Cracker Barrel reporting slightly higher sales in its fiscal third quarter and boosting its full-year adjusted EBITDA forecast. The restaurant chain expecting a $5 million hit due to tariffs in the fourth quarter. Shares are up over 3% at the moment. Joining us now, Julie Felss Masino, Cracker Barrel Old Country Store president and CEO, also Yahoo Finance's Brooke DiPalma for who brought us the conversation. Julie, I want to start with you, of course. Thank you for joining us. Give us some insights into the impact of tariffs on the business. You obviously cited that $5 million hit. Just walk me through how you're thinking about the impact of tariffs as the policy continues to change.

Sure. Thanks for having us here. Look, I'm really proud of the way the teams have been dealing with the tariff situation. It's not new. It's been a topic since the campaign trails. So we've been working on this, thinking about our sourcing strategy, our skew strategy, even the flow of goods. So the teams have done a great job on that, and we were really pleased that the impact of this year, we've been able to mitigate that down to $5 million and absorb that into our guidance and still be able to raise our guidance on the year.

Julie, I want to talk about vice versa, the impact that it's having on consumer demand. Your business is 80% food, 20% retail. Many people probably don't even know that. You did see a slight decline in same-store sales growth when it comes to retail. Are consumers just grabbing less out the door because of this uncertainty?

Look, the macros are really interesting right now. They're a little volatile. There's some good news, but a lot of the fundamentals of the economy are actually quite stable. We're seeing food away from home be consistent. It's a consistent measure over the last, you know, probably 40 years that it's about 5%. Our job is to really make sure that people choose us when they're out. Uh, everything that we have in that retail store is discretionary. It's wonderful. It's joyous. It's a treasure hunt. Uh, we're seeing people still choose us and shop with us, and we're making sure that we're delivering that great country hospitality and value every day for them on these items.

But maybe are they, are they just grabbing less? Are they, are they worried about their budgets right now and perhaps opting for the food, that essential, maybe not the discretionary.

Yeah. We're seeing traffic up for us the last couple of months, and the choices that they're making are not suggesting that they're managing their mix. We reported again a very strong mix component on the restaurant side, and given everything that's going on, we're really happy with where the retail business is performing. So we're not seeing people really manage check at Cracker Barrel, but maybe that's because we are such a great value. We offer abundant portions of our delicious scratch, scratch-made food every single day at a great value, and don't forget we have a loyalty program where guests can earn and redeem on both sides of the business. So we think that they find tremendous value in that. Um, so we're, we're pleased with how we're showing up. We think we're well positioned given the macros.

Can you talk about what you're seeing in terms of a little bit more specifics on consumer behavior? Have you seen them switching menu items? Have you seen any change in what they're buying in that storefront as well? Just talk to me a little bit more about whether you're seeing any signs of a change in that consumer purchasing power.

Really, we aren't. As we discussed yesterday on the call, our, our guests are pretty consistent across age and demographic, um, barriers and, and kind of sizing this mass past quarters. So we haven't seen any shifts between over and under income levels or even age groups. What we are seeing is continued mixed growth, actually. So people are choosing items like our new campfire meals. They're choosing items like our hash brown casserole shepherd's pie. So we're actually getting a little bit of benefit from check, um, which is interesting. You know, and a lot of times you worry in situations like this that people might manage check or to your point, choose less often to go out or to shop, but we're, we're actually really not seeing that. Again, we think it's because we offer such abundant value at Cracker Barrel. Our price points are quite sharp, too, Brooke. I don't know if you're aware, our average check is like $15, while the casual dining industry is 27. Um, so we're very, um, we're very affordable for the abundance of the quality food that you get.