Ted Xenohristos, co-founder of CAVA, describes how a local banker agreed to finance their grease hood replacement despite their poor credit and minimal collateral.
Insight
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.”
Disclosure
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.”
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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.”
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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…”
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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…”
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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.”