This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brett Schulman, the 54-year-old cofounder and CEO of Cava, based in Washington, DC. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
I worked in restaurants when I was younger and waited tables in college to help pay for it. I thought I wanted to go into the legal profession and interned at a law firm in college, only to realize I did not want to do that.
I worked in corporate finance for about a decade, and then realized I wanted to do something more entrepreneurial. That manifested as helping my wife build a natural snack food company called Snikiddy. I helped her with the company’s operations and logistics. We left our careers and didn’t take a salary for two years, bootstrapping and building it.
In 2009, a friend from college reached out and asked if I’d speak with her cousin, Ted Xenohristos, who ran a restaurant called Cava Mezze and had partnered with a customer to sell some of the dips and spreads. Ted and I hit it off, and he, along with the other cofounders, Ike Grigoropoulos and Dimitri Moshovitis, asked me to help. I helped that business become profitable, and they then asked me to become their fourth partner.
We spent about a year figuring out how to translate what was produced in full-service restaurants and grocery stores into a walk-the-line format. We raised money in August 2010 while already under construction on the first location.
I was chosen as the CEO, and we officially opened our first location in January 2011. Here we are, 15 years later, with more than 500 locations.
Here’s what a typical day in my life looks like.
If I’m not traveling, I wake up at 6:30 a.m.
I try to take a couple of minutes to get into the day, and then I look at my phone. I check our sales reports to see everything from the night before.
I have a home gym, so I can walk downstairs and work out — that saves me time in the morning. I work out for about 45 minutes. I turn on CNBC to hear what’s going on in the news and what’s happening in the markets that day.
We have three kids. My wife gets our youngest son ready for school, so I say hello to him when he wakes up and before he goes to school.
I jump in the shower around 7:30 a.m.
Afterward, I come downstairs to make coffee.
I’m the barista of the house, and I like making oat milk lattes. I like ordering beans from all over the country and trying different kinds. That’s been a fun little hobby, and I’ve been working on my latte art. I’ve been getting pretty good with the leaf.
I spend 30 minutes with my wife having coffee. I don’t eat breakfast, and I fast in the morning. After coffee, I read a few articles.
I’ve had to reinvent myself as a CEO because the requirements of the job have been very different across startup, growth, private enterprise, and now public enterprise. It requires a lot more structure in my calendar.
I head to the office around 8 a.m.
I have a short commute, 10 to 15 minutes, and I like to listen to music on the way.
When I’m in town, I like to be in the office. We have a hybrid policy of three days in the office. We have our main office in DC, which we call our collaboration center. Then we have a small office in Brooklyn, and a small office in Plano, Texas. The rest of the company is remote, located across the country.
I get to my desk around 8:15 a.m.
I spend about 30 to 45 minutes checking my inbox and looking at The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and The New York Times, reading any relevant articles that could be impactful to the business or culture.
Meetings start at 9 a.m.
I’ve blocked my calendar before 9 a.m. so people can’t add meetings unless there’s something urgent.
When I’m in town, I try to plan my yearly calendar and outline what I know is recurring. I then fill in items like our quarterly town halls with the team or with our board, as well as earnings planning. I also attend investor conferences.
Once all that’s out on the calendar, I have space to plan other things.
Every quarter, I work a shift in the restaurant
I used to be able to work at the restaurants a lot more, but that’s getting harder with all the other responsibilities, especially running a public company. We still make sure it happens.
Open space on my calendar can be filled with anything from spending time with Ted and the culinary team, tasting and ideating culinary innovation, to being out with the real estate team, touring new markets, and planning where we’re going to open new restaurants every quarter.
I have an executive coordinator who manages my calendar.
I walk to Cava to get a bowl for lunch
We have an R&D kitchen, but one of my prerequisites was being near a Cava location. I walk seven minutes and pick up a bowl. I put a little block on my calendar during lunch.
My order changes. If we’ve launched a new product, I usually get that to make sure we’re delivering it as intended. Right now, my bowl is Power Greens, saffron basmati rice, a scoop of hummus, a scoop of Crazy feta, half harissa honey chicken, half steak, roasted corn, fiery broccoli, pickled onions, pita crisps, crumbled feta, and lemon herb tahini dressing. Sometimes I’ll do tahini Caesar or hot harissa vinaigrette. I always grab one of our house-made fresh juices.
After I eat, I have an afternoon filled with meetings
I could be going over a strategic initiative, discussing a marketing campaign, reviewing the culinary development pipeline, or talking with people in culture and operations about how we’ll develop our future pipeline of general managers.
People know me as being kind of obsessively punctual — I can’t help myself. My family makes fun of me for it, but I think time management is so critical, and I feel like it’s respect for others.
Efficient time management allows me to handle my responsibilities and be present for my family, my team, and the organization, while still managing the job.
I leave the office between 5:30 p.m. and 6 p.m.
I drive home, and then my wife and I cook. My wife is a phenomenal cook. I used to be a better cook because I cooked more, but we try to sit down to dinner with the family whenever I’m home.
I never get tired of Mediterranean food; there’s so much flavor diversity and so many options. We love to cook at home and make all kinds of cuisine, from American to Asian to Italian.
We talk about everyone’s day and what’s going on in the world. My kids keep me very connected to their generation’s culture.
After dinner, my wife and I walk the dog, and then come back and hang out
Our daughter loves watching shows with us, and my son loves watching the nightly news. When he goes to bed, we’ll watch shows like “The Bear.”
I’ll check email and any documents I need to read to prepare for tomorrow’s meetings. I get pre-reads to be efficient in meetings.
My guilty pleasures include Nightingale ice cream sandwiches, spinach and artichoke dip at Hillstone, binge-watching a show on streaming, trail running, and golf on the weekends.
I usually try to go to bed between 10:30 pm and 11 pm.
I get seven to seven and a half hours of sleep; that’s important to stay fresh the next day. Then I wake up and do it all over again.
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