Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Michael Gallo -CL King.
Michael Gallo - CL King
The question I have is on birthday parties. I was wondering as the economy is continuing to get worse here early in ?09, whether you’ve seen any change in trends toward parents booking birthday parties? Obviously that business held up pretty well in 2008.
I guess, as we start to dissect the traffic and the comps a little bit further, what you’re seeing on the birthday party business versus what you are seeing in the everyday traffic?
Mike Magusiak
As we stated, our birthday sales and this is just core stores, comparable store birthday sales on a year-to-date basis are positive approximately 6%. So we feel that initiative is working. With comps being negative 1.4% on a year-to-date basis, we are losing it on the typical walk in business.
Michael Gallo - CL King
Coming back to the trends, I think my recollection was earlier in 2008, that the trends toward birthday parties had been even stronger. My guess is, has that trend held pretty constant throughout the quarter or has it that gotten tougher heading into ?09? Just trying to get a feel for whether you are starting to see that area become more difficult or whether that just continues to hold pretty steady?
Mike Magusiak
You would think that the economy would impact birthday sales, but really throughout all of 2008 when we implemented our revised birthday party we saw strong birthday sales throughout 2008, including the fourth quarter. We feel good about our birthday sales year to date this year and we are actually rolling out a new birthday package in May, June of this year 2009 to hopefully kick birthday sales even a little bit higher.
Operator
Your next question comes from Greg Ruedy - Stephens Inc.
Greg Ruedy - Stephens Inc.
Your plans to remodel expand and enhance the games; I don’t think it has changed material from the last quarter. Do you project the returns continuing to stay here given the macro and what other factors are in play to gives you confidence to move forward with your CapEx guidance versus maybe reduce the debt load further?
Mike Magusiak
That is a good question. First of all, I would believe that if the economy is weak it would impact remodels or expansions or any part of the business, but at the same time we are very encouraged by our capital expenditure results early in 2009. We expanded 20 stores last year and year to date 2009 those 20 stores are averaging about 20% up in sales.
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