CAVA’s co-founder says impatience inspired its fast casual concept

In this episode of Founding DC, CAVA CEO Brett Schulman shares his entrepreneurial journey — from investment banking to building a culinary empire — and the pivotal role his wife played in inspiring the leap.

In January of 2011, the first-of-its-kind Mediterranean fast casual concept restaurant opened in Bethesda, Maryland.

That one restaurant, CAVA, grew from one to over 400 around the United States over a decade later.

In an interview on the latest episode of Founding DC, Brett Schulman, the co-founder and CEO of CAVA, told host Dan Simons, those 400 locations employ 12,000 people.

“You think back just three years, we were 200 restaurants, roughly $450 million in revenue,” Schulman said. “Now, three years forward, we’re … trailing a 12-month basis, and over a billion (dollars) in revenue.”

But he didn’t always plan to be the face of a hugely successful (and delicious) restaurant chain. He started out in investment banking.

Schulman admitted that his pathway to becoming an entrepreneur started with a conversation with his wife Mary.

“My wife said to me, I really hate Sundays at six o’clock,” Schulman said. “She said, ‘because I can tell you’re getting in a bad mood because you’re thinking about having to get up for work tomorrow.’”

Schulman could have stayed in investment banking, like he had for the past 10 years and continue to be rewarded financially, or he could make a leap of faith and bet on himself.

“I think every entrepreneur has to have a certain tolerance for risk,” he said.

A leap that Schulman said his wife gave him the confidence to take.

“Mary acted as counsel, who’s helped spur inspiration ideas for me that I’ve applied to the business, who’s talked me off the ledge more than a few times,” Schulman said.

“Having that counsel around you, whether it was Mary, whether it was the confidence of growing up with the friends I grew up with … to help either validate my thinking or help me gain clarity in the course I wanted to take the business was instrumental.”

Eventually, Schulman joined up with Ted Xenohristos, Ike Grigoropoulos and Dimitri Moshovitis with the CAVA fast casual concept, so they could serve their food to the world.

Schulman spoke about a couple of the reasons they decided to use the assembly line model that other restaurants like Chipotle utilize for several reasons.

“I’m a pretty impatient guy, so I love the idea that I knew when I got to the register, I’d have my food,” Schulman said. “Versus like a counter service place. You’re waiting for them to buzz the buzzer to go off.”

The second reason was the partners believed people wanted to be able to customize their meal to their dietary preferences or taste preferences.

“We wanted high quality food and an operating model that was able to have that kind of efficient labor productivity to deliver that great value to the guest,” he said.

The partners also believed as the country became more diverse, people would come to enjoy bolder, more adventurous flavors.

“People are going to look beyond the mature categories of Asian, Italian and Mexican, and seek out that next cultural cuisine category, which we believe to be Mediterranean and which we now have established and have clear leadership in,” Schulman said.

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