How CAVA Grew from 1 Mediterranean Restaurant to over 400 Fast-Casual & an IPO with Ted Xenohristos

Thanks. How you doing today? I'm doing great. Great pronunciation on the name. I don't think you could say it any better unless you were Greek. So, thank you.

Yeah. I mean it's funny because it's so cliche but it's true. My aunt and uncle owned a restaurant and my mom was her sister. So when she came to this country, that's the first place she worked and she worked as a server for about 30 years, maybe even longer. She used to take me to work all the time and I really loved it. My dad, who also immigrated here from Greece, would take me to work at a construction site, and I was like, 'Oh man, I got to figure out something to do.' But when I got to go with my mom, it was such a treat. I loved interacting with the customers, I loved busting tables. They would leave me nickels and quarters back then when they were worth a lot more than they are today. I got to wash dishes and run food. I just enjoyed it so much. I love the hospitality, being around the people, the energy. It was truly amazing. I think it was just in my veins and in my blood to always want to be in and part of a restaurant.

So I had another uncle who owned a restaurant. I got a lot of uncles and a lot of restaurant owners in my family. It was my first job and I was pretty young. I waited tables for him and the food was really good. It wasn't Michelin Star, no writeups or reviews. I realized that people enjoyed going there because they enjoyed him, the hospitality. He was such a jovial, he was like a magnet for happiness and people just loved being around him. He was rambunctious and loud. He would remember everybody's name and he'd be like, 'Oh, you guys didn't get your calamari today,' and yell to the kitchen, 'Bring out a calamari over here.' I realized that they loved the hospitality part and there were lines out the door. They came for him and for that experience. So I realized it was more about treating people well and taking care of people, equal to the food being good. People don't want to eat bad food even if people are super nice.

Yes. I grew up with both parents as immigrants from Greece and Cyprus. My mom worked all day as a waitress and still found time to come home and make dinner almost every single night. I'm amazed by it. I have two kids and me and my wife try to figure out if we can squeeze something in the oven and get it done in a few hours. My mom somehow found a way to make huge meals like braised lamb and homemade tzatziki and pita bread. I grew up eating this food and didn't really know it was good for you until later. As Mediterranean started to really grow and have this health halo, it was cool to see all the stuff I was eating considered healthy. We really wanted to share what we saw as Greek Mediterranean food because what people knew it as was gyro, pastichio, moussaka. I love that stuff, but there was so much more to it. Italy has technique, France is strict in technique-driven culinary, whereas Greece was all about freshness. The Mediterranean countries share this happiness and jovialness around food, all about freshness. When we were creating our crazy feta, we couldn't get the same fresh red peppers that grow in northern Greece, so we used jalapenos because they were close by and the freshest pepper we could use. Normally that dip is called tirokaftei and it's more mild, but this was spicy, so it got the name crazy feta. It was really the visits to Greece, growing up eating this food the way my mom cooked, and saying, 'How do we share this with people and really show them what Mediterranean food is?' Because it's not just a gyro.

Call it the ketchup of Greece. So easy to make. It's about fresh garlic and it's the ultimate refreshing thing.

Our first restaurant we called it Cava Mezze. 'Mezze' means small plates meant to be shared. We wanted to take what we were experiencing in Greece in those visits with our families. I would go back to my dad's village, a very poor village, but whenever we visited they always found a way. It was a big table, a huge spread, and it was about being together. We wanted to create that atmosphere and vibe along with showcasing the food. We started this full service restaurant with 20-25 small plates. All the stuff you see in our Cavas today came from that full service. Chef D was my partner and chef and created all those recipes, a lot he took from his mom. We were waiters, we built the place by hand for less than $10,000. Everything was from Target, Marshalls, and the dollar store. We didn't have a sign or a register. Our marketing plan was to just take care of people and treat them like family. We'd send appetizers, buy them drinks, dessert, keep the bar open late, let people step behind the bar and make their own drinks. It was such a fun, jovial place. People would come and suddenly we were 45 minutes outside DC and this place had a line out the door with an hour wait before we even opened. We were written up in Washingtonian magazine as restaurant of the year. We were 26, 27 years old, living with our parents because we were making no money, sometimes even sleeping in the restaurant. I wanted to change the culture of restaurants. My mom worked in it for so long and it's a grind, brutal work, and at the end she had nothing to show for it. We gave people percentage of ownership, profit sharing, limited hours, paid the same as other managers. We wanted to share the quality of Mediterranean food through the menu and share that hospitality and generosity. We talk about generosity at Cava all the time. We have a 'love button' team members can use if someone is having a bad day to buy the meal for them. That all stemmed from that first restaurant. The recipes transferred over to our fast casual format, the generosity transferred over, and taking care of our team members is one of our top priorities.

That's literally the number one request I get. Not just sleeping bags, but anything with Cava on it. People ask, 'Where's your merch store?' I say, 'Well, we're trying to open up a thousand restaurants by 2032. We're trying to focus on that.'

Our marketing team did a great job. We call him Pita Chip, and there's Garlic Gus and a few other characters. We open restaurants all over the country and I get messages, 'Can you get me? I'm missing Garlic Gus, I'm missing Pita Chip.' From family members, people I haven't heard from in years, to our investors. They say, 'I'm out of the country, can you get all four for me?' I don't even have all four.

Big as it gets.

We had that first restaurant and were running it ourselves. I was living with my parents, my other two partners were doing the same. We weren't making much money, but the restaurant was packed with lines out the door. One of my partners stepped out of the restaurant, I started focusing on what I do best as chief concept officer, designing the menu and working with the chefs. My chef partner Dimitri stayed in, and Ike, the third founder, started working on the business and understanding how to make money. We created this awesome one restaurant, then opened a second, and started selling our dips and spreads. People kept buying our hummus and tzatziki, so we decided to sell them in grocery stores. We would operate the restaurants all day, then at midnight start making dips by hand, package them with blow dryers to melt the plastic, and deliver to grocery stores. By the end of 2010, we had three full service restaurants and were selling to about 10-15 Whole Foods and other grocery stores in the DC region. It was all organic. At that point, we needed a little help. That's where I met Brett Schulman, currently the CEO. I like to say I hired my own boss. I brought him on as a consultant, and he helped fix the grocery side of the business. He pitched the idea of turning this into the fast casual format of Cava. In full service, you can only serve a certain number of people, it's more expensive. In fast casual, you could get everyone in for less than $10 for a meal and drink. He said it's super healthy. We were like, 'Hold on, I'm not a salad eater.' But he pointed out the food we're making is healthy—lentils, hummus with chickpeas. It was a transition period of figuring out how to make things we made in full service with chefs in a fast casual format. That was a really fun period.

Very agonizing. I'm leaving out all the hard part.

The line has changed dramatically over the years. Our first line at the end had yogurt and you could choose your toppings. We realized that the more things you had, the more chance of it going bad. So we honed in on the menu. We call it menu creep. We said, 'If we add something, we have to take something off.' We can't have 50 items go to 80. That makes it more difficult. We were braising lamb in a pot, taking a whole leg of lamb, braising it, pulling it off for our braised lamb. We did that in fast casual, putting it in pans on the line. We weren't that busy, so the food sat there and got mushy after 30-45 minutes. We started getting shorter pans, creating standards for cook times and how long things could sit on the line. It's a different business altogether. In full service, you have chefs prepping for dinner service. In fast casual, you cook to serve from kitchen grill to consumer right away. Lots of practice, learning experiences, and tweaking those things. It was fun, interesting, a lot of work, but cool to learn a new facet of the restaurant business.

I think it starts with people. We start by taking care of our people. In 2013, we went to $13 an hour minimum wage, which was almost double in most places. We continue investing in our team members. Are we perfect? Of course not, but as we grow we're able to do more. I think team members enjoy working at a place knowing they have an opportunity to grow a career. The restaurant business was super hard for my mom. People would say, 'I'm just working here till I get a real job.' I was like, 'This is my real job.' I didn't finish university, so I want people to have opportunity to grow careers at Cava. The second part is the food. My job as chief concept officer is defending our food. As we grow, I see comments like 'Corporate Cava, their food is this or that.' No, the food is exactly the same. Our lentils come from Montana, olive oil from Greece. My good friend Stavros grows olives with his family. Knowing where our food comes from is super important. We have no freezers, no microwaves, no butter. We focus on quality. It's all fresh, made by hand. Falafel is made by hand, lamb meatballs are literally made by hand. I challenge anyone to come in the back and scoop lamb meatballs all day. Those Persian cucumbers are hand cut every day. The freshness and quality are something we believe in. As we grow, we have to find more supply because we run out of stuff. We're investing in growing fresh dill in greenhouses so we can still use fresh dill instead of powdered. I think the food and the people are what bring people in. Now we're investing in our spaces, bringing that Mediterranean feeling with greenery, olive trees, and soft seating.

It's funny. We have a lot of people clamoring for that one. We get to take the chefs out there to experience the Mediterranean region, eat at different restaurants, tavernas, on the side of the street. Watching harvest happen with olives is one of the coolest things. It's like wine, you can have olive oil tastings.

I'm going to cheat and answer that in two ways. Our pita chip has completely taken off, as you mentioned with the plushies. Pita Chip is doing a great job. We introduced a second chip flavor, garlic ranch, hot harissa, and new flavors coming. Having that two chip option has been great. We recently did sauces for them, thinking about pairing sauces with chips. On the other hand, something that hasn't gained as much traction but has a big following is lamb. It's hard to find lamb in fast casuals or fast food. We do it two ways. The grilled lamb meatballs came from the original restaurant, same recipe with harissa to give them heat. We make them fresh every day. We work with amazing lamb farmers to get some of the best lamb, dial in the spec, and hit them on the grill every day. It's an amazing product and people love it. It's cool to see a big contingent of people who really love lamb.

Wow. For me, one of my favorite islands is Santorini. I know it's gotten popular. A sneak tip: Folegandros is another hidden one, hard to find, but worth it. Almost a better version of Santorini.

The Peloponnese region. It's gorgeous. My father's from there. Olives come from there. There's lots that was historically Venetian, so it looks like Venice. Beaches are gorgeous, still very affordable.

It's definitely Giannis. He's the best. My son is named Yanni, not because of the basketball player, but because we name kids after our fathers. So there's like 20 Yannis in my family. He grew up very Greek in Athens. Watching him represent Greece is cool. I don't think anybody has been better wearing the Greek uniform.

Souvlaki. Marinated pork grilled over fire, salt, pepper. So simple, a little olive oil. You can put it in a pita sandwich or eat off the skewer. This summer with the chefs, we stopped at a road stop on the way to the Peloponnese and I ate about 20 skewers in one sitting.

Probably galaktoboureko. It's a dessert, amazing. It's a custard with filo dough served warm with cinnamon. People ask my favorite dessert and I want to say that, but it's hard to spell or pronounce, so I usually just say baklava to make it easier. But galaktoboureko is the best.

For anyone in the restaurant business, it's a lot of work, grueling, a tough business. If you love hospitality and want to open your own restaurant or grow in a company, you have to love it. You have to love people and just keep working. It never ends. People say, 'I wish I could have my own restaurant.' It's a lot of work, but if you love people and taking care of them, it's a fabulous business. I want to give a shout-out to all our teams in the field. They do all the things I did in that one restaurant for us today and help us expand. Thank you to all of them. It's a wild and crazy ride, but fun while we're doing it.