309 million in the third quarter of 2019. Year-to-date, gross revenue was $709.8 million in 2021 compared to $653.6 million in 2020 and $925.5 million in 2019. The increase in gross revenue for the quarter from 2020 reflects the easing of government-mandated restrictions and the return of guests to our dining rooms. The decrease in gross revenue from 2019 relates to the impact of dining room closures at the beginning of Q3 2021, which impacted 31.4% of our operating weeks in the quarter. This was partially offset by higher off-premise System Sales in both our corporate and franchise restaurants.Operating EBITDA for the third quarter of 2021 was $50.3 million compared to $42.5 million in Q3 of 2020 and $49.5 million in 2019. Year-to-date 2021, operating EBITDA was $104.7 million compared to $78.8 million in 2020 and $155.5 million in 2019. Operating EBITDA increases compared to 2020 were driven by increased System Sales, partially offset by lower government subsidies and an increase in food costs, in particular, in our retail segment. Our operating EBITDA results in Q3 2021 demonstrate the earnings ability of Recipe's improved portfolio mix of restaurants when we are able to open without restrictions even as subsidies reduce.Adjusted earnings was $27.6 million in the quarter compared to $16.1 million in the prior year and $19.5 million in 2019. Year-to-date, adjusted net earnings were $35 million compared to $29.3 million in 2020 and $60.9 million in 2019. The increases from 2020 were driven by increases in System Sales, partially offset by increases in variable costs as a result of higher System Sales and lower government subsidies.Adjusted diluted earnings per share increased to $0.47 in the third quarter compared to $0.28 in 2020 and $0.31 in 2019. Year-to-date, adjusted diluted earnings per share was $0.66 compared to $0.52 in 2020 and $0.96 in 2019.Now turning to Slide #10. Turning to segmented results for the quarter and year-to-date. Total System Sales for our corporate restaurants declined from $195.1 million in Q3 2019 to $127.5 million in Q3 2020 and increased to $166.4 million in the third quarter of 2021. The increase of 34.4% from Q3 2020 was driven by higher dining room sales as a result of the easing of the majority of COVID-19 restrictions and higher off-premise System Sales in the corporate segment. The decrease from 2019 reflects the effects of the remaining COVID-19 related restrictions, which impacted 31.4% of the company's operating weeks in Q3 2021.Year-to-date, corporate restaurant System Sales declined from $580.1 million in 2019 to $319.7 million in 2020, an increase to $333.8 million in 2021. The year-to-date increase from 2020 was driven by more corporate restaurants after the Burger's Priest acquisition, offset by early Q3 dining room restrictions in Ontario. The year-to-date decrease from 2019 was driven by the effects of government-mandated temporary restaurant closures and restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in March 2020.Contribution from corporate restaurants was $16.1 million for the third quarter of 2021 compared to $12.8 million in 2020 and $16.8 million in 2019. Year-to-date contribution from corporate restaurants was $22.8 million in 2021 compared to a loss of $1.1 million in 2020 and a contribution of $55.8 million in 2019. The increases of $3.3 million for the quarter and $23.9 million year-to-date in corporate restaurant contribution compared to 2020 were driven by higher corporate restaurant sales from a stronger mix of corporate restaurants after the Burger's Priest acquisition and after the closure of underperforming locations since 2019, partially offset by a corresponding increase in the cost of sales and a decrease in government subsidies as a result of higher revenues.System Sales from franchise restaurants declined from $597.1 million in Q3 2019 to $462.6 million in Q3 2020, an increase of $574.4 million in Q3 2021. The increase from Q3 2020 was driven by the return of guests to our dining rooms as a result of the easing of restrictions and strong off-premise System Sales. Year-to-date System Sales from franchise restaurants declined from $1,774.3 million in 2019 to $1,237.3 million in 2020 and increased to $1,323.1 million in 2021. The increase from 2020 was driven by higher off-premise System Sales. Similar to the corporate restaurant segment, System Sales from franchise restaurants decreased from 2019 as a result of government-mandated temporary closures, which began in spring of 2020.The total contribution from franchise restaurants decreased from $26.1 million in Q3 2019 to $17.1 million in Q3 2020 and increased to $26.6 million in Q3 2021. Year-to-date contribution from franchise restaurants decreased from $78.5 million in 2019 to $48.1 million in 2020 and increased to $59.9 million in '21. Contribution from franchise restaurants as a percentage of franchise System Sales was 4.6% in Q3 2021 compared to 3.7% in Q3 2020 and 4.4% in Q3 2019. The increase in the franchise contribution rate from Q3 2020 and Q3 2019 reflects the impact of the 2020 Recipe COVID royalty subsidy program, which came in effect on March 15, 2020 and ended on December 27, 2020, and also reflects the overall health of the company's restaurant network and the success of the company's restaurant portfolio improvement efforts, which reduced the number of franchise restaurants on royalty and rent assistance.Turning to Slide #11. And turning to the Retail and Catering segment. Retail sales reported within the Retail and Catering segment relate to the manufacture and distribution of fresh, frozen and nonperishable branded and private label food products. Catering sales relate to the food and beverage sales from Recipe's Catering divisions, operating under the Pickle Barrel and Marigolds and Onions banners. System Sales from Retail and Catering division in Q3 were $93.4 million compared to $86.3 million in Q3 2020 and $76.9 million in Q3 2019, representing an increase of $7.1 million or 8.2% compared to Q3 2020 and an increase of $16.5 million or 21.5% compared to Q3 2019. Year-to-date, System Sales from Retail and Catering division were $268.3 million in 2021 compared to $245.3 million in 2020 and $224.1 million in 2019, representing an increase of $23 million or 9.4% from 2020 and $44.2 million or 19.7% from 2019. The year-over-year sales growth demonstrates the strong consumer demand for Recipe branded retail offerings sold in grocery channels and also reflects a moderate sales recovery in the Catering segment.Contribution from the Retail and Catering division in Q3 was $8.2 million compared to $12.6 million in Q3 2020, representing a decrease of $4.4 million. Year-to-date contribution was $22.6 million in 2021 compared to $35.3 million in 2020, representing a decrease of $12.7 million. The contribution decreases in the Retail and Catering division were driven by changes in product sales mix, higher food input costs overall and lower federal wage subsidies, partially offset by an increase in sales volumes to grocery customers.The company continues to execute its growth strategy in the Retail segment, which includes growing its market share in a number of Retail categories. During 2021, the company experienced strong growth in a number of categories. The frozen and fresh rig category, in particular, has experienced higher-than-anticipated growth. The ribs category traditionally has lower gross margins than other grocery items, and the ribs margins have been especially challenged in 2021 because of higher protein input costs compared to prior years because of global supply chain issues. Gross margins in the Retail segment are expected to normalize as certain input costs recover and selling prices to grocers are adjusted.Turning to the central operations segment. Central operations segment sales consist of sales generated by Recipe's off-premise call center business, representing fees generated from delivery, call-ahead, web and mobile-based meal orders. Central operations segment EBITDA consists of franchise fees, property and equipment rent and vendor volume rebates, and it is reduced by the net central overhead costs net of federal wage subsidies. Central contribution is also reduced by royalties paid to the Keg Royalties Income fund.Central segment contribution before the net royalty expense was $2.5 million in the third quarter of 2021 compared to $2 million in 2020 and $1.9 million in 2019. Compared to 2020, Q3 2021 central segment's contribution increased by $500,000. Year-to-date, central segment contribution was $4 million in 2021 compared to $1 million in 2020, representing an increase of $3 million. The improvement year-to-date is related to the growth in off-premise fee revenues, higher rental income, higher vendor volume rebates, partially offset by lower government subsidies.If we can now turn to Slide #12. During the 39 weeks ended September 26, 2021, management successfully opened 14 new restaurants, closed and exited 30 locations and sold 41 locations as part of the milestone sale. The company ended the quarter with 1,284 units compared to 1,341 restaurants at the end of 2020. Unlike others within the restaurant industry, Recipe's restaurant closures were part of a pre-COVID long-term strategic plan where management identified locations that no longer fit the long-term plan for the company and/or restaurants that were under-performing before COVID. The corporate restaurant locations that no longer fit the long-term strategic plan of the company, management is taking steps to exit these sites. For under-performing franchise locations, the company will work with franchisees to help them achieve sustainable success. Since 2019, Recipe has opened 46 locations and closed 94 locations to strengthen our portfolio and to improve the quality of our sales, especially as we reopen and reengage with our new and long-term guests.As Frank mentioned, the company continues to execute on its brand portfolio improvement plans, which includes the expansion of new concepts such as Ultimate Kitchens, the acquisition of young brands that offered new restaurant growth opportunities like Burger's Priest and Fresh and may include the divestiture of under-performing brands and joint ventures that no longer fit our portfolio strategy.During 2021, the company successfully divested of the Milestones brand and certain Original Joe's joint ventures, and we acquired the full ownership interest of the Burger's Priest brand in corporate locations. The company continue to execute its strategic plan subsequent to the third quarter of 2021, with the sale of its investment in the 1909 Taverne Moderne joint venture and the acquisition of all the remaining Fresh Plant Powered branded locations. The clarity of ownership with regards to Burger's Priest, Fresh, Blanco and Anejo allows the company to more aggressively expand these concepts over the next 5 years.Turning to net debt on Slide #13. The company's net debt at Q4 2019 prior to the pandemic, was $439 million, which left the company with available liquidity of $359.6 million. Through prudent cash management, the company has maintained a stable net debt balance throughout the pandemic. Our strong financial performance this quarter also allowed us to repay $50 million of long-term debt in Q3 2021, bringing our net debt balance down to $424 million and our available liquidity, up to $435.7 million at the end of Q3 2021. It should be noted that the cash proceeds on the Milestones sale was received just after the end of Q3.Now turning to Slide #14. For Q3 2021, the company's free cash flow before growth CapEx, dividends and share repurchases was $36.9 million compared to $33.4 million in Q3 2020 and $36.1 million in Q3 2019. Free cash flow per share before growth CapEx, dividends and NCIB on a diluted basis was $0.63 per share in Q3 2021 compared to $0.59 in Q3 2020 and $0.58 in Q3 2019. The company will continue to prudently manage its cash flows and liquidity to protect the short-term and long-term health of Recipe, its brands and franchisees and to prepare for the return to opportunistic and strategic growth and enhance shareholder returns.This concludes the financial commentary of the call. I'll now turn the discussion back to Frank.
Thanks, Ken. And as Ken mentioned, sales growth in our Retail segment in Q3 was led by ribs. The rib category is up 46% year-to-date versus last year. The incredible success of the sale of ribs is offset by the fact that our rib portfolio operates at a lower margin rate versus other retail SKUs and has been subjected to higher commodity pricing.We're going to continue to work on improving our margin levels in the Retail sector, while also continuing the development of new products. In Q3, we launched more new SKUs for Retail. Products included St-Hubert Piri-Piri chicken wings, Montana's meat pies, St-Hubert meatless pies and St-Hubert cream fudge. It takes approximately 3 years for grocery SKUs to hit their sales maturity. So we expect all new products launched this year to continue to build. Already SKUs launched in Q1 of this year have surpassed $5 million in sales.Turning to Slide 17. I want to touch for a moment on the topic of labor and inflation. Regardless of the external operating environment, we are committed to adhering to our 4 Pillar strategy of delivering great-tasting food and drink, exceptional services, value for the experience and an ambiance that guests want to come back to. We have made progress on the labor front in Q3 and have reduced our vacancies through hiring of over 1,200 teammates, close to half of our target. We have implemented multiple programs to ensure that we fill all vacancies.We also want to ensure that we are hiring the best talent available. We are utilizing various training tools to help guide our franchisees on best practices for recruiting, and we are accessing the foreign worker program. It is, of course, critical that when we hire new teammates, we train them so that they can execute on our promise to our guests and that we can give them, the new teammate, a great and rewarding experience. Giving our teammates a great experience helps increase retention. And one way we do that is by delivering engaging training content. Our e-learning investments in gamification allows us to deliver engaging fun content that has proven efficacy and can reach any teammate anywhere from the convenience of their own personal phone.The shortage of labor in the global supply chain and the disruption that it is creating is certainly driving inflation across multiple sectors for both goods and services. Our significant scale and the great work done by our supply chain teams are helping to ensure that we maintain continuity for our restaurants, albeit even with these advantages, we have still experienced some spot outages of a minor nature.From a pricing perspective, our scale advantages are still allowing us to price slightly below inflation, even though in some brands, we have taken significant pricing from a historical perspective. However, there are certain inflationary pressures that are beyond our ability to leverage. 2 examples of this are both government related. The first is the decision by the government controlled dairy board to increase prices by 8% and everything from milk to butter to cheese.The second is the surprise announcement on Tuesday from Doug Ford's conservative Ontario government to increase the minimum wage rate to $15 effective January 1. Now let me be clear, we are not against a $15 minimum wage rate. In the majority of cases, we pay well beyond that rate. What we are opposed to is an increase to the server wage rate by 20% to $15 per hour. The average server in a full-service restaurant currently makes between $30 to $50 an hour with Tips. Something Mr. Ford's government would be aware of if they engage in dialogue with industry. This decision is unwise. It is unnecessary and is certainly ill-timed.We are cognizant that prices are up everywhere, not just at restaurants. Inflation will impact those consumers with lower income disproportionately, and as these guests that make up a large portion of guests that choose casual brands. We will continue to be responsible with our pricing, take the long view and find the balance between creating an experience in our restaurants that appeal to guests and that they value with ensuring that we do our best to protect our margins for our franchisees.And finally, turning to Slide 18. During the past 20 months, we have taken significant steps to strengthen our overall business. Some of the initiatives include streamlining menus, improving our digital platform, launching new retail SKUs, exploring new channels such as off-premise kitchens and testing higher efficiency kitchen equipment that is better for the environment and saves labor. We have also made strategic changes to our brand portfolio and restaurant mix and have restructured many of our joint venture restaurants to either full corporate or franchise ownership, and we divested of certain nonstrategic investments.Further, we have paid down debt and once again restored our balance sheet to its pre-COVID strength. All of these changes have been done in order to further strengthen our business model to both sustain our base and accelerate growth. But the most important investment has been our investment in our people, our franchisees and industry.So I'm very pleased to announce that our actions during the pandemic has been recognized by the foodservice and hospitality industry, and in Q3, Recipe was named the recipient of the prestigious Pinnacle Award as Company of the Year. With so many people in our industry going above and beyond during these very long and trying 20 months, we are humbled and grateful to be acknowledged in this manner. Thank you to the Recipe team, our franchise partners and our suppliers for your continued commitment.And with that, I'll turn it back to Chris to take any questions.
[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from John Zamparo, CIBC.
I wanted to start on the Fresh deal, congrats on that. Can you talk about the 4-wall metrics on those restaurants, either sales or margins? And how would you describe your plans to grow the restaurant count of that brand?
A good question. There's a lot of things that have appealed to Fresh. And one is it's very much an omnichannel business. AUVs prior to COVID were very significant in the -- and don't normally give these ranges, but in excess of $4 million, but they have a good balance of dine-in and a retail component. And again, as I said, we've been operating them in our Ultimate Kitchen since the very first one we ever opened and see the strength in that on that side of the business. So it's also really timely.I mean in the way that consumers are choosing these days, there's a huge appeal for this type of offering. And so I think one of the things that is giving us a sense of urgency is really first-mover advantage because there's very few concepts, if any, that are like Fresh, particularly in this country, and there's very few in the U.S. as well. So we're excited to get going and grow the business across the country.
Understood. That's helpful. On the Ultimate Kitchens, has there been any change in unit economics as dining restrictions have been removed? And I think you've previously said build-out costs are around $1 million and average volumes around $2 million. Any changes there?
Yes. Our AUVs are a little bit higher than that on Ultimate Kitchens. I mean, you get -- you definitely get seasonality in the business. We experienced that last year. So as it gets a little colder, that will probably -- or sales will go up. It really gets into the mix of the brands that we put in there. We kind of continue to play around with kind of the mix to get the right offering for guests, but also the right offering from a profitability point of view. So again, we feel like it's -- we got it into a good place now.The technology that, again, we're kind of self-developing is certainly helping us, and it's giving us a unique model. It's again, you probably heard me say this before a few times, but it's not a ghost kitchen, it's on-premise kitchen. And so we get probably we're in the neighborhood of around 25%. We like to get that a little bit higher of people that actually come and pick-up and order inside the establishment. But again, we're bullish on it. It's about finding the right spots for it and where it can slot in. And again, the team has a number of sites that they're looking at right now.
Okay. Got it. I wanted to ask about the -- you called it in the press release the softening of System Sales based on vaccine passports. Can you give any sense of materiality here? I know it's only 5 or so weeks into the quarter, but just would like to get a sense of what that's looking like relative to 2019 after you got to make minus 4% in Q3 versus '19?
Yes. We certainly -- I think we got a little -- be really honest about this, I think we got a little fooled in Quebec as when we -- in the first week it opened, it was a soft launch in kind of Quebec. And so we didn't really see anything material. We certainly experienced it in Ontario almost immediately. I think even if you look at OpenTable, in what they're showing. It looked on OpenTable that is kind of -- but we certainly noticed it. And we'll just see how that -- it seems like it's getting a little bit better, the longer we go on here. So it's hard to know how much of this is due to vaccine passports in the long-term versus people just feeling more comfortable coming back out. We still -- kind of polling that's out there still shows that there's a significant amount of Canadians, they're still a little hesitant to go up to restaurants. We think that's going to get better over time and improve.So we think that will more than offset people that -- also, the other thing I would say on the vaccine passports, there's a bit of a multiplier effect. If one person in the party is not vaccinated, that may take out the whole party. So not a lot we can do about that. Our teams are operating as best as they can. And hopefully, just people will get more comfortable coming out.
Okay. I appreciate the color there. And then one last one for me, and I'll pass it on. You've talked over the years about getting out of or at least not renewing some of the unattractive leases that have been signed in the past. Can you say what inning you're in in terms of those closures? And on the opening side, what are conversations like with franchisees in terms of willingness to open new units next year?
Yes. I mean, listen, I think franchisees if you ask me today. I mean, they've certainly seen some of the announcements I just talked about, and it's -- everyone's very cautious out there about what's going on. That being said, we still have a number of franchisees who are renovating restaurants next year. We're still opening new restaurants with franchisees.We still have people in our pipeline that want to buy franchises. So again, I think one of the things that we did was it's being recognized, I guess, by the industry, is that how we supported our partners and we'll continue to support them, I think, is recognized, and so they feel comfortable that they have a partner they can count on. But yes, I mean, I think one of the things when we look at the inflationary side of things, stuff that's outside of sort of government-mandated inflation is that a lot of these are commodity-driven, and commodities go up, but they also come down.So we think that we're in a short-term situation here, and we hope that it will abate as we go into Q1 and Q2 next year. And that's why I think also we want to be very cautious about how we price, because once you take your prices up, it's very difficult to get any credit for taking them back down. So we know that when we do those things, they tend to be permanent.
John, It's Ken, I'll answer the question on the lease status and where we are in that with exits. As you know, leases have a term and we need to get closer to the end of term before you can plan an exit or a change. I would say we're probably in the 6th or 7th inning of that exercise only because we can't accelerate some of those calendars. But I think a lot of the future exits or changes are probably going to be more relocations and changes in format or size or downsize as we reposition in particular markets. So I think we're very well ahead of that process.
Your next question comes from George Doumet, Scotiabank.
Congrats on a good quarter. I just wanted to ask a little bit about where consolidated System Sales are kind of exiting the quarter. Presumably, they are probably very close, if not higher than 2019 levels. So can you maybe talk a little bit about where you're seeing those levels, maybe fewer compared to family, the casual, and maybe the premium casual banners, which ones are probably experiencing the highest levels of growth vis-a-vis, I guess, pre-pandemic levels?
Well, I think with our portfolio, what we've experienced is, obviously, our QSR Harvey's continues to be incredibly strong, driven in large part by kind of late night. So they continue to do well. Every brand is in a little bit different position. And as you know, George, we don't get into kind of forecasting our future here. But I think we've been encouraged by the return of people to the Keg, and where their sales performance was in Q3. So again, we're seeing it really across the board.We don't really have any brand that in our view is under-performing. They're all kind of relatively in the same level. And as you know, our portfolio, sort of because we're across the country and across a lot of different formats, we're sort of active in an index for what's going on in the industry. So we're happy with where our sales have returned to. We still obviously want them to come and get even stronger and get well above 2019. And again, on the Harvey's front, we're well past that.
Okay. That's great. And the corporate margins were almost 100 basis points higher than the pre-pandemic levels. And we're dealing with labor issues and higher food costs. I know there's probably government in there, but how should we think of those levels on the sustaining levels of margins, I guess, over the next couple of quarters?
Yes, George, it's Ken. Yes, we're happy with the corporate performance. It does include some subsidies compared to 2019. So that's still part of that because we apply the wage subsidy to the specific business unit that drove the labor cost. But what you're also seeing coming through the corporate segment is the portfolio mix improvement as we've closed under-performing stores. Those under-performers are in some cases, negative contributors we're weighing down than the better contributors, so it's a much cleaner, stronger portfolio.
Actually kind of one more, if I may, again, on the government aid, I think we're a smidge above $11 million this quarter. It seems a little bit high given that we're almost flat with '19 levels. Is that just timing from collections from previous quarters? Any color there? And do you still expect to get some kind of government aid?
Yes. George, again, the government aid is a monthly program. July was a still challenging month for us because Ontario dining rooms were closed for most of July. And then it reduced as we were more open, and we had higher revenue. So it reduced through the quarter. We're still sorting out the new subsidy programs that are being introduced for the hospitality sector. I don't expect them to be as significant as what we've been receiving up to now. So we'll be on the kind of the former program for October, which is get higher revenue, less recoveries. And then we've got to sort out the new program. But ideally, we've got revenues back closer to 2019, and we're operating without subsidies.
[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Peter Sklar, BMO.
On the labor issue, have corporate stores or franchise had to curtail store opening hours because they just can't get enough labor? Are we seeing that kind of phenomena?
Peter, it's Frank. I mean, the answer to that is, yes, we have had those experiences. It has been primarily, to my knowledge, in Quebec in St-Hubert brand, where they've had to, in some cases, shut down on a day-part or a day of the week.The experience there, though, is interesting because it seems like guests are just kind of shifting their time when they go to when that restaurant is open. So we've actually seen positive sales there. But that has occurred. Quebec had a labor challenge prior to COVID. This has been ongoing in the province and really trying to work with the government there to be a little bit more flexible on some of the foreign worker programs to help alleviate it.
Okay. And then on the cost pressures that you're seeing in the restaurants, like what's the picture look like for franchisees in terms of store economics? Or at least for the time being, are the cost pressures being kind of overwhelmed by people returning to the dining room. So like they're not really seeing it yet because they're seeing this big momentum of people coming back to the restaurant.
Well, I think they've certainly seen, and when you look at the inflation levels that you're seeing out in the economy, I mean, it's very significant from a historical perspective. But I do think people coming back in are spending more. There is a lot of money out there. So we're seeing our average checks up significantly as well as people are just actually buying more. At some point, you expect that there's going to be some pushback on that, but that's certainly helping offset what's going on.And again, we have taken pricing to try to alleviate some of this. But again, it's, people are facing this everywhere, gas prices are up, it's across all sectors. And I think back to the labor point, I mean, there has been a shift in the macroeconomics from services to goods by about 5%. And so you have a bit of a misalignment of labor that's out there. It's not easy for a hair dresser to become a truck driver. And you're seeing that impact a lot of things. Anything that's being manufactured by labor, so food manufacturing facilities, anything like that is experiencing cost pressures and they're rolling downstream.
Okay. So as you look across your banners in terms of store economics at franchisees, or store economics, I think that they've not recovered to 2019 pre-COVID levels. Is that a correct statement?
We keep a pretty close eye on that. I can't say that we're seeing a material difference from 2019, but that's again part of the actions that we've taken to-date. Going into Q4 and Q1, we're going to keep a close eye on it. And again, we're not going to be foolish and know that our partners need to survive. We just want to make sure we're very balanced and methodical about how we do it, because again, if you price yourself too high, you will impact your traffic numbers eventually. So we want to be careful about it, and just work very closely with them and recognize that they need to get a return on their investment. So we'll keep an eye on it.
There are no further questions at this time. Please proceed.
Okay. Well, thank you, everybody, for tuning in today, and we'll look forward to speaking to you in the new year. Thanks, everyone.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.