Everything Ted Xenohristos said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Xenohristos: Greek cuisine relies on ingredient quality rather than technique
“Greek cuisine was never technique driven like the French or the Italians or Japanese, right? It was always about the quality of ingredients.”
Xenohristos: CAVA founders maxed personal credit cards for first lease
“We took all our credit cards, our personal credit cards, and we just pulled money off them. Withdrew cash. We, Basically maxed them out and we were able to come up with that, that money to pay the landlord off.”
CAVA founders built their first restaurant location for around $10,000
“But I'm telling you, we built this thing for right around like 10 grand.”
Xenohristos: Initial Cava loan collateral was worth less than loan amount
“Well, there was no collateral except for the restaurant itself, so there was a lien on the restaurant, which, like I said, I mean, we built that place for 10 grand, so the collateral's Less than the loan was gonna be, so.”
CAVA founders underpriced early menu items by forgetting ingredients shrink when cooked
“We were bringing an octopus and let's just say the octopus weighed 40 pounds. We would divide that by the ounces that we served, and we were like, great, we can serve octopus for six bucks. Well, we didn't take into account that once we cooked that octopus off…”
CEO Brett Schulman warned CAVA's founders against giving him 25% equity
“I remember, you know, to his credit, he looked at me and he actually told me that that was, that's actually a bad decision. That's bad. You know, he's trying to give me good, good advice as a business partner already. Like, that's not a good thing to just give…”
CAVA funded unprofitable dips retail business using restaurant profits
“So the restaurants were making profit. The dips, of course, were not. We were funding those with the restaurant profit, but, you know, we were starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel coming out of that whole economic collapse of oh, eight, oh nine.”
CAVA founders collateralized their first restaurants when investors refused to provide capital
“We ran out of money after two restaurants and our investors didn't want to give us any more money. And so we went and took a loan out against everything that we had worked for. We took a loan against our full service restaurants, against these fast casuals”
Bank pulled CAVA's second restaurant loan during 2008-2009 financial crisis
“We had a loan for that restaurant, and the bank eventually pulled it because of the collapse, and so we were in a tight spot, like things were not going well.”
How I Built This 2