Company: FWRG
Filing Date: 2025-04-08
Form Type: ARS
Source: 0001789940-25-000033
Chunk: 33

Company: First Watch Restaurant Group, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-04-08
Form: ARS
Chunk 33
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 injury, health inspection scores, integrity of our or our suppliers’ food processing and other policies, practices and procedures, employee relationships and welfare or other matters at one or more of our restaurants. Any publicity relating to health concerns, perceived or specific outbreaks of infectious diseases attributed to one or more of our restaurants, or non-compliance with government restrictions imposed by federal, state and local governments could result in a significant decrease in customer traffic in all of our restaurants and could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. Furthermore, similar negative publicity or occurrences with respect to other restaurants or other restaurant chains could also decrease our customer traffic and have a similar material adverse effect on our business. In addition, incidents of restaurant commentary have increased dramatically with the proliferation of social media platforms. Negative publicity may adversely affect us, regardless of whether the allegations are valid or whether we are held responsible. In addition, the negative impact of adverse publicity may extend far beyond the restaurant involved, especially due to the high geographic concentration of many of our restaurants, and affect some or all our other restaurants, including our franchise- owned restaurants. The risk of negative publicity is particularly great with respect to our franchise-owned restaurants because we are limited in the manner in which we can regulate them, especially on a real-time basis and negative publicity from our franchised restaurants may also significantly impact company-owned restaurants. A similar risk exists with respect to food service businesses unrelated to us, if customers mistakenly associate such unrelated businesses with our operations. Employee claims against us based on, among other things, wage and hour violations, discrimination, harassment or wrongful termination may also create not only legal and financial liability but negative publicity that could adversely affect us and divert our financial and management resources that would otherwise be used to benefit the future performance of our operations. These types of employee claims could also be asserted against us, on a co-employer theory, by employees of our franchisees. A significant increase in the number of these claims or an increase in the number of successful claims could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. Our inability or failure to recognize, respond to and effectively manage the accelerated impact of social media or artificial intelligence could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. Our marketing efforts rely heavily on the use of social media. In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the use of social media platforms, including weblogs (blogs, mini-blogs, chat platforms, social media websites, and other forms of