Cracker Barrel 2014 Annual Report Download - page 8

Our women’s apparel and accessories continued
to be one of our strongest selling categories. To build
upon the strength of this category, we successfully
introduced women’s footwear providing depth to the
assortment. Another leading sales category in
2014 was Décor. Our guests responded especially
well to our sentiment and inspirational décor items.
We continue to invest in our employees and their
career development. At the onset of our fi scal year,
we held a very successful General Manager’s
conference. This conference provided a platform
for the introduction and training of several new
technology-based programs. We trained all of our
General Managers on the second phase of our
labor management system and all of our Retail
Managers on improved selling techniques to high-
light our fun, unique, and nostalgic merchandise.
Other successful process and technology improve-
ments during the year included a new back of house
system that supports superior food quality and
enhances the employee experience and an inventory
management technology system that can be built
upon to automate the inventory and replenishment
process. These technology and process enhance-
ments, as well as others that are not listed,
resulted in increased productivity and throughput,
ultimately contributing in part to our increase
in operating margin.
Our fi nal business priority has been, and will
continue to be, a continued focus on maximizing
total shareholder return. In 2014 we targeted
increasing the quarterly dividend, expanding the
footprint through new unit growth, and extending
the brand outside of the four walls. In the third quarter,
we declared a 33% dividend increase to $1.00,
which was paid in the first quarter of 2015. This
marks a fourth increase in the quarterly dividend
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