The Chefs’ Warehouse Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call

Greetings and welcome to the Chef's Warehouse Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Alex Aldous, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary, and Chief Government Relations Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone. With me on today's call are Chris Pappas, founder, chairman, and CEO, and Jim Letty, our CFO. By now, you should have access to our second quarter 2026 earnings press release. It can also be found at www.chefswarehouse.com under the Investor Relations section. Throughout this conference call, we will be presenting non-GAAP financial measures, including, among others, historical and estimated EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA, as well as historical adjusted net income, adjusted earnings per share, adjusted operating expenses, adjusted operating expenses as a percentage of net sales and as a percentage of gross profit, net debt, net debt leverage, and free cash flow. These measures are not calculated in accordance with GAAP and may be calculated differently in similarly titled non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies. Quantitative reconciliations of our non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures appear in today's press release and second quarter 2026 earnings presentation. Before we begin our formal remarks, I need to remind everyone that part of our discussion today will include forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our estimated financial performance. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore you should not put undue reliance on them. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect. Some of these risks are mentioned in today's release. Others are discussed in our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, which are available on the SEC website. Today, we are going to provide a business update and go over our second quarter results in detail. We are also providing an update to our five-year financial targets. For a portion of our discussion this morning, we will refer to a few slides posted on the Chef's Warehouse website under the Investor Relations section titled Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Presentation. Please note that these slides are disclosed at this time for illustration purposes only. Then we will open up the call for questions. With that, I will turn the call over to Chris Pappas. Chris?

Thank you, Alex, and thank you all for joining our second quarter 2026 earnings call. Today, Jim and I will begin our remarks with an update on second quarter results and provide an increase to our full-year 2026 financial guidance, followed by an update to our five-year financial targets, taking our previously provided 2028 targets out to 2030. Second quarter, 2026, displayed strong growth in both revenue and profitability. Our regional SEPs warehouse teams continue to deliver excellent execution across markets and product categories. We are driving market share gains via growth in product penetration, case volume, and unique customers, combined with ongoing improvement in operational efficiency to provide customers with the highest quality ingredients and flexible on-time delivery. Momentum continued into July, and we currently expect double-digit top-line growth to start the third quarter. Our Middle East operations are improving gradually as they enter the seasonally slower summer period. During May and June, our business located there open, operated at approximately 94% a prior year, and this trend has remained fairly steady through recent weeks. I would like to thank all our teams from sales, procurement, and pricing, operations, and all the supporting functions for their dedication to serving our customers and our communities as we go to market as the Chef's Warehouse family of brands and companies in North America and the Middle East. With that, please refer to slide three of the presentation. A few highlights from the second quarter include organic net sales grew 12.2%. Organic specialty sales were up 10% over the prior year, which was driven primarily by unique placement growth of 7.2% and specialty case growth of 6% and price inflation. Unique customers grew 3.6% year over year. Reported unique customer growth was impacted partially by the conflict in the Middle East. Excluding this impact, second quarter unique customer growth was approximately 4.9%. The pounds in the center of the plate were approximately 8.8% higher than the prior year's second quarter. Those profit margins increased approximately 49 basis points. Gross margin in the specialty category increased approximately 47 basis points as compared to the second quarter of 2025, while gross margin in the center of the plate category increased approximately 75 basis points year-over-year. Jim will provide more detail on gross profit and margins in a few moments. For an update on certain of our operating metrics, including continued improvement in year-over-year gross profit per route and adjusted EBITDA per employee, please refer to the slides provided in the appendix of our second quarter 2026 earnings presentation. With that, I'll turn it over to Jim to discuss more detailed financial information for the quarter and an update on our liquidity. Jim?

Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. I'll now provide a comparison of our current quarter operating results versus the prior year quarter and provide an update on our balance sheet and liquidity. Please refer to slide four of the presentation. Our net sales for the quarter ended June 26, 2026, increased approximately 12.9% to $1.169 billion from $1.035 billion in the second quarter of 2025. The growth in net sales was the result of an increase in organic sales of approximately 12.2%, as well as the contribution of sales from acquisitions, which added approximately 0.7% to sales growth for the quarter. Net inflation was 4.9% in the second quarter, consisting of 4% inflation in our specialty category and 6.4% inflation in our center of the plate category versus the prior year quarter. Gross profit increased 15.2% to $292.9 million for the second quarter of 2026 versus $254.3 million for the second quarter of 2025. Gross profit margins increased approximately 49 basis points to 25.1%. Selling general and administrative expenses increased approximately 9.6% to $234.2 million for the second quarter of 2026, from $213.8 million for the second quarter of 2025. The increase was primarily due to higher costs associated with compensation and benefits, facilities and distribution to support sales growth, as well as higher depreciation driven by facility and fleet investments. Adjusted operating expenses increased 8.4% versus the prior year's second quarter, and as a percentage of net sales, adjusted operating expenses were 17.5% for the second quarter of 2026. Operating income for the second quarter of 2026 was $58.6 million compared to $40.2 million for the second quarter of 2025. The increase in operating income was driven primarily by higher gross profit, partially offset by higher selling, general, and administrative expenses. Our GAAP net income was $33.8 million, or 76 cents, per diluted share for the second quarter of 2026, compared to net income of $21.2 million, or 49 cents, per diluted share for the second quarter of 2025. On a non-GAAP basis, we had adjusted EBITDA of $88.1 million for the second quarter of 2026, compared to $65.4 million for the prior year's second quarter. Adjusted net income was $34.7 million, or $0.78 per diluted share, for the second quarter of 2026, compared to $22.5 million, or $0.52 per diluted share for the prior year's second Turning to the balance sheet and an update on our liquidity, please refer to slide number five. At the end of the second quarter, we had total liquidity of $321.1 million, comprised of $135.5 million in cash and $185.6 million of availability under our ABL facility. During the second quarter, we repaid $30 million of our ABL debt, reducing the outstanding drawn balance to $70 million. As of June 26, 2026, total net debt was approximately $478.5 million, inclusive of all cash and cash equivalents, and net debt to adjusted EBITDA was approximately 1.6 times. Please refer to slide six. As Chris mentioned, we are raising our full year 2026 guidance as follows. We estimate that net sales for the full year of 2026 will be in the range of $4.5 billion to $4.6 billion, gross profit to be between $1.102 billion and $1.125 billion, and adjusted EBITDA to be between $305 million and $315 million. Please note for the full year 2026, we expect the convertible notes maturing in 2028 to be dilutive, and therefore we expect the fully diluted share count to be between approximately 46 and 46.7 million shares. I will now turn it back over to Chris for an overview on our updated five-year financial targets and to highlight certain of our initiatives supporting our growth expectations.

Thank you, Jim. Please refer to slide eight of the presentation. As we are halfway through the five-year financial target ranges we set out in 2023 and are on track to meet or exceed those targets sooner than expected, we felt it appropriate to update our expectations to full year 2030. Our organic growth has exceeded the 4% to 7% target range established in 2023, with a focus on full year 2028. Much of this growth has been driven by the accelerated investment cycle in a number of our key areas, including our expansion and distribution capacity, sales teams and product specialists, investments in technology, consolidation of facilities and routes, and key strategic acquisitions. Referring to the slide titled 2030 Financial Goals, our updated target ranges, an annual revenue growth rate of 7% to 10%, reaching full-year 2030 revenue of $6 billion to $6.5 billion. We assume organic growth will be the primary driver, with the potential for moderate acquired growth of approximately 1% per annual. In certain years, where more significant M&A would occur, we would expect total growth to exceed the estimated range. Adjusted EBITDA of $450 to $520 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 7.5% to 8%. Achieving these goals will not come from one or two areas of execution, but from many initiatives across our platform coming together over time to drive continued growth, market share gains, and improved operational efficiencies. In summary, we will continue to grow our differentiated model in the food-away-from-home industry, focusing on the upscale casual to higher-end dining experience customer base, bringing together our unique supply chain and marketing model with deep product expertise and the ongoing training of a maturing sales force, increasingly positioning our people as trusted advisors to the best chefs combined with the deployment of our ever-evolving technology and a flexible distribution platform. We expect to continue to deliver operating leverage going forward by driving volume through invested capacity, consolidating routes and distribution centers into efficient and state-of-the-art facilities and processing centers to both reduce costs per unit and drive top-line growth via marketing opportunities with existing and potential customers. We will continue to invest in distribution capacity across our network to provide both growth and operational efficiencies going forward. Current plans include New England, Texas, Las Vegas, the Midwest, and potential new markets as they develop. We have begun and expect to continue to deploy AI-based tech across our functions, including sales, pricing, and procurement, operations, inventory management, logistics, and customer experience. Building on the data and analytics platform, we have rolled out across operating companies, these tools give our teams real-time information to serve customers better, upsell more effectively, and manage inventory and costs more efficiently. TW teams across our regions and functions are committed to continual improvement and innovation in these areas and others, all with a laser-like focus on maintaining and growing our unique culinary-focused culture that has been curated over 40 years. These areas represent the key components to the chef's warehouse differentiation, or moat, within the industry. These competitive advantages, combined with the significant size of the under-penetrated market opportunity in virtually all our regions, where we believe we remain in the early innings of penetration, will allow us to continue to grow market share going forward. I will turn it over to Jim to review our thinking on capital allocation.

Thank you, Chris. Please refer to slide nine of the presentation. We expect our capital allocation model going forward to be consistent with the approach we have taken over the past few years, as we have generated approximately $270 million of free cash flow since implementing the plan at the start of 2024. We expect total capex to average approximately 1% of revenue going forward and capital deployment to be focused on the following areas. Continued investment in growth via distribution center development and fleet expansion to accommodate capacity needs for markets as they mature. Investment in AI and other technology improvements focused on key areas, operations and inventory management, customer-facing digital enhancements, driving upsell opportunities, enhanced search, and other value-add services. Enhance Salesforce training and data utilization to better understand our customer needs and behavior, and dynamic pricing and sourcing initiatives. We're going to maintain a strong balance sheet and increase share repurchases. Target net debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage of 1.5 to 2.5, and we expect to allocate more dollars to share repurchases as leverage remains in the target range. We expect to retain dry powder to facilitate tuck-in M&A should accretive opportunities arise. And going forward, we expect free cash flow conversion to be in the range of 40% to 60% of adjusted EBITDA. Thank you, and at this point, we'll open it up to questions. Operator?

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up their handset before pressing these star keys. One moment, please, while we pull for questions. Our first question comes from the line of Alex Lagu with Jeffries. Please proceed with your question. Good morning.

Really impressive growth. I just wanted to get your perspective on what's going on from a demand perspective. I mean, really strong demand in your U.S. business, and we can kind of see the broader demand in food service at the upper end, but where are you seeing the biggest acceleration or what surprised you the most? Both placements and the new customer growth are really strong. Is it a business you're winning from other specialty players, or is it more just broadening of new types of customers trying to expand the quality of what they put on the menu? and I guess just some more color on that would be great.

Yeah, a really easy answer. You mentioned everything, Alex. There's no, like, you know, one secret, you know, thing going on. It's kind of Goldilocks. It's, you know, the large investments we made into building a sales force, You know, giving our team, you know, new buildings with capacity, ability to add categories, cross-selling, team building, specialists, you know, maturing of a lot of new people that we've been hiring, you know, coming out of COVID. So it's just execution on all sorts of levels, and, you know, you see the outlook. You know, we think we're just getting started, really, you know, in building this thing for so long, you know. You know, it's a 40-year-old business that's maturing now as a public company, and we're just finally getting the scale that we could start to leverage, you know, of what we thought would be a great business model at Chef's Warehouse.

And you raised the longer-term outlook for the organic sales growth also. Is that additional market share gain baked in, kind of going from, you know, four to seven to, I guess, six to nine, the organic sales growth outlook?

Well, thanks, Alex. If you look at, you know, the algo that we put out in 23 to 28 was four to 7%. We've been outperforming that by, you know, two or three hundred basis points since then. So we just think it made sense to kind of raise that that algo to seven to ten percent. It is risk adjusted to what we're doing the last couple of quarters. You know, we've been growing above ten percent. So there is some conservatism in their risk adjustment. But I think we feel good about it because it's still an industry-leading growth algo, both from top line and adjusted EBITDA growth cadence. So, you know, it's really just kind of aligning with, you know, what we've been doing and where we see all the things that Chris just mentioned, the capacity we've put in, the capacity we're going to put in as we continue to make a measured amount of investments across our network. So it really just kind of aligns with our plan.

Thank you very much. I will pass it on to others. Thank you. Thanks, Alan.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mark Cardin with UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning. Thanks so much for taking the question. You guys continue to generate pretty strong top-line growth really across the business. So building on Alice's demand question a bit, did you see much fluctuation on a monthly basis? Do you think that you saw much of a benefit from unique events like the World Cup and the Knicks being the NBA Finals?

Just any incremental color there and how it's been holding up quarter to date with some of the unique events like Cyclospora and some of the wildfires? it's been um it's been pretty consistent um i mean our growth a year of year growth in the second quarter uh it was a little bit higher than the first quarter but you have to remember we had two major storms and the start of the war in the first quarter and we we talked about that having about 150 basis point impact on the year of a year so um really kind of taking that out of the equation. Our first half growth was pretty consistent across the board. I wouldn't say there was anything that really stood out other than the normal seasonality. The World Cup, we don't think had a major impact for us. We talked a lot of our customers and they did not see a huge uptick. Even in our major cities, we think that it was more sports bars and pubs that got the uptick from the World Cup for those four or five weeks, and then some regions that we don't really operate in, like Kansas City, and obviously we're not in Mexico or Canada. We are in Canada, but we didn't see much of an uptick there. So I wouldn't say there was anything to call out. We've seen pretty consistent strength throughout the first part of the year.

That's great. Thanks. And then it sounds like your Middle Eastern business is proving to be pretty resilient, just given all the turmoil in the region. You mentioned that you're in this slow period there. How long does that last? And then outside of the conflict, how impactful have the Middle Eastern events just been on your product sourcing, thinking about the blockades and whatnot? Thank you.

The last part of the question, we haven't seen an impact on our sourcing into North America. Obviously, our team over there has been dealing with, you know, some challenges around getting product in the Middle East, but they've done an amazing job of, you know, working with suppliers to reroute, go into different ports, go over the air, over the ground where we used to take it over the water. So obviously there's some long leads and the prices of product have increased as a result of those logistics changes. But our team there is doing an incredible job of managing through that volatility. In terms of the first part of your question, we did build in some conservatism into the forward guidance because we are comping to a period this summer where there's not a lot of tourists in Dubai. And that's been the main difference between operating at 100% and we were operating at 75% in the beginning of the conflict. As we got into the summer, we were comping to a period where it's 120 degrees there and you don't really have a lot of tourism. So the hotels were not as full last year as they were this year. So we kind of moved up into that mid-90s range. But it's still uncertain whether the level of tourism that will come back in the fourth quarter. So we did build in some conservatism into our guidance as it relates to that.

Makes sense. Appreciate it, guys. Good luck.

Sure. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Todd Brooks with Benchmark Stonex. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good morning. Congrats on another amazing quarter, guys. A couple questions for you, if I can. kind of an educated us over the years, Jim and Chris, that this is a hard business to inflect margin meaningfully in. It's more of a kind of yearly grind. Let's get our 20, 30 basis points out of the EBITDA margin. The last couple quarters, the EBITDA margin performance has been amazing. The new kind of forward five-year plan is taking us into that upper sevens to eight percent range, which is kind of a new frontier for profitability in the business, how should we think about the ratability of the improvement between this year where we may end up in the high sixes and getting into that high sevens? Is this just a step-up year for some reason, or are we reset to that 20-25 basis points a year in the guidance framework, or how should we think about that?

Yeah, and I'll let Chris comment as well. But, Todd, I think, you know, if you know us, we tend to be a little conservative in our forward guidance, and we've risk-adjusted the, you know, the five-year algo as well. So I think, you know, there's definitely potential for upside to that, but, you know, we want to build in potential things to happen that we don't control. So I think it implies really industry-leading top-line growth, industry-leading adjusted EBITDA margin improvement over the timeframe, and continued operating leverage. So you never know what the cadence is going to be exactly, but I think we're not saying that we can't repeat what we've been doing recently. We're just, this is a five-year look, and obviously we're going to build in some risk adjustment.

Yeah, and it's a great question, Todd. You know, if you go back through our history again, you know, we're celebrating our 41st, going into our 41st year since we started the business as, you know, mainly a specialty business. And, you know, before we went public and started adding a lot of costs to build the model, you know, it was a very, it was a much higher EBITDA business, you know, it was 10% plus. And adding all the infrastructure, you know, to build Chef Warehouse and adding the new divisions, you know, you've heard me say for years, listen, this is a big drag. Once we get scale, the EBITDA margins will go up and I'm not going to cap it, you know. So we just updated our, you know, model until 2030, which is pretty much based just continuing as a specialty broadliner. And as we fill up, you know, we're giving ourselves room, you know, we're building new facilities every year. And, you know, when you add space, usually you're adding more space than you need, so you're carrying more overhead. So that's a little drag on EBITDA. And as we fill them up, as we're starting to do right now, you start to see the real EBITDA of the company starting to show itself, right? So I think I've said many, many times, we have a lot of our core business, you know, way over 10% EBITDA businesses. But, you know, this is a model that, you know, purposely, you know, we built the moat around, so it's very hard to copy because there's such a long tail to what we do. You know, we always say we do the hard stuff, so we have to have – we have 170 different olive oils, right? You have a very long tail. You're carrying extra inventory. Your overhead's higher than a typical broad liner. But the flip side, once you execute and you start to get scale, it's very hard to replicate, right? This is a 40-year-old business, and you can get leverage on it, which you're starting to see. So, you know, tomorrow there will be great opportunity. You know, you see our model takes us over $6 billion. We could be $10 billion, but we've added more businesses that we thought there was opportunity that we're lower margin to turn into Chef's Warehouse types of business that we've been doing over the past 10 years. So, you know, our forecast, again, is based on continuing to do what we're doing, moving into new buildings, expanding into new territories, and continuing to execute with our team sale, our cross-sell, and continuing to add new customers and sell our customers more products, which we think we can execute into a 2030 plan. Add that with, you know, a bunch of tuck-in small specialty businesses. You know, you can easily be $8, $9 billion and a very high margin business. Add some more businesses that, you know, are great businesses, but they'll need four or five years like other businesses that we've bought. So maybe that prevents us from going to a 9%, 10% EBITDA. But at this point, I'm so proud of the team and the execution of all teams that I'm not capping where the EBITDA can go percentage-wise.

Okay, that's great. Thanks to you both. Just a quick follow-up. You're talking more overtly about your moat and kind of laying out the case for how you've built it through investment over the past five years here. What's your competitive environment like in specialty, and how are you winning market share? Because you're obviously aggressively taking it. Is it these capabilities and the moat and customers recognizing that, or is your competition not performing as well and opening potential businesses' eyes to the possibility of making us switch to the chef's warehouse?

Yeah, there's plenty of competition. I mean, we fight every day. But I think with the technology that we, you know, we're just getting better and better, implementing better and better technology, making it easier for customers to do business with us and order more items. So I think, you know, we believe that was going to happen, and it's happening. So, you know, it's good to be right once in a while. And, you know, it takes five to ten years to develop people. So as much as everything is going online and it's a great tool, we are in a relationship business. We sell the best chefs in the world, and they need information, and they constantly need new products. And it's a stressful environment. You have to execute. You know, when you're at the top, they're expecting a lot. And the supply channels are always challenged for some reason. And, you know, so the logistic team, we rely on them, really. We cannot leave our customers without product, right? It's not like you're going to, you know, you're at a $20 average check average and you could substitute and no one's really going to complain. Our customers are very demanding, and we have to execute at a very high level. And to do that takes a lot of expertise. You know, you can't just rely on computers. and it takes a lifetime to develop that type of team and I think that the results you're seeing is because of that lifetime investment in people. So we're very proud of them and we know how hard it is to duplicate this.

Well, congrats again, guys. Really impressive.

Thanks very much. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Harbour with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah, thanks. Good morning, guys. Good morning. You've talked in the past about some of the younger markets could be 3X, maybe 4X the size they are today. I guess as you think about adding a couple billion of revenue over the next five years, I mean, where are we in some of those or what opportunity are you assuming in some of those big relatively underpenetrated markets?

Yeah, well, you know, I mean, we have the microscope, you know, to look at what we've done in other businesses, other cities as they've grown, right? So, you know, the West Coast, East Coast obviously is, you know, most populated. And, you know, we look at how we've grown our more mature markets over the last 40 years. So as our new markets are developing, they're developing, you know, kind of, you know, very similar to how we develop, you know, our more mature markets like, you know, New York and San Francisco. So when we look at Texas and Florida, you know, as big markets, and then we have our smaller markets, Nashville, you know, Detroit, and as we push into the Carolinas and Colorado, we see, you know, lots of similarity, you know, so it gives us the ability to pretty much forecast. So, you know, places like Texas and Florida, you know, we see customer growth, we see maturity of sales staff, we see logistical efficiencies starting to form. You know, it's almost like a repeat of a playbook. As salespeople mature, as everybody gets better, as logistics get better, we start to sell more products, margins improve, and we continue to add people. And that's why, you know, we see the 3, 4, 5x in those markets because, you know, we're really small with lots of opportunity, you know, where, you know, go to a market where not a lot of people, not a lot of customers, you know, I think there's a ceiling. You know, even if you get all your categories humming, the business is only going to grow so, so X. So that's why we see our, our bigger markets really adding a big, a big amount of that, that growth we're talking about.

Okay. Sounds good. What, is there any of the like tech investments you've made or maybe like uses of AI that you'd, you'd point to as actually, you know, kind of driving margins today? Like, I think, you know, certainly some of this is from, you know, just efficiency and, like, Salesforce efficiency, warehouse efficiency. You talked about that. But, you know, how would you sort of point to some concrete examples of, like, technology investments helping as well?

Yeah, you know, I like to use the metaphor of, you know, you have a really smart student, you know, he, she is doing great. But they've always had a lack of great eyesight, right? And you put great glasses on them, and now they can do even better, right? They can digest the information quicker, make better decisions, and go faster, you know? You give the same pair of great glasses to an average student, I mean, they'll still do better. But I look at Chef's Warehouse as we had a great student and we gave them really powerful lenses and they are doing an even better job, right? So the tools are just assisting them to be a lot more efficient and do what they need to do, execute at a higher level. So it's definitely making a difference, and we think it's going to continue to enhance our model and the ability to, you know, sustain our growth rate.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kelly Banya with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning. Thanks for taking our questions, and congrats on just some really strong execution here. um had just maybe a near-term question and then some longer term given given the new targets um i guess first as we as we look at um the second half guidance for 26 you know sounds like top line continuing at this low double digit rate so i i guess my question is just if the top line continues at this pace um is there any reason why the margins wouldn't be as strong as they were in the first half. Obviously, the OPEX leverage was, you know, very, very strong this quarter, but just curious if there's any reinvestment or other factors or maybe why the margin wouldn't be quite as strong.

Kelly, are you referring to gross profit margin or EBITDA margin?

EBITDA margin.

No, I don't think there's any reason that our EBITDA margin would be anything uh you know different than the kind of the cadence that we normally perform seasonally you know obviously the first quarter is the weakest and then you get the second and third quarter fairly similar usually the second quarter is a little stronger than the third quarter and then the fourth quarter seasonally is you know pretty much for everybody in food distribution the kind of powerhouse quarter driven by december so um no i i don't think there's anything i think I think the guidance implies, you know, really good cadence. You know, obviously the top-line growth in the second half we have in the guidance is a little bit slower year-over-year, but that's really driven by, I talked about earlier, a little bit of conservatism on the Middle East, and then we lapped the Italco acquisition in the fourth quarter, and that's about 70 basis points of year-over-year growth.

I think our question, Jim, was mainly on the second quarter why the EBITDA margin was in higher with such great growth.

No, it was about the second half. Maybe I've got it wrong. Or EBITDA margin was up 120 basis points year-over-year.

Yeah, I guess I was just kind of looking at the model. I know the top line is planned more conservatively in the second half, but if the growth stays at this double-digit rate, I mean, the OPEX leverage that's coming through is very, very strong. So just trying to get a sense of, you know, what the upside could be to the second half if we keep at this double-digit pace.

Yeah. I mean, you know, I think the full-year guidance implies now 6.8% adjusted EBITDA margin. So that'd be a 70 basis point improvement year over year on a full-year basis. And, yeah, you know, I think, as you know, you know us from history, even though we've raised the guidance pretty significantly, it's really, we would have raised it in Q1. So it's really kind of two raises at once and implies, you know, very strong operating leverage. But is there upside from there? Sure.

But, you know, that's our history is we tend to be a little bit conservative on our guidance. got it that that makes sense um just another question um chris and jim as you think about kind of taking this organic profile um over the next couple years up you know i guess from four to seven maybe maybe six to nine on an organic basis do you think you need to ramp up hiring of the sales force obviously that takes a long time to mature but um or are you kind of expecting to extract more organic growth per salesperson. I just was curious how you think about the kind of Salesforce hiring plans over the next few years.

We are, you know, my instructions are if you find a great talent with potential, hire them. You know, with our growth rate, we never have enough people. And it takes so long to train them. That's why, you know, got to make sure that, you know, we're hiring. I always say, you know, we're giving them such a great career opportunity. We really should get a 10-year contract guarantee, right, because the first few years are just putting so much investment in these people. So, yes, you know, the mature people are doing better and better. The people that, you know, have come on in the last four or five years are continuing to evolve and getting better and better, and you constantly need that bench. You know, our growth rate, you know, which was, you know, 12-plus percent this last quarter, you just can't have enough people. So we spend a lot. Again, you know, we blew up HR, you know, years ago. We took a different philosophy, hired a new leader, and we really focus on the hiring process. You know, hire slow, fire fast, right? You don't want to put the investment into people, and two years later, you got the wrong person. You know, it's a capital drain. So we spent a lot of money on the Chef Warehouse University and recruiting, and it's something that we talk about every single day.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Peter Silek with BTIG. Please proceed with your questions.

Thanks for taking the question, and congrats on the quarter and really the year. I wanted to ask, you know, historically you guys have mentioned that the business has a lot of, you know, natural attrition, maybe in the high single-digit range maybe or more, and you kind of have to outgrow that. So I'm curious if that natural attrition has moderated at all, and that's kind of helping boost some of these more near-term results.

No, not really, Pete. We see a pretty consistent attrition rate in this industry, just in general, given the cyclical nature of a customer base. But I wouldn't say it's changed materially.

Understood. Okay. And then just on the gross margin gains, I mean, they're pretty substantial really in the first half of the year. I guess I was kind of under the impression going back a couple years that that gross margin rate didn't really have all that much upside to it. So maybe can you just talk about do you think there's more upside from where we are today or where are some of the growth going to come from? Is it more on the OPEX side or more on the gross margin? Just trying to understand where we go from here.

You're correct, all of the above. Again, it's just not one particular thing that is going to drive margins in EBITDA up. It's getting leverage on all the investments, right? So, you know, once the bulk of your fixed overhead is built in, right, you're building and, you know, obviously you're always going to add trucks, but your efficiencies. So it's really, I go back to, you know, as the team matures, you know, remember, we were a family business that was only about $300 million, I think, when we went public 14, 15 years ago. And it just took a lot longer than I expected to build the platform, build the team. And so, like I said, unless we buy a commodity-driven business that has much lower margins that, you know, kind of like we did in Texas and kind of like we did in New England and in many other markets, you know, the platform as it exists today, there is no reason. and we're going to be conservative because, you know, we didn't see the plague coming, the COVID and the war and everything else that happens. But, you know, the platform is built to get leveraged and to produce better margins and better EBITDA. You know, saying that, anything could go wrong, but, you know, what you're starting to see is execution, you know, better logistics. So, you know, when we open up Texas, you know, we have tremendous headwinds, you know, in logistics. You know, we don't have the volume. We're moving products, you know, LTL, which cost a fortune. You have a lot of bad inventory because, you know, you're trying to forecast a lot of perishables and stuff that's very hard, you know, when you're small, but you have to have the product. So as it grows and as it builds leverage, it should continue to improve on every single department, which should produce better results.

And Pete, I'll just add on the gross profit margin side, while on a quarter-to-quarter basis or year-over-year, it's often impacted by your product mix changes and the level of inflation, I'll just echo Chris, we've made a ton of investment in our pricing teams and technology, our procurement teams, leveraging our scale, and just the level of collaboration between these teams and our sales leaders and sales teams, you know, has been a big contributor to that gross profit margin improvement side.

Our next question comes from the line of Margaret May Binge Talk with Wolf Research. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to ask a little bit about the timeline timeline and some of these AI investments. What have you guys done already? What should we be expecting to come and when just to understand some of the ROI and what we could expect to see it? Thank you.

I think you're starting to see it. We never called it AI, but we've always been investing in the technology that makes us faster, more efficient, and I think we're already getting a great ROI, and we think we're still in the first inning. So we continue to invest. We have great leadership in that department, and we continue to hire really smart people. We outsource a lot also to people that are developing, you know, the AI tools for us. So we're producing them in-house and outside. And I think the, you know, we're not moon shooting, you know. expecting, you know, to get five, six points, you know, to the bottom line. Somehow, miraculously, I don't think that's the way our industry works. So I think, you know, the tools, the agents, and everything else that we call them, I think it's just part of our normal day-to-day business at this point, and we're constantly going to continue to invest, and we think it's going to keep producing good ROI.

Super helpful. And then I just wanted to ask, just like to check in on the M&A environment, any differences in the environment like what you guys were seeing versus like six months ago today? Thank you.

Yeah. I think it's getting frothier and frothier. I think a lot of businesses that, you know, came out of COVID or some of the roll-ups that we've seen, you know, that also came out of COVID that are, you know, way behind, you know, know, trying to exit. Uh, so, you know, my desk is full, but, you know, we continue to be, you know, very diligent and disciplined and, uh, you know, probably do some tuck-ins, probably do some new market, uh, you know, acquisitions, but, uh, our, you know, our organic growth is, is so strong, you know, um, I would, I would still rather keep investing in people and, uh, you know, just keep adding talent and can grow at a much better ROI than a lot of the acquisitions that we're looking at, that we're passing on.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Charles with TD Cowan. Please proceed with your question.

Great, thanks. Two for me, you know, first, Jim, you talked about conservatism in the 2026 guidance, and I'm curious, just given the volatility of fuel costs, what are you embedding within guidance for the back half of the year when it comes to fuel?

A pretty conservative assumption. You know, we just modeled forward kind of what we're experiencing now, you know, whether $5 plus diesel on average across the nation, obviously in places like California, it's even more expensive than that. But yeah, it's in the guidance. You know, we're not modeling any significant decrease or increase from that, but I think we've shown that, you know, the power of our growth is kind of overwhelming the fuel impact right now.

That's helpful. And the other piece as well is, you know, the produce category, you know, showed very impressive 34% growth in the quarter. And I'm also just curious there, you know, for July or what's embedded in the back half of the year around guidance for this line, just in light of recent news surrounding cyclospora.

Yeah, I'm not sure what you're referring to, it's a 34%, but produce prices and inflation year over year has been pretty high. Most of that is due to logistics costs and driven by fuel, a lot of it driven by your first question, fuel. So we haven't really embedded an assumption, anything different from what we've been seeing recently.

It's still a small division.

Yeah, and produce is generally around 14% of our overall revenue, so I'm not sure what the 34% is.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Mullen with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, this is Allison Armstrong for Brian Mullen. Thank you for the question. Last quarter you noted that we would fully lap the Texas non-core customer attrition in Q2, But now that we're through that comparison, curious what you're seeing in terms of the underlying customer and volume trends in Texas.

Yeah, thanks for the question. Yeah, we have lapped at, you know, producing some noise on our reported volume and inflation because it was such a big program in the center of play category, but very low margin and really no profitability. So we're through that. Our Texas business is growing really nicely. You know, we're in the process of, you know, working out the real estate solutions in both Dallas and the big markets there, Dallas and Houston. Dallas being first, we'll be looking to, you know, take on new space and build it out and consolidate some facilities. You know, that's down the road. Right now, you know, our businesses there are growing really nicely. we've improved our overall Texas EBITDA margin by multiple hundred basis points versus the last couple of years. So, yeah, we're really happy with how it's growing right now.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. And we have reached the end of the question and answer session. Now I'd like to turn the floor back over to Chris Pappas for close remarks.

Yes. Well, again, we thank everybody for their interest and joining our call. I couldn't be prouder of the CW family team, their execution and devotion to the company and pushing it forward. I think the results speak for themselves, so we're very excited about what's happening at CHEF, and we look forward to speaking to everybody at our next quarterly call. Thank you. Have a great day.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.