Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first call comes from Meredith Fowler – Wachovia Securities.
Meredith Fowler – Wachovia Securities
Based on your costs that you've had what do you expect for the overall food inflation in 2009 on a purchase end basis?
Lawrence Hyatt
We've not given specific guidance for 2009, but as noted in my prepared remarks, we saw significant softening in the market for food commodities in the fourth quarter and we took advantage of that softening to lock in our pricing for the current fiscal year.
With that locked in pricing which includes over 70% of our estimated beef requirement and over 90% of our estimated poultry requirement, 95% of our pork requirement and half of our expected seafood requirements, we expect our beef and seafood prices to be lower in 2009 than they were in 2008 and expect our pork and poultry to show increase in the low to mid single digits.
Without being very specific, we expect on a constant mix basis that we will see food price increases in the relatively low single digit range in 2009 versus 2008.
Meredith Fowler – Wachovia Securities
Can you just talk about how same store sales have been trending so far in Q1?
Gregory Burns
We really do not give our periodic same store sales information. We report that on a quarterly basis. Certainly the weather during the first quarter has been pretty touch particularly in New England and we also saw a lot in the Ohio market. But as I said earlier in my comments, the traffic in general in the restaurant industry remains strong. Restaurants are reporting numbers, most restaurant companies in the single digits.
So we still have pretty strong traffic. I think as we get a little further in the year, we'll get a little more clarification about where this economic prices, gasoline prices and so on. I still remain optimistic that we're going to see improvement in sales in our company and others as well.
Operator
Your next question comes from Jeffrey Omohundro – Wachovia.
Jeffrey Omohundro – Wachovia
Greg, I want to wish you all the best in your future endeavors. It's been a pleasure working with you. My question, I wonder if you could perhaps touch on some of the traffic building initiatives such as the new menu roll out for O'Charley's? You mentioned that the focus there is on some changes at brunch but are there other changes that are anticipated in that menu? And perhaps you could talk a little bit more about promotional initiatives around building traffic at O'Charley's.
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