Cava from Coast to Coast

Brett Schulman ’95 always asks prospective new hires: What’s your favorite food memory?

For the man who’s shepherded the rapid expansion of fast-casual success Cava Grill, which serves a rainbow-colored selection of Mediterranean greens, grains, proteins, toppings and sauces, his own answer is simple: his grandmother’s matzoh ball soup.

That warm, satisfied feeling of eating a fresh, home-cooked meal is one he seeks to bring to customers. “Cava is the expression of the passion of our founders. Hopefully through our ingredients, design and culture, people will feel that when they walk in.”

Schulman partnered with Ted Xenochristos (his cousin was a college friend of Schulman’s who introduced them), Dimitri Moshovitis and Ike Grigoropoulos in 2009, after they had opened two traditional restaurants based on their families’ cuisine, then expanded into packaged dips and spreads. Fast-casual seemed to be the obvious next step.

“Full-service restaurants are obviously harder to grow,” Schulman says. “If we could make it more simple, we could bring this food to a larger audience, one that’s health-conscious, taste-conscious and budget-conscious.”

And grow they did: Since opening their first Cava Grill in 2011, they’ve expanded to 16 locations, with eight more to open this year. They’ve set up shop in Los Angeles and will open in Manhattan in August. Schulman oversees about 600 employees in stores and 50 in the corporate office; many of the original employees have stayed with the business and become managers or area leaders.

Rockville native Schulman came to Maryland as a criminology and criminal justice major, thinking he’d be a lawyer, but found his way into investment banking, where he worked for the next 10 years.

“At one point, my wife said to me, ‘I really don’t like Sundays, because at 6 o’clock you get in a bad mood because you have to go to work on Monday,’” he says.

It was around that time that Mary (Owings) Schulman ’97 had started her own business with her mom, a healthy snack company called Snikiddy.

“We realized they needed my help full-time if the business was starting to get traction,” he says, so he took over manufacturing and logistics. “There was no better time to take that leap of faith.”

His wife, meanwhile, opened his eyes to the ingredients and types of food he was eating—his favorite College Park meal was at the greasy but delicious Marathon Deli—which made him a natural fit with the Cava co-founders a few years later.

Schulman doesn’t care to talk about competition, though there’s plenty, from local chain Sweetgreen, created by Georgetown alumni, to more established brands like Panera and Chipotle, which popularized the assembly line-style ordering that Cava uses in its restaurants.

He’s confident that Cava’s commitment to taste and quality will bring the company continued success as it expands across the country. He even says he has College Park “on the radar.”

“I put myself in our customers’ shoes,” he says. “Tasty, affordable options that are healthy—that didn’t exist when I was in college. Now, people are demanding it.”