Cava CEO on how the Chipotle competitor grew to $33 million per restaurant

Cava CEO and cofounder Brett Schulman has watched Cava, the cult-classic Mediterranean fast-casual spot, skyrocket.

Transcript

00:00I never specifically thought I wanted to be a CEO, but when I worked in finance, I felt

00:07very unfulfilled.

00:09I wanted to make a greater impact than what I was making in that career, build something

00:14that helped others and lifted others up.

00:17So I was born and raised in Philadelphia, graduated from University of Maryland, was

00:21able to get an internship at a finance firm, an investment bank, and was able to use that

00:28internship to get a full-time job after I graduated.

00:31That really was the beginning of thinking about, well, maybe I want to do something

00:36different.

00:37At the time, I met my wife, Mary.

00:38So around 2004, we started to think about leaving our careers to do something more entrepreneurial.

00:45That really came to life in a natural snack food company.

00:47A couple years later, as we were growing that business, a friend of mine from college, from

00:51University of Maryland, called me and said, hey, will you talk to my cousin?

00:54So at the time, my partners, Ted Eich and Chef Dimitri, had opened a full-service restaurant

01:00in 2006 called Cava Meze.

01:02But that business was struggling.

01:03They said, do you have any advice?

01:04So I gave them some advice.

01:06We agreed to stay in touch.

01:07And then about two months later, I called Ted back up and he said, well, why don't you

01:11come on board?

01:12Would you want to consult for us and help us fix this business?

01:15And so I was able to go in and get the business profitable.

01:19And me and the guys hit it off and they said, Brett, why don't you become our fourth partner?

01:23So I went back to the guys the next day and I said, I'm in.

01:25But have you ever thought about taking what we do in full-service and in the grocery stores

01:31to a larger audience?

01:33We spent about a year figuring out how that food would translate from a full-service made-to-order

01:38format into a fast format and ultimately settled on the walk-the-line format.

01:44And we opened our first fast casual location in January of 2011.

01:49And fast forward to today and we have over 340 restaurants operating in 25 states and

01:56the District of Columbia.