Freshpet - Q2 2023
August 7, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Greetings, welcome to the Freshpet, Inc.'s second quarter 2023 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Mr. Jeff Sonnek, Investor Relations at ICR. Thank you. You may begin.
Jeff Sonnek (Managing Director of Investor Relations)
Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Freshpet's second quarter 2023 earnings call and webcast. On today's call are Billy Cyr, Chief Executive Officer, and Todd Cunfer, Chief Financial Officer. Scott Morris, Chief Operating Officer, will also be available with us for Q&A. Before we begin, please remember that during the course of this call, management may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements. Please refer to the company's annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC and the company's press release issued today with for a detailed discussion of the risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made today.
Please note that on today's call, management will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures such as EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA, among others. While the company believes these non-GAAP financial measures provide useful information for investors, the presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Please refer to today's press release on how management defines such non-GAAP measures, a reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable measures prepared in accordance with GAAP, and limitations associated with such non-GAAP measures. Finally, the company has produced a presentation that contains many of the key metrics that will be discussed on this call. That presentation can be found on the company's investor website.
Management's commentary will not specifically walk through the presentation on the call; rather, it's a summary of the results and guidance they will discuss today. Additionally, we'd ask that your questions remain focused on the performance of the business and the results in the quarter. Management will not discuss the upcoming annual stockholders' meeting or other topics beyond what is being reported here today. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Billy Cyr, Chief Executive Officer. Billy?
Billy Cyr (CEO)
Thank you, Jeff. Good morning, everyone. The message I would like you to take away from today's call is that the Freshpet business has real momentum on both the top line and the bottom line. In both areas, growth and operating efficiency, we believe that we are still just scratching the surface of the enormous opportunity ahead of us and remain convinced that fresh pet food is the future of pet food. We believe that Freshpet is very well positioned to lead the transition to fresh for many years to come. In Q2, we made significant progress on the adjusted EBITDA improvement that we committed to delivering this year, while simultaneously re-accelerating the household penetration and volume growth that supports both our near-term and long-term growth targets.
The operational improvements are the result of the intense focus and organizational capability we have built in the areas of quality, logistics, and input costs, and in an improving operating environment. The re-acceleration, household penetration, and volume growth are the result of our unwavering focus on three foundational pillars that underpin our strategy: the strength of Freshpet proposition, the exceptional support of our customers, and our long-standing demonstrated marketing and innovation mastery. I will share a few highlights of our performance and a few thoughts on the outlook for the balance of the year. Then Todd will provide more detail on the quarter and an update on our guidance for the year. The highlights are, first, strong net sales growth. We delivered 26% net sales growth in the second quarter and our 20th consecutive quarter with greater than 25% growth.
This quarter's growth was in line with the guidance we shared for the quarter that called for mid-twenties growth and puts us on track to deliver our 2023 plan and our 2027 goal of $1.8 billion in net sales. What is most encouraging is that, unlike many other CPG companies, our volume consumption was strong and the growth is accelerating as the year-on-year benefits of higher pricing recede. Consumption volume growth in the quarter accelerated to 18%, up from 14% in Q1 and 12% in Q4 of 2022. Pricing and mix contributed a little more than 7% to our growth in the quarter. Second, household penetration growth. As we had anticipated, household penetration growth re-accelerated in the quarter once consumers digested the higher pricing that we have implemented over the past 18 months.
The 52-week household penetration was up 10% versus year ago, and the more near-term readings, such as the 13-week and 4-week measures, are up even higher, which foreshadows positive momentum for the annual growth rate. Encouragingly, the rate of growth amongst our heaviest users, HIPPOs, was higher, yet up 17% versus year ago in the quarter on a trailing 52-week basis. Additionally, the buying rate for our franchise remains well ahead of our expectations and was up 19% versus year ago. Third, adjusted EBITDA well ahead of guidance. This was a breakout quarter for our operations team. As we discussed on our last call, second quarter adjusted EBITDA was expected to be in line with Q1 and weighed down by the heavy start-up costs in Ennis and the start-up of our Dallas DC.
We greatly exceeded those expectations due to strong performance across every part of the P&L, with the biggest improvement coming in logistics. Our logistics costs improved by 350 basis points versus the year ago, and 130 basis points versus Q1, primarily due to strong fill rates and the successful utilization of our second DC. We also had strong performance on input costs, quality costs, and SG&A. As a result of this strong performance and the continued improvement we are seeing, we are raising our adjusted EBITDA guidance for the year. Todd will provide more detail and the rationale for that, but you should take away that we are very encouraged by the improvements we've made in the efficiency of our operations and confident in our ability to drive further improvements.
You should also take away that we are well on track to deliver the cost improvements embedded in our 2027 goals. Fourth, we proved that Freshpet could grow strongly even when priced at levels that reflect higher commodity costs. We've now taken price increases totaling a cumulative impact of approximately 27% over the past 18 months to reflect the higher input costs we have absorbed. Despite this higher pricing, volume growth continues to be strong and is accelerating. This demonstrates the strength of our brand and the Freshpet consumer proposition. Input costs as a percent of net sales came in at 34.4%, a 240 basis point improvement versus the year ago. This reflects the full impact of our February price increase and a more stable input cost environment.
With these gains in hand, we are well on our way to achieving the necessary savings that underpin our 2027 goal. We believe we have an opportunity to drive further operating improvements in areas such as production yield, cost savings initiatives, and some increasing scale benefits in purchasing. However, our goal is to make Freshpet accessible to the broadest range of consumers that we can. An improving cost environment will help us to avoid further price increases, while efficiency improvements will generally be used to restore our margins and generate higher returns on our invested capital. Fifth, the Ennis Kitchen startup continues to deliver. The Ennis Kitchen is now operating 1 bag line and 1 roll line on the 24/7 schedule. The chicken processing operation is up and running, providing large quantities of chicken to our operations as planned.
We are also producing the full range of SKUs that were planned for the Ennis facility. These demonstrate the thoughtful execution of our operating team, and we remain very optimistic about future gains we can realize as we ramp up to full efficiency to support our long-term growth. We are in the early stages of planning to start up the second bag line in Ennis and expect to be producing on that line in Q1 of next year, which means that we will begin hiring the staff and then commissioning that line in the second half of this year. Finally, construction on phase two is well underway and the steel frame of the building has gone up. The first line in phase two is expected to begin production late in Q3 of next year, which is when we anticipate that we will need that capacity to support our growth.
Sixth, record levels of customer support. During Q2, we saw several major customers begin the implementation of very large-scale fridge placement efforts, including the largest single project in our history, where we began a two-month effort to place more than 2,300 fridges at a single customer in late June. Many of those fridges were upgrades, second or third fridges, but that program demonstrates their interest and commitment in capturing very large shares of the growing Freshpet food category. In the quarter, we placed a total of 1,385 new fridges, with 313 of them being net new stores and the balance were upgrades, second and third fridges in existing outlets. For the year, we continue to expect to install more than 5,000 new fridges, which will similarly be heavily skewed to stores where we are placing second and third fridges.
By the end of the year, we expect to have more than 1.7 million cubic feet of refrigerated space at retail. Seventh, continued to strengthen our board. In the past three months, we've made some excellent additions to our board. In May, we announced the appointment of Dave Biegger, the former Chief Supply Chain Officer for Conagra and Campbell Soup, to our board. Dave brings highly relevant perishable food operations expertise to our business. Two weeks ago, we announced that Dave West has joined our board. Dave is the former CEO of Big Heart Pet, which is now part of JM Smucker, and prior to that, he was the CEO and CFO of Hershey, and most recently, he was the vice chairman of Simply Good Foods. Dave brings deep pet industry expertise, strong financial acumen, and an appreciation for the unique challenges of high-growth businesses.
Dave West will join our audit committee. We announced that Walt George was selected as our new Board Chair. Walt is replacing Charlie Norris, who just retired in accordance with the mandatory retirement policy we put in place as part of our five-year governance transformation plan that we announced in 2020. Charlie championed that plan despite the knowledge that it would compel him to retire this year. We are incredibly grateful to Charlie for his vision and support over so many years. He shepherded Freshpet from a company with $5 million in sales to one with a projected $750 million in sales this year, and even personally guaranteed the debt of the company at a perilous moment early in its life. Walt will step into the chairman seat seamlessly.
He's been on the board since the company went public in 2014 and has deep knowledge of both the company and the pet industry. Walt began his career in operations at Frito-Lay. More importantly, he was a key executive at Hill's Science Diet during its rapid growth from $185 million in net sales to $1.5 billion. That gives him unique insight into the challenges of building a large pet food brand and creating a supply network capable of supporting that growth. Walt is also deeply committed to advancing the health of companion animals. As he serves as an officer on the board of the Morris Animal Foundation, which is one of the largest nonprofit organizations worldwide, funding scientific studies to advance the health and well-being of companion animals.
These board changes punctuate a multi-year effort to strengthen our company and better prepare us to pursue our mission to change the way people feed their pets forever. These changes also demonstrate our commitment to evolving our board to meet our changing needs, in parallel with the five-year governance transformation plan that we initiated in 2020. That plan and the board evolution are built on a philosophy that our board's governance practices and counsel they provide to our leadership team should match the increasing scale and complexity of our business, and be capable of addressing the emerging challenges we will encounter in the years ahead. Our efforts to strengthen our human capital have touched every part of our organization.
Two years ago, we announced our investment in the Freshpet Academy, which has stabilized and strengthened our production workforce, dramatically reducing turnover and building critical skills that have delivered the results we are sharing today. Last September, we announced several impactful changes to our management team and have filled numerous roles since then, including a new CFO, a new EVP of Manufacturing and Supply Chain, a new Head of Logistics, a new CIO, a new VP of Manufacturing, and numerous other important roles. Each of these was needed to both strengthen our team and support our rapid growth. Looking forward, I expect that our efforts will deliver continued improvement in our operations and increasingly strong volume and household penetration-based growth. Our team is very focused on the goals we set for this year and is delivering the kind of performance you should expect from us.
We believe that the strengthened team we have built, everywhere from our production floor, to our finance team, to our logistics team, to our marketing and sales team, and more, is only scratching the surface of what is possible. We are very focused on delivering the 2027 goals we laid out earlier this year in our Fresh Future plan and doing it as quickly as we can. We are building momentum, and our results to date show that we are on track to deliver those goals. Now, let me turn it over to Todd for the details on the Q2 results. Todd?
Todd Cunfer (CFO)
Thank you, Billy. Good morning, everyone. As Billy said, in Q2, we continued the strong performance we saw earlier this year and have raised our adjusted EBITDA guidance to reflect that strength. Let me break it down a bit further. Net sales came in at $183.3 million, up 26% versus a year ago. Our net price mix was up slightly more than 7% versus a year ago in the quarter, and volume grew around 18%. Total Nielsen measured dollar growth was up 23% versus a year ago in the quarter, but our growth at non-measured channels was much stronger and added about 2.5 points to our measured channels growth.
The growth was broad-based across channels, ranging from a low of 15% in the pet specialty channel to 25% in xAOC, and greater than 50% in the unmeasured channels. Adjusted gross margin was 39.8% in Q2, 110 basis points better than a year ago and above our base expectations. This improved performance was due to a variety of factors, including improvements in the cost of inputs, quality, better pricing, and a solid start-up in Ennis. All aspects of our operational improvement plan that our team is focused on. We expect these elements will continue to improve as we move forward and drive continued margin enhancement.
As we ramp up production in Ennis, in both our operations and in chicken processing, we will have some margin dilution due to the less than full utilization of our capacity and the cost of incremental staffing as we prepare to start up our next line. We will grow into that over time. The increasing production in Ennis will also make us a much more resilient company, able to absorb the kinds of incidental supply issues that we struggled with in previous years and also lower our total logistics costs. Total adjusted SG&A was 34.9% of net sales, down from 40% in the year ago quarter. The biggest improvement was in logistics, where we gained 350 basis points due to strong fill rates, the increased utilization of our second DC, favorable lane rates, and lower diesel costs.
We spent a healthy 14.8% of net sales in media in the quarter. This was below the 16.4% we spent in the year-ago quarter when we leaned into first half media to offset the impact of the February 2022, 12% price increase. Year-on-year, however, media spending was up $3.5 million. The balance of our SG&A costs were flat as a percentage of sales versus the year-ago. Adjusted EBITDA was $9 million in Q2. That is considerably better than the expectation we had initially provided and was primarily due to the strong operating performance in COGS and logistics, in addition to a modest shift in SG&A spending from Q2-Q3.
For the year, we have delivered $12 million in adjusted EBITDA to date, well ahead of the initial expectations we set at the outset of the year. Capital spending in the quarter came in slightly below the most recent expectation at $45 million, largely due to sequencing of some sizable expenses in Ennis related to completion of the first production building, the chicken processing facility, and the early stages of construction of Phase Two. There is no change in our outlook for capital spending this year, which remains at $240 million. Our cash position is very strong. For the remainder of the year, we expect interest income and interest expense to largely offset each other. We believe that we have adequate cash to fully fund our growth through 2024, and we will be free cash flow positive in 2026.
We also believe that we will have access to traditional, non-dilutive forms of capital to bridge a gap in 2025, if it occurs. In terms of the cadence of our business for the balance of 2023, we expect to continue the strong growth we demonstrated in the first half, the net sales growth will increasingly be driven by volume growth versus pricing growth. In Q1, we had a 14% benefit from pricing. In Q2, that dropped to 8%, and by Q4, it will be less than 5%. We expect the volume growth rate to continue to increase from the 18% we experienced in Q2 and be in the mid-20s by year-end.
We expect that Nielsen-measured consumption growth, which is measured in dollars, will continue to grow from the mid-20s, where it was in Q2, and from the upper 20s, where it is now, to around 30% by the end of the year. Our non-measured channel growth rate will be even stronger as the business is growing quickly and accelerating. The net sales growth rate versus year ago will be stronger in Q3 than Q4, as we had a very large trade inventory refill in the year ago during Q4. While it's very difficult to determine the amount of that trade inventory refill, we did have a gap of 10 points between the net sales growth rate and the Nielsen measured growth rate in Q4 of 2022.
We estimate that the trade inventory refill that occurred last year was in the $10 million-$15 million range. Separately, last year's Q3 had some supply interruptions due to the recall we had, and that will also make this year's year-on-year comparison a bit more favorable in Q3 than in Q4. We continue to see continuing improvement in our operating costs in Q3 as we build scale in Ennis and continue the strong delivery we have already seen in logistics and quality. However, we will be adding staffing in the back half of the year in anticipation of meeting the demand we will experience in Q1 of 2024, and that will impact the adjusted gross margin. Despite the additional staffing, we expect the second half will generate significant improvement in adjusted gross margin versus prior year, with adjusted gross margin in the 38%-39% range.
In terms of inflation, we continue to see modest inflation in some portions of our cost structure, typically those costs with a heavy labor component, but we are also seeing relief on some other commodities that were badly constrained over the past year or two. At this point, over 90% of our costs are locked in for the year, so there is little upside opportunity or downside risk on input costs this year. It is too early to tell what next year's total cost basket will look like. In the back half of the year, we will also benefit from lower media spending as a % of net sales than we had in the first half. Recall, our plan for this year includes a first half, second half split on media investment of 2/3 versus 1/3.
Unlike last year, though, we will have a meaningful media presence in Q4. This translates to media spending in the back half of the year that we expect to be up around $15 million versus the second half of 2022. Let me turn to our guidance for the balance of the year. Given given outperformance for the first half, we are raising our adjusted EBITDA guidance for the year to reflect some of that performance, but we will also leave us some room to absorb unexpected issues. Thus, we are raising our adjusted EBITDA guidance to at least $55 million from at least $50 million. With net sales continuing to build each quarter and Q4 historically being our lightest media investment period, we expect approximately half of our full-year adjusted EBITDA to occur in the fourth quarter.
We are reaffirming our net sales guidance of around $750 million for the year at this time. The recent trends in volume and household penetration growth continue to support this plan, and we remain confident in our ability to drive the acceleration and growth that our full-year target implies. Finally, I want to provide some perspective on how we are managing our capital spending and capacity expansion projects. Our goal is to support our long-term growth plan without any need for further dilution. We believe our plan and the principles I will outline will achieve that goal. There are two key principles that are guiding our work. Number 1, we want to always have adequate capacity to meet consumer demand. Short-shipping our customers over the past few years frustrated customers and consumers.
Further, we endured unacceptable cost increases in freight and quality when we struggled to keep up with demand. We always want to have enough capacity to meet demand. That will require us to both plan ahead and also leave ourselves some capacity cushion so that we can absorb unanticipated issues or more rapid growth. Fortunately, Freshpet demand growth is generally very reliable and predictable. As we return to more normal timetables for construction and equipment lead times, we should be able to match supply and demand better than we have for the past few years. Number two, conversely, we do not want to commit to more capacity than we will need or sooner than we need.
Ideally, at any given point in time, we do not want to have more capacity than we might need and have large stranded costs consume our cash prematurely. Our current plan, which has us committing to new lines about 18 months before we need them, is consistent with this principle. At this point, we are only committed to part of Ennis Phase Two, and that takes our total capacity to almost $1.5 billion. We can comfortably pay for that cash with the cash we already have. We have not made any commitments for the second part of Ennis Phase Two and Ennis Phase Three or additional lines at Kitchen South. We will only make those commitments when demand justifies it.
Further, we do not want to get too far ahead of ourselves on any manufacturing technology that we will have the ability to implement more efficient technologies as soon as they are ready to commercialize. As you know, we have a team of engineers and meat scientists who have been working for several years on ways to produce Freshpet more efficiently and have some exciting opportunities under development. These principles make me very confident that we will be able to fulfill our long-term growth expectations with the financial resources that we have and that the business will produce. It also provides some advantageous optionality under lower growth scenarios, where we can accelerate free cash flow generation, should the conditions present themselves. That is certainly not our expectation, it should give you some comfort about the downside risk of our plan.
I also want to be clear that each capital investment we make is with an expectation that we will deliver an after-tax ROIC in the mid-teens. The financial projections we laid out at CAGNY allow us to achieve these ROIC targets. In closing, we are very happy with where we are at the midpoint of the year. We continue to see strong revenue growth and are seeing the rebound in volume growth and household penetration that will enable us to deliver on our long-term mission to change the way people nourish their pets. The operations improvement plan we put in place last September, has now produced strong and consistent improvements that put us on track or ahead of the glide path needed to achieve our long-term margin targets.
We have successfully started up our most significant capacity expansion effort, Ennis, expanded our capability to include on-site chicken processing successfully. Our customers are leaning into the fresh category by adding second and third fridges at a rapid rate. In total, that leaves us feeling very bullish about our future and our ability to deliver our long-term goals. That concludes our review. We will now be glad to answer your questions, and as a reminder, please focus your questions on the quarter and the company's operations. Operator?
Operator (participant)
Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two, if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. In the interest of time, we ask that you each keep to one question and one follow-up. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Mark Astrachan with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.
Mark Astrachan (Managing Director)
Hey, thanks. Morning, everybody.
Todd Cunfer (CFO)
Morning.
Mark Astrachan (Managing Director)
I guess I would ask you about media spend and, and sort of how you're thinking about that. You know, in terms of the timing through the year, I, I, I get that, but in terms of what it's bringing in, how you're spending it, you know, relative to a few years ago, it's still as efficient as it was in terms of the historic correlation. How are you spending it versus social media, other sort of new age, media purchases versus more traditional? Are you aiming it at new consumers? Is it aimed at existing users? You know, how do you think about who you're bringing in? How do you think about the returns on the different cohorts of folks?
Maybe if you could give an update on how you're thinking about the cohorts in terms of repeat purchases, as it relates to the media spend, that'd be helpful. Thank you.
Scott Morris (COO)
Hey, Mark. Good morning. So, I think, like, historically, we've always been a, you know, heavily weighted towards the front half of the year, from our, from our total media spend. This year, we have, we have actually more money budgeted towards... a little bit more budgeted in total dollars towards the back half this year. For kind of where we are year to date, if you look at our overall media plan and the timing and correlation around household penetration, we were waiting for an inflection point, and we were hoping to see it in February, and it really started happening in late February, early March. It was kind of timed similarly to what we have seen in the past.
If you look at the overall year, we're slightly above our historical on dollars per consumer. It's cost us a little bit more to get consumers year to date. If you look at the period since that inflection point, it's actually starting to perform well right back in the norm. I think this goes back to a much broader piece that we're seeing on the business. To be back in stock, consistently with full fridges, plus the media, plus the innovation and all of those things working together, is what's driving those efficiencies. I, I think we were still between pricing and not being consistently back in stock and really smooth the supply chain until over the course of Q1. I think that was holding us back.
We're really excited to see the media respond, you know, to really kind of drive the household penetration. The thing I think we're most excited about, is to be able to see that it's not just driving dollars, that we're seeing really, really great progress.
Todd Cunfer (CFO)
... on a pounds and units front, which I think is pretty unique based on the category and also across CPG. You asked a little bit about cohorts, you asked about media mix. The thing that I would probably celebrate is both our marketing team and our partners have done, year after year after year, done an amazing job continuing to evolve our mix of media to make sure that it's productive as we spend more and as we get deeper into our total addressable market. They've been able to do that consistently, and I think it gives us incredible confidence in what we- what the potential of the business is over time. You'll see us more and more, even before the writers' strike, you'll see us more and more around sports.
Scott Morris (COO)
We've been testing sports over the past year. They've been incredibly productive for us. We're pressing into some, some new channels from a digital and, you know, even kind of e-commerce standpoint. That's been helpful to us. We are very, very committed to being... I always refer to it as media agnostic, meaning we wanna do a lot of testing, we wanna figure out what's productive, and that's where we're gonna spend our dollars. There's, there's no dollars that we're spending that are for glory and, and fame. It's literally comes down to the strict payout, and I, I, I think that our analytics around that are best-in-class and best in the industry.
Todd Cunfer (CFO)
From a cohort repeat basis, one of the things that's mentioned in, I think in the script and also in the presentation, is not only are we seeing overall penetration growth, but we're seeing really strong growth from the HIPPOs. Those are the high-profit, pet-owning households. Those are the people that tend to have either multiple dogs, bigger dogs, and they spend more with us. We're seeing really strong performance from that group, really nice, consistent, repeat purchases over time. The way we always think about it is, we do a lot of work around LTVs, like, what's the long-term value of these consumers? We are seeing that the long-term value of, of the consumer groups continue to perform and continue to grow at year in and year out.
Scott Morris (COO)
I think it's another kind of sign of a really kind of healthy, fundamental business. I, I know that you, you there were a lot of questions in there, so hopefully I, I hit on, on the majority of them.
Mark Astrachan (Managing Director)
Yeah, that was great. Thanks, Scott.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Peter Benedict with Baird. Please proceed with your question.
Peter Benedict (Senior Research Analyst)
All right, guys. Good morning. I was hoping maybe you can expand a little bit more on the unmeasured channel growth, how strong that's been, just some, some more color on what's driving that and, and how you see kind of the, the, the durability of that above-average growth.
Scott Morris (COO)
Hey, Peter. Good morning. It, it, we have continued to see a really, really nice expansion. When I say expansion, just continued strong and leading growth in the non-measured channel. That's centered around both club and e-commerce. The e-commerce is still on the smaller side of our business, but we have recognized, and I was just mentioning a lot about the marketing performance that we've seen. We've been able to see incredible returns when we're very, very careful and selective around some of the marketing that we've done around e-commerce, so we're really proud of that. The team's done a terrific job, and, we just love, we love the progress there, and we also see, you know, the opportunity in that area.
We've- we've been a little bit of a laggard, in, in pressing into that area, partially because we just haven't had the inventory, for, for a few years. We really didn't wanna kinda press into a, a, a new channel as much. There, there's a lot of opportunity there. On the club, on the club front, we've been able to get distribution, and we've come with a proposition that works for all the different partners. We think it works well for the consumer, works well for the retailer, and then works really well for us, and we've continued to see really, really nice expansion there.
The other thing that's, I think important to note in those, those unmeasured channels is we've done a, a pretty significant amount of work and been able to identify that the, the consumers coming in on those non-measured channels seem to be incremental to the, kind of the overall, overall business. We really, really like that aspect of it.
Peter Benedict (Senior Research Analyst)
That's great. Thanks. My follow-up would be around pricing ability that you mentioned, you know, a desire to avoid more price increases. Just curious, if you could comment on behaviors you're seeing across your price points, across your assortment, and how you, maybe how you feel about how that's set right now. Are there any adjustments that you think you might wanna make, given demand elasticities, across your portfolio? Thanks.
Scott Morris (COO)
Yeah. We feel very good about where we're sitting right now. Obviously, the consumer had to digest 27% pricing in 18 months, there were some bumps along the way, we've come out the other side, we feel like we're in a really good place today. The value relationship looks pretty good. The only piece of, of shift that we've seen is we've seen a little bit more of rolls consumption than bags, it's very small in the grand scheme of things. For the most part, the consumers, they digested the pricing quite well. It's a little bit hard to see some of the, all the details, because our in-stocks have been improving quite a bit since where we were a year ago, that masks some of the, some of the price sensitivity you might see.
Overall, we feel like we're in a pretty good spot, and frankly, we like where we sit because the commodities seem to be somewhat stable. Consumers have adopted our pricing, so we feel like we've got a, you know, fairly clear, smooth sailing for at least the foreseeable future at this point.
Peter Benedict (Senior Research Analyst)
Great. Thanks so much, guys.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Lavery with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.
Michael Lavery (Senior Research Analyst)
Thank you. Good morning.
Scott Morris (COO)
Good morning.
Michael Lavery (Senior Research Analyst)
... Can you just unpack a little bit and help make, help us make sure we understand what drives the volume acceleration in the second half, and just how much of the EBITDA guide is tied to that pickup as well?
Billy Cyr (CEO)
I'll talk about the acceleration, let Todd talk about the EBITDA pickup. What's driving it is the consumers have digested the pricing, and the in-stock conditions look good. We're getting lots of second fridge placements, and the media is on air and working the way it's, it, worked historically, as Scott, you know, outlined in the earlier question. It's the, basically, the return to the business model, getting to work without all the bumps in, you know, of out of stocks and media not necessarily being on air. It's really back to business as usual. You wanna talk about the back half?
Scott Morris (COO)
Yeah, back half, it's, it's pretty simple. It's, it's really two aspects. One is, as you know, we spend heavily, more heavily in media in the first half. Almost two-thirds of our spend happens in the first half versus the second half. That, that delta between first half and second half in absolute dollars is almost $25 million. That's a huge chunk of the EBITDA second half waiting there. Just sequentially, every quarter, we're anticipating revenue will be larger, and we'll obviously get, you know, variable margin off of that. Those are really the two big pieces, and we'll continue to see very favorable logistics costs. I think we'll even do a little bit better in the second half than we did in the first half. Those, those are the big buckets.
Michael Lavery (Senior Research Analyst)
Okay, that's helpful. I, I know you said it's early for next year, and that, that makes perfect sense as far as some of the input cost visibility. Can you give us a sense of timing of when you have your discussions to, to, to lock in chicken? You know, I think you contract that annually. Obviously, those prices have come off, and just curious, you know, kinda when the sweet spot is for figuring out what, you know, when, when you would be locking in for next year and how far away that is.
Billy Cyr (CEO)
Yeah. I mean, we officially lock in December. The discussions start as early as September, and it's sort of a dance that goes on between us and the chicken suppliers over that time period. It's always hard to say because the, as you think you know, the chicken market can move fairly quickly. The, the growing cycles on chickens is very short. Supply and demand can expand and contract fairly quickly. You know, we're optimistic, we're encouraged. I do think you have to remember that our price on chicken didn't go up as much as what you'd see in the publicly reported information for chicken for the human market. It doesn't have as much room to go back down. It, you know, there is still a little bit of room there.
We don't know what we'll, what we'll see when, by the time we get to the end of the year, though.
Michael Lavery (Senior Research Analyst)
Okay, great. Thanks so much.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bryan Spillane with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.
Bryan Spillane (Americas Director of Equity Research)
Hey, thanks, operator. Good morning, guys.
Billy Cyr (CEO)
Morning.
Scott Morris (COO)
Morning.
Bryan Spillane (Americas Director of Equity Research)
Hey, Billy, if, if I could, we got a couple of questions on this today, and, and so maybe if you could talk a little about, about I think it's slide 30 on the in the presentation, where you, you, you know, you lay out the, the volume growth, or the volume chart. Can you talk a little bit about how that looks like on a multi-year stack basis? I think the question that a lot of people have, have kind of, you know, has come into my inbox this morning is just how much of the volume acceleration is, is, you know, basically just the comparisons, and maybe some distribution fill, and, and just how, how you gain comfort with that in trying to look at it on some sort of stack basis.
I guess, you know, net of it is-
Billy Cyr (CEO)
Yeah
Bryan Spillane (Americas Director of Equity Research)
... how much of it is easy comps versus, you know, household penetration and growing, growing again?
Billy Cyr (CEO)
Yeah. I, I think the way to think about it is, it's, what you're getting to is, in the year ago period, in the early part of the year, you had a continually elevating price, which is driving a little bit on the price side, not necessarily on the pound side. On the pounds. Once the price is stabilized, both this year and then a year ago, the pound growth starts accelerating growth. We're seeing, on a week-to-week basis, we're seeing the pounds go up, very consistently, which is a little bit unusual for this time of the year. For us to be in the summer and see pound consumption increasing week to week, you know, obviously, there's a little bit of shift, you know, as you go through the weeks of the month.
For the most part, we've been seeing consistent growth on a sequential basis throughout the summer, and that's very, very encouraging to us. We're very bullish on the volume growth side of the story. You know, we've obviously seen, you know, even more data than is there, but what we can tell you is the volume growth continues to accelerate quite a bit.
Scott Morris (COO)
L- l- let me. I'll, I'll just expand on that a tiny bit. If you take an average of Q4, this is, and this is Nielsen MEGA, and you basically take that average, and you look at where we are to date, we're up about 12% versus kind of that Q4 average in pounds. It's been. Like Billy said, it literally from February forward, every couple of weeks, it's been consistently up. It, it, the compare. I, I think you can, you can look at comparables, but I think you look at where you were at the end of the year, and you look at it versus a prior period, and it's been consistently up since February. It, I mean, and we, we're. Every couple of weeks, we're setting new records in, in volume.
Bryan Spillane (Americas Director of Equity Research)
Okay. Thanks for that. Just, just a quick follow-up to that. I, I don't Maybe I missed this, but I, I know you've got the Mega channel in, in the slide deck, but you, you talked about non-measured and, you know, some of the other channels. Do you have a composite of all channels, kind of what consumption was in, in, in the quarter and, and kind of where it's running now? If we were because we, you know, we can't see all of those, the other two, so just trying to get a sense of what the composite of all channels looks like consumption-wise.
Scott Morris (COO)
Yeah, the unmeasured is still a relatively small part of our business. We quoted that volume was up 18% in the quarter. That is the composite that includes the measured and the unmeasured. It's based on our shipment data. We can use that to project it. That's the acceleration we've seen quarter to quarter, 12%-14%-18% in this quarter. We're still seeing that continue to accelerate. The big driver of that is the part that's in the unmeasured, as we said in the call, is growing at a rate that's in excess of 50%. While it's relatively small, it is a expanding portion of the growth.
Bryan Spillane (Americas Director of Equity Research)
Okay. We should look at the 18 volume as a decent proxy for consumption. There's not, like, a lot of inventory or any kind of pipe...
Scott Morris (COO)
No, there's not.
Bryan Spillane (Americas Director of Equity Research)
You know, like new distribution or anything like that?
Scott Morris (COO)
No, that is, that is based on looking at what we shipped, and it's also looking at the Nielsen measured numbers, as well as what we can track for the customers who are not included in the measured part, and that's how you arrive at the 18.
Bryan Spillane (Americas Director of Equity Research)
Okay, cool. Thanks, guys.
Scott Morris (COO)
Yep.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bill Chappell with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question.
Bill Chappell (Managing Director)
Thanks. Hello? Can you hear me?
Scott Morris (COO)
Now we can.
Bill Chappell (Managing Director)
Good morning.
Scott Morris (COO)
Morning.
Bill Chappell (Managing Director)
Just a follow-up on the pricing issue. I understand you're comfortable with the pricing and consumers are increasingly comfortable with the pricing, what happens if you see more of the dry premium competitors roll back on price, where the price gaps get bigger? That seems to. I know it's a different market and different product, but that seems to be a risk throughout packaged food in general, that we start to see as costs come back, there's more promotions in the marketplace. Any thoughts there?
Scott Morris (COO)
Yeah. So Bill, I think you're right. I think that the reality is, fresh, fresh food, Freshpet is a, is kind of its own specialized universe, but at the end of the day, they're still like it's still a food marketplace. There are certain, I think people have to get consumers have to get comfortable with basically what the value proposition is of what we're offering versus what they can get in dry. But I do think that one of, one of the things that we've seen, which has been really amazing, is we went up a very significant amount, like, you know, Billy quoted in the script, almost 27% price increase.
To see the, the, the expansion that we're seeing, in penetration and buying rate, it's extraordinary, and I, I really think it demonstrates the specialness of what we, what we brought to consumers. I know I do think that if, if people start doing a, you know, a significant amount of promotion, I mean, it, it could have like a short-term disruption, but I think that we've been able to work through this really well in the past, bringing what we brought to market. Now, secondarily, we actually made a handful of decisions over the past, literally six months, to make sure that we're continuing to offer the best value proposition we possibly can.
There's gonna be some additional innovation that we're launching in the back of this year, that will kind of address that and offer even better value to some consumers, at, at parity-type margins for us. Then we'll also, offer some new innovation in the beginning of next year. I think your point is, we're cognizant of that. We think we're at a really good place. We do know that there could be significant promotion going on in the category, and we've tried to kind of forward think, what, what we could do in order to kinda offset some of that. Overall, it has not-- we've seen a ton of activity in the past. It has not slowed our progress.
Bill Chappell (Managing Director)
Got it. I guess on the same vein for the follow-up, I know in the past you've done some certain customers, do you feel the need to expand that even further, as, if, if customers are price sensitive, or are you very comfortable where you stand?
Scott Morris (COO)
Bill, you, you cut out just a tiny bit. You said something, certain customers, and I missed that, and I think that was an important part.
Bill Chappell (Managing Director)
Yeah, yeah. Sorry, you're doing private label already for certain customers.
Scott Morris (COO)
Oh, yeah. Yes. Oh, okay.
Bill Chappell (Managing Director)
And this is a really-
Scott Morris (COO)
Was there, was a need to expand that? Yeah. Got it. Okay. Actually, well, I'm glad you brought that up. We have actually, based on what we're seeing in the market and where we are and the progress that, or the lack of progress we've made with some of that private label, we're going to start, like, basically winding the majority of that, those offerings down. We've shared that with, with most of our customers. There'll always be some discussion, but we're if you think about the program, where it is today, it's gonna be significantly less over the course of next year. We'll tighten that up.
When we have done the private label items, we've been able to actually, for the most part, have margins that are, I'd say, acceptable. They're not- they're definitely not leading by any means, but they've been acceptable to us. Overall, we think we can better utilize that capacity towards some innovation and different things that we'd like to bring to market.
Bill Chappell (Managing Director)
That's great to hear. Thanks so much.
Scott Morris (COO)
Thank you, Bill.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Cody Ross with UBS. Please proceed with your question.
Cody Ross (Lead US Packaged Food Analyst)
Good morning. Thank you for taking our question. You guys have been able to re-accelerate volume growth and household penetration, but I just wanted to dig into the metrics you provided on slide 25. Your household penetration is up 10% on a 52-week basis. How did that compare to your plans coming into the year? Can you just describe and detail for us more your volume growth plans in the back half, what you're looking for from household penetration from here?
Scott Morris (COO)
That's a, that's a really good question. I think I had mentioned it in the very beginning when, when Mark was asking about the advertising. We actually got off to a slow start. January and February were a little bit slower than we would have liked to see from a household penetration standpoint. Actually, in-- since March, we've, we've seen that re-acceleration, and it's actually, we're, we're basically back on track to what type of the level of performance we'd like to see and the cost to acquire a consumer. If you'd asked me that in March, I, I-- we thought it was starting to turn, but it's now really turned, and it's really clear which way the line is going, which is, you know, up into the right, which is terrific.
We've actually posted some, you know, more recently, a couple of really, really good, good weeks. That's on a rolling kind of 52. Pretty big improvements. I think it's a lot of it's behind, again, going, we're back in stock. We're back in stock consistently. We've got really good innovation. We've got great a great media plan, and I think we have epic creative right now. The, the creative and the advertising that we put in place seems to literally have talk value and really be kind of well adopted and absorbed by consumers in the marketplace. We feel like we're returning, I think Billy used the term earlier, we're returning to the historical growth algorithm.
Cody Ross (Lead US Packaged Food Analyst)
Gotcha. That's super helpful. I guess, Todd, just to put a finer point on a question that was earlier, do you think you can hit your revised EBITDA guidance that's higher now, if you did not accelerate volume as you guys planned? I'll pass over. Thank you.
Todd Cunfer (CFO)
Yeah, look, I mean, obviously, no, no change in our full year outlook. We're still, we're still, you know, holding, holding to the $750 million level. Really no, no change in what we think the volumes are gonna be for the full year. I would say that the re-acceleration happened a little bit later than we thought. You know, Q2 got off to... It was, it was perfectly fine, but wasn't as strong as, as we had hoped. Now that re-acceleration is a bit steeper than we originally thought. Where we are as we, as we enter Q3, we feel terrific about. Again, no change to the full year guidance. We, we thought we, we, we could hit that. Just the, the, the curve is a little bit different than we originally anticipated.
Cody Ross (Lead US Packaged Food Analyst)
Thank you. Best of luck going forward. I'll pass it on.
Todd Cunfer (CFO)
Great. Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Rupesh Parikh with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.
Rupesh Parikh (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)
Good morning, thanks for taking my question. Just going back to Ennis facility and the ramp so far, just curious, any positive or negative surprises as you continue to ramp the facility?
Scott Morris (COO)
I guess I would say that, as you can imagine, starting up a greenfield facility has always got ups and downs in it, and we've had, you know, our fair share of ups and downs as it's gone along. What I'll tell you is where we are today is, we feel very good about the progress we made on the roll side of the business, and it's going very, very well. The chicken processing is doing very well. The bag side of the business took a little bit longer and steeper to ramp up than what we would have hoped. We're now producing all the items in the lineup. We feel very good about that, but it took a little bit longer to get to the production levels that we wanted in qualifying all the items.
In part, that's why we've begun to do the staffing for the line, the next bag line, so we give ourselves a little bit more time to start that up. We need that to be producing in Q1 of next year. We've started adding some staffing now, so we can give ourselves a little bit more lead time on the ramp-up of the bag line. Other than that, it's, it's, it's going well. We feel good about it. As we said, it's over 20% of our production at this point, and for two lines, that's pretty darn good.
Rupesh Parikh (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)
Great. Then maybe just one follow-up question for Todd. You've beaten out EBITDA two quarters in two quarters in a row by a significant margin. Just curious, you know, if we see more upside in the back half of the year, would you consider reinvesting in the business, or is there more a bias to let it flow through to the bottom line?
Todd Cunfer (CFO)
Yeah, look, we have. It's a very good question, we will, you know, we'll continue to evaluate the returns on additional media if, if we choose to go do that. I just, you know, want to point out, even though, you know, almost two-thirds of the spending is, is first half weighted, we have significantly more media in the second half this year than we do next year. I mean, we're gonna be up about 40% year-over-year in Q3, and then, as you know, we spend very, very little in Q4, and we'll spend probably over $10 million in Q4 this year. We have, versus prior year and even previous years, we have a solid amount of media in the second half.
Look, if we, if we see an opportunity to invest more, we'll definitely take a look at it. As you know, over time, we'd like that media as a percent of net sales to come down a bit to allow us to get to our 18% EBITDA margin target in 2027. We'll be smart. If we see a great opportunity, we'll take advantage of it.
Rupesh Parikh (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)
Great. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jim Salera with Stephens Inc. Please proceed with your question.
Jim Salera (Research Analyst)
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Billy, I, I think in your opening remarks, you had mentioned that there was a $2,300 bridge commitment from a single customer.
Billy Cyr (CEO)
Yeah.
Jim Salera (Research Analyst)
If you can just give us some idea around what was the catalyst for them to make an order of that size? Is it something that, you know, they've been looking at, and now is the right time for them? Just give us some insight into, you know, why that decision now?
Scott Morris (COO)
Yeah. I, I'll, I'll expand on that a bit. you know, it's-... I think this is something that's been coming for several years. We actually put a strategy in place probably about three or four years ago, that we call Fresh First. The idea was, how do we get consumers to think about filling their pet food's bowl with fresh first? How do retailers start off the aisle with fresh first, because of the inherent benefits in, in, in our business model. I think what's happened is, us talking about that and the progress that we've made on the consumer front, and then finally being able to, you know, to build an Ennis, have that customer come and visit there, and see that we were gonna have plenty of capacity, they got really comfortable, going ahead and expanding.
It was a, it was an existing customer, very large customer, one of our top kind of five customers, and, wanted to expand and double down, and really put in second and third fridges. I think the core of it, and I've heard this repeated time and time again over the past maybe two years, is retailers are looking around, going, "The benefits that Freshpet food brings to their store and their aisle, are the same benefits they see on the human side," where they see increased traffic, new consumers, strong margins, a lot of dollars per consumer, and really an overall quality halo impact for their entire aisle. I think they realize that, and they realize that it's a, it's a really advantageous for both their business and then the overall pet food aisle.
And they've made that decision along with lots of others. I, I think we're gonna continue to see many retailers, kind of, kind of follow in behind them, and add more and more fridges. I mean, we're gonna have more... we'll have more fridges, you know, almost year to date, than we've had in some years. I think we're, we're excited about the, the change, and, and I guess it goes back to Todd's comment earlier. We've got to make sure that retailers are confident we can fill those fridges. If they, if we can, and we have been able to, then they're willing to put in more.
Billy Cyr (CEO)
Yeah. Let me, let me just amplify that point, that this particular customer, last July, sent a, sent a group starting at the buyer and the planner for the pet category, all the way up to the CEO, to Ennis, to walk it and get convinced that we could we could supply them. They spent better part of almost a full day with us, and at the end, they came away convinced that we'd be able to supply them, and we're willing to make that kind of commitment. Now that we've got good fill rates, they can see the net is there, Ennis has the capacity, I would expect other customers to have the confidence to lean in and, and put more fridges in.
Jim Salera (Research Analyst)
Okay, great. Then maybe as a follow-on to that, if we think about the pet aisle in retailers, and obviously it varies a little bit from, from store to store, but given that the majority of your new fridges are second and third fridges, how much actual space is there in a lot of these? I mean, do they have to expand the pet aisles, or is there enough in most retailers to accommodate a second and third fridge or the larger fridges?
Scott Morris (COO)
Yeah. Even in a grocery store, you'll see, just in dog food, you'll see typically at least 40, 48, 40-48 feet. There's a, there's a-- That's just in the dog food section. There's plenty of room. I think over time, you know, we're gonna continue to take more and more of the calories in the category and deliver kind of really strong metrics to the retailer. I think that there's plenty of opportunity and plenty of room for us to continue to expand for many years to come.
Jim Salera (Research Analyst)
Okay, great. Thanks, guys. I'll pass it along.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jon Andersen with William Blair. Please proceed with your question.
Jon Andersen (Research Analyst)
Yeah, good morning. Thanks for the question. You know, the past 18 months or so, perhaps even longer, have been more oriented around building the capacity, enhancing fill rates, and getting in-stock levels back. I'm wondering, to what extent you're now looking at it as innovation, as a, a, a key driver, maybe both in terms of kind of filling out the kind of value equation for consumers, also, you know, targeting, you know, maybe some specific segments, that you feel you've been underrepresented in. The bigger question is, I guess, what are, what should we expect from an innovation perspective over the next 12-24 months, and how does that kind of compare to what perhaps we've seen over the, the past 12-24? Can you just provide a comment on your packaging restage?
I think you've talked about, packaging rework that's coming and some of the consumer test results around that. Thank you.
Billy Cyr (CEO)
Yeah. I'm gonna give you just a, a top-line comment, and Scott can tell you about the innovation and the packaging. The top-line comment is, that all the capacity that we've built out has largely been focused on the existing bags and rolls line, because we think the opportunity there is enormous, and our projections are built upon on that. Having said that, we have built flexibility into our system to be able to accommodate a little bit more innovation, and if we get that, that's gravy to us. We think the opportunity on the bags and rolls is absolutely enormous, and so we're gonna put the bulk of our attention and focus on continuing to maximize that opportunity. Having said that, there's a lot of innovation opportunities.
We've got a very innovative team, so Scott can just give you a little bit of color on that.
Scott Morris (COO)
Yeah. Actually, I'll start with the term that we use internally, which is, there's innovation, then there's renovation, renovating some existing products and making simple improvements, and then there's retirement.
Jon Andersen (Research Analyst)
Mm-hmm.
Scott Morris (COO)
We wanna make sure that we're retiring things that aren't productive, and productivity is on a pounds and, but it's also something around, things around margin, too. We do think about it that way. We wanna make sure that, the innovation that we're coming with, we're, we're making sure that we're making progress on margin over time. The biggest single place that we're, we're, I would say, the impact of what I would call innovation, which is a very, very big area, is we're literally looking at innovation and also renovation on our existing lines and, and making sure that they're more productive. That will give us the giant win in the future.
There's both teams are oriented, constant stream of very smart innovation, but it's tight, but also making sure that we're retiring some things that aren't productive and innovating, and using that word on our overall production processes to make, you know, grow margins, increase throughput, and really get to a overall better and better process for the company, which will expand margins over time.
Jon Andersen (Research Analyst)
The packaging restage?
Scott Morris (COO)
Oh, packaging. Oh, thank you. Sorry. On the packaging restage, I believe it's gonna launch in the beginning of end of Q3, beginning of Q4. You'll start to see it kind of gently flow out. It seems to be... We don't do this, we try and be very kind of thoughtful about these things. Every time. I mean, some companies, every time there's a new brand manager, there's a new, there's a new package. We try and do it every three to five years. We think what we're coming with is pretty, pretty significant step change. We test everything very, very thoroughly quantitatively. The quantitative test results that we've done over time tend to be incredibly predictive.
We think that it will be something that will be a support and help for us next year. Congratulations again to the sales team, for their work in the expanded distribution, the innovation team, and that's broad, that's very broad here on the work that they've done, and then also the marketing team on not only the packaging, I mentioned the advertising earlier.
Jon Andersen (Research Analyst)
Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Connor Rattigan with Consumer Edge Research. Please proceed with your question.
Connor Rattigan (Senior Equity Research Analyst and VP)
Good morning, guys. Thanks for the question. Just, just wondering, have you observed any noticeable pack mix shift across your portfolio to larger sizes? I mean, I know last year was a bit of an anomaly, given the gas price, issue, but from what I recall in the summer months, typically, consumers tend to shift to larger pack sizes as, as they travel and such. If so, how should we sort of think about that in the context of the top line and gross margin?
Scott Morris (COO)
Yeah, I don't think we've seen a whole lot of of mix shift in size, a slight shift towards those larger sizes in the most recent periods, but it's not nothing that big. The biggest difference is the comment I made earlier, which is there's a little bit more rolls development this year than than what we would historically had, which is, it's obviously the more economical way to feed your dog. But even that's not very significant. In terms of the margin impact, you know, we don't have a huge difference between sizes. We do have a difference in margins between rolls and bags, and rolls tend to have higher margins than the bags do.
Connor Rattigan (Senior Equity Research Analyst and VP)
Okay, great. Thanks. Then also, just, Scott, I just wanted to follow up on the comment you made earlier that consumers in, non-measured channels are highly incremental. I mean, I guess, is this kind of a result of your current media spend? I mean, maybe is this just targeting those specific consumers, or is this just a function of, you know, just a, a distribution rollout? Maybe if you have any data on, that you can share on sort of, you know, I guess, what these consumers look like, maybe in terms of, you know, income and whatnot, or if they're any different than your other consumers, that would be great.
Scott Morris (COO)
Yeah. Well, I'll answer the back of the question first. There, there really hasn't been much of a change in the type of consumer. You know, they're a similar household income. You know, $80,000 is kind of the average income. I mean, it's, it's amazingly... Like, a lot of times people go, "Oh, well, this must be for, like, very high-income households." What it comes down to is relationship with pet and, and the importance that people put on nutrition, and that's for themselves and their family. We're seeing similar group of consumers that we, we kind of historically have seen across the business. Our belief is that there are certain consumers that tend to primarily shop for pet food in a specific store or channel.
As we've added, you know, some, some of that distribution, whether it's through e-commerce or in some of the clubs, those consumers that are primarily shopping in that channel for pet food are now going, "Oh, wow, there is a new product here. I've heard of it." I think the media has been, been encouraging them, but they haven't, you know, they haven't been making that trip in a more traditional grocery channel, which we, we have much broader distribution in. That's, that's what we believe, and that's what we're. From everything that we've been able to see, that, their, their primary shopping trip is in that channel, and now we're, we're able to, you know, have them become part of the Freshpet family.
Connor Rattigan (Senior Equity Research Analyst and VP)
Okay, great. Thanks for the call. Appreciate it.
Scott Morris (COO)
Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our final question this morning comes from the line of Robert Moskow with TD Cowen. Please proceed with your question.
Robert Moskow (Managing Director)
Hi, how you doing?
Scott Morris (COO)
Hey there. Welcome to your new home.
Robert Moskow (Managing Director)
Yeah, it's, it's pretty great. I guess one last question. Todd, I, I, I think you mentioned that, you know, you, you, you won't be committing capital to volume until you know for sure that the volume's there. Is there any way to quantify, you know, what kind of volume growth you'll need in 2024 to, to hit that threshold? You know, it sounds like the next phase of Ennis is, is pretty much, you know, you're, you're gonna go, you're gonna do it. Is it 5%? Is it 10%? 15? Is there any way to put a number around it?
Scott Morris (COO)
Around volume, Rob?
Robert Moskow (Managing Director)
Yeah, volume. How much volume growth in 2024-
Todd Cunfer (CFO)
Yeah.
Robert Moskow (Managing Director)
would be the threshold to, to justify the next round of capital outlays?
Todd Cunfer (CFO)
Yeah. I, I mean, as you know, you know, the algorithm for us for the next five years is to grow the top line on average, 25%. For, for 2024, I mean, we, we don't anticipate any additional pricing. We'll have a little bit of a wraparound on that last price increase that we took in February. For 2024, it's gonna be almost all volume. Close to 25%, the way we're seeing it right now, will be volume growth for 2024. That's why, you know, Billy made some earlier comments. We're starting to get that second bag line in Ennis staffed sooner rather than later, because we're seeing an acceleration right now. Again, we're, we're, we're anticipating a lot of volume growth over the next couple of years.
Robert Moskow (Managing Director)
Okay.
Billy Cyr (CEO)
Yeah, the message-
Robert Moskow (Managing Director)
Go ahead.
Billy Cyr (CEO)
If I could add to it, is we already have, as we said in the comments, phase two is under construction. We've split phase two into two pieces, so there are two lines in the first part of phase two. Recall though, we also have some other lines in the system that are not fully utilized right now. The reality is, what we said is, when the, the projects that are already committed, we have up to almost $1.5 billion in capacity. All you have to do is look at that and say, "That's what's committed," and how long it will take us to grow into that, and then recognize that when you need anything beyond that, you need 18 monthly time to do it at a minimum. Depends on whether it's a building or a line, but you need about 18 months.
Robert Moskow (Managing Director)
Okay. Well, I, I guess that's kind of the, the nature of the question. Like, if, if volume is only, say, 15% in 2024, what does that mean for the capital allocations that you've, you've put out there? Is there enough flex in the system to, to tamp it down in an event like that?
Todd Cunfer (CFO)
Yeah. I mean, there's two ways to tamp it down. One is we will slow CapEx spending. You know, we're obviously we're not anticipating that we're gonna slow to that degree, but if for some reason we did, we would absolutely slow down our CapEx spending, you know, for the next year. The second one is, we have flexibility on how many of these lines that we would staff. If we're not seeing the growth that we're anticipating, we will not staff all those lines. Again, From what we're seeing right now, we anticipate very, very strong growth.
Robert Moskow (Managing Director)
Yep, I agree. All right. Thank you very much.
Billy Cyr (CEO)
Thank you.
Todd Cunfer (CFO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question and answer session. I'll turn the floor back to Mr. Cyr for any final comments.
Billy Cyr (CEO)
Great. Thank you. Thanks, everyone, for your interest and your time. I'll end with a thought for you from the author Karen Davison. She said, "A dog can express more with his tail in minutes, than an owner can express with his tongue in hours." To which I would respond, "Feed them Freshpet, and their tail won't stop talking until it's time for the next meal." Thanks, everyone. Thanks for your interest.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.