Cava Group Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

On Tuesday, Cava Group (NYSE:CAVA) discussed first-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.

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The full earnings call is available at https://events.q4inc.com/attendee/922188545

Summary

CAVA Group Inc reported a 32.2% increase in revenue for Q1 2026, with same restaurant sales up 9.7% and traffic growth of 6.8%.

The company opened 20 new restaurants, bringing the total to 459, and reported adjusted EBITDA of $61.7 million, a 37.6% increase year-over-year.

Strategic initiatives include the launch of CAVA Core, a modern data platform, and CAVA Current, a real-time commerce platform, aimed at improving operational efficiency and customer engagement.

CAVA Group Inc introduced its first seafood offering, Pomegranate Glazed Salmon, as part of its culinary innovation, which has received positive feedback.

The company is investing in its Flavor Your Future platform to develop talent, including the new Assistant General Manager role to support growth.

Future guidance was raised to expect 75 to 77 net new restaurant openings and same restaurant sales growth of 4.5% to 6.5% for the full year 2026.

Management remains committed to its long-term strategy, focusing on consistent menu innovation, operational execution, and avoiding significant price increases to maintain customer trust and value.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to CAVA Group Inc Q1 2026 earnings call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, please press Star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Matt Milanovich, SVP of Finance. Please go ahead.

Matt Milanovich

Good afternoon and welcome to CAVA Group Inc's First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference call. Before we begin, if you do not already have a copy, the earnings release and related 8-K furnished to the SEC are available on our websiteat investor.cava.com the purpose of this conference call is to give investors further details regarding the Company's financial results as well as a general update on the Company's progress. You will find reconciliations of any non GAAP financial measure discussed on today's call to the most directly comparable financial measure calculated in accordance with GAAP to the extent available without unreasonable efforts in today's earnings release and Supplemental deck, each of which is posted on the Company's website. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that this call will contain forward looking statements for this purpose, any statements made during this call that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward looking statements. Investors should be aware that any forward looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed here today. These risk factors are explained in detail in CAVA Group Inc's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K as may be updated by its reports on Form 10-Q and other filings with the SEC. Please refer to these filings for a more detailed discussion of forward looking statements in the risks and uncertainties of such statements. All forward looking statements are made as of today and except as required by law, CAVA undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward looking statements whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise. And now I'll turn the call over to the Company's co Founder and CEO Brett Shulman. Thanks Matt and welcome to the call everyone. In the first quarter of 2026 we further solidified our position as the clear leader in the Mediterranean Cuisine category while executing against our long term strategy with discipline and conviction. Despite today's broader macroeconomic environment and geopolitical uncertainty, we sustained strong momentum and delivered exceptional results including positive traffic of 6.8%. Guided by the same steady focus that has shaped our business for the past 15 years, we will continue building for the long term as we gain market share with significant white space ahead while deepening our relationships with guests through a value proposition that clearly resonates our first quarter. Highlights include a 32.2% increase in CAVA Group Inc revenue, same restaurant sales of 9.7% driven by 6.8% traffic 20 net new restaurants ending the quarter with 459 restaurants, a 20.2% increase year over year adjusted EBITDA of 61.7 million, a 37.6% increase over the first quarter of 2025 net income of 23.6 million and 15.5 million in free cash flow. These results are a direct byproduct of the structural strength of our business and the dominant position we hold as the industry leader in Mediterranean, a cuisine category we have pioneered, defined and continue to shape. Central to that leadership is the value proposition rooted first and foremost in doing what is right by our team members and our guests. While many peers have responded to short term cyclical pressures with discounting and promotional activity, we have remained unwavering on our long term strategy. This past January we took an approximate 1.4% price increase while holding baseball and PITA pricing flat. Over the longer term, we have priced well below inflation with price adjustments representing only slightly more than half of cumulative CPI since the end of 2019. These decisions, deliberate and consistent, have compounded over time reinforcing the trust we have built with our guests and strengthening the foundation of our brand. And importantly, that value is not one dimensional. Whether a guest is looking for an accessible everyday meal or choosing to lean into one of our more premium offerings, we have created the flexibility for them to engage with CAVA on their terms in a way that fits their needs and moments. Ultimately, this all ties back to our concept essence making Mediterranean cuisine accessible to communities across the country while delivering it with warm hospitality. Hospitality that is delivered by our outstanding team members who we support with investments like our Flavor Your Future platform, which I will speak to in more detail later. The strength of our category, the competitive positioning of our brand and the power of our concept have enabled the success we saw this past quarter and that we continue to build on for the future. It is that foundation and focus on execution that guides our work across our four strategic pillars. Beginning with our first, expand our Mediterranean way in communities across the country. During the first quarter we opened 20 net new restaurants, ending the quarter with 459 locations across 29 states and the District of Columbia. Our expansion continues with both intention and incredible momentum reflected by recent new market openings at Cincinnati, St. Louis and Columbus and our upcoming entry into Minneapolis, Minnesota later this year, further deepening our presence across the Midwest. We are encouraged by the early performance of our 2026 cohort, which is tracking in line with or ahead of the strength of our 2025 class. With first quarter new restaurant productivity trending above 100% as we expand our reach across the country, our culinary innovation remains at the heart of what draws guests to our brand. This past January, we brought back our fan favorite Roasted White Sweet Potato to a warm reception, with guests embracing it as a complimentary meat and using it as a canvas to craft their own cotton experience. The launch resonated beyond our existing customer base as well, driving increased visit frequency among returning guests while introducing the brand's new ones. We are pleased with the performance of the seasonal favorite and we look forward to welcoming it back to our menu again in the future. And from beloved returning favorites to new culinary firsts, our pipeline of innovation continues to move forward with discipline and purpose. I'm excited to share that we've officially launched our first ever seafood offering, Pomegranate Glazed Salmon across all restaurants nationwide. Our roasted flaky fillet is marinated in a subtly sweet blend of pomegranate, date molasses, harissa, red wine vinegar and bold spices. A protein rich option with omega 3s and essential vitamins like B12 and vitamin D, delivering both bold flavor and genuine nourishment in every bite. Salmon is a natural extension of our menu, fitting seamlessly within the Mediterranean diet while increasing the variety of choices we can offer our guests. This is an important culinary milestone for us and one we approached with care, ensuring it stayed true to our concept. Essence. We have seen promising early results as guests experience salmon for the first time at their local cabo. Shifting to our second pillar Deepen personal relationships with guests Even as we scale, we are encouraged by the strength of our loyalty program and the increasingly creative and engaging ways we are bringing it to life for our guests. This past quarter through our digital experience, we leaned into the cultural touch points that bring our guests together, finding intersections of joy, connection and food that feel organic to who we are. Our flavor bracket in app game and recent partnerships with WNBA number one pick AZ Thudd and NCAA men's basketball champion Yaxel Lindenberg, each with their own digital exclusive bowl, brought the energy of March Madness to life in a way that felt both timely and uniquely cava. Together, these became one of our most highly engaged digital experiences to date and we will continue to broaden our array of engagement tools and tactics like these to further leverage the loyalty program and first party audience. We are growing. From the beginning it has always been about showing up authentically and becoming a genuine part of what our guests already love. It is through this kind of presence that we continue to deepen the relationships that keep our guests delighted and coming back. Bringing these relationships to life starts at a fundamental level with our people and our restaurants, which is reflected in the progress across our third and fourth pillars. Run great restaurants every location, every shift and operate as a high performing team Operating as a high performing team requires making foundational investments today that position us for the next decade and beyond. We've spoken before about being on the precipice of a decade of data transformation, a multi year transformation where data technology and AI will reshape how we run our business. I want to take a moment to share the recent progress we have made. Earlier this year we reached a meaningful milestone with the launch of Kava Core, our modern data platform. It establishes a unified scalable foundation for how we manage and use data across the business, enabling fast execution today while positioning us to leverage emerging AI capabilities. Building on that, we are in the early stages of delivering our new edge enabled operating platform Kava Current. A modular real time commerce platform, Kava Current is live today, actively processing orders across our restaurants and as it scales, it will drive more consistent execution with improved visibility and faster, more localized actions. Together, Kava Core and Kava Current create a connected real time system bringing data, applications and intelligence together to power our business. This enables us to deliver more meaningful personalized experiences for our guests, tailored to their preferences and behaviors, while also advancing more predictive operations that help our teams anticipate demand and better align staffing and preparation in real time. By building this platform internally, we gain greater control, flexibility and the ability to scale more efficiently over time. And while this is an important advancement, it is not a discrete initiative. It is a deliberate structural evolution creating the conditions for us to operate as a real time AI enabled business and move faster and more intelligently across every part of our organization. The work we are doing today will allow us to continue delivering value for our guests, our team members and our business for years to come. And finally, even the most sophisticated infrastructure only creates value when it is in service of the team members running great restaurants, every location, every shift. A core tenet of this strategic pillar is investing in our team members and talent and we remain deeply committed to building the next generation of leaders across our system. Our Flavor your Future initiative continues to show promise, focusing on attracting, developing and retaining talent across the organization. A recent key action under this platform was the launch of our new Assistant General Manager position with the critical goal of developing a deeper bench of role ready leaders to support our growth as we scale. Early indicators from the AGM rollout are promising. Restaurants with AGM coverage are outperforming Those without as AGMs provide additional leadership support during peak dinner and weekend shifts, strengthening operations, deepening the development of future team members, and building more sustainable restaurant teams over time. We look forward to sharing more on the broader Flavor your Future platform in the quarters ahead. And while the early results of the AGM rollout are encouraging, stories like Adriana Cervantes reflect the broader opportunity we are building toward through Flavor your Future Adriana joined CAVA as a Guest Experience Manager in Sherman Oaks and through her leadership, operational impact and commitment to our values, quickly progressed into the Assistant General Manager role before being promoted to General Manager earlier this year. Today she's already working toward becoming an Academy Manager, helping develop future leaders across the organization. Her journey is a powerful reminder that when we invest in our team members and create opportunities for growth, we are able to build not just stronger restaurants but but meaningful and lasting careers for our people. Before I turn the call over, I want to thank our teams across the country for delivering a strong quarter and for staying true to our mission. It's the consistency, intentionality and discipline with which we operate that have allowed us to establish ourselves as a clear leader in Mediterranean, the next large scale cultural cuisine category. As we look ahead, we remain committed to bringing heart, health and humanity to food and with that I will hand it over to Tricia to walk you through the financials.

Tricia

Thanks Brett and hello everyone. CAVA Group Inc revenue in the first quarter of 2026 grew 32.2% year over year to 434.4 million. Same restaurant sales increased 9.7% driven by traffic growth of 6%. During the quarter we opened 20 net new restaurants, bringing our total CAVA restaurant count to 459. As Brett noted, we are very pleased with our new restaurant openings which are tracking ahead of or in line with the strength of our 2025 class. New restaurant openings continue to exceed expectations in both top line and margin performance. With new restaurant productivity above 100%, our overall system wide average unit volumes are now $3,000,000. Cabo restaurant level profit in the first quarter was 108.9 million or 25.1% of revenue, compared to 82.3 million or 25.1 percent of revenue in the prior year period, representing a 32.3% increase. Kava's food, beverage and packaging costs were 29.1% of revenue lower than the first quarter of 2025 by 20 basis points, largely driven by favorable mix. As a reminder, we anticipate Kava's food, beverage and packaging costs to increase as a percent of revenue for the rest of the year as a result of the recent salmon launch. Kava labor and related costs were 25.7% of revenue approximately flat to the first quarter of 2025. This was driven by sales leverage offset by a 2% investment in team member wages which includes the expansion of our AGM role. CAVA occupancy and related expenses were 6.9% of revenue, an improvement of 50 basis points from the first quarter of 2025 due to sales leverage. CAVA Group Inc other operating expenses were 13.3% of revenue reflecting an increase of 80 basis points in the first quarter of 2025. This increase was primarily driven by a higher mix of third party delivery and other individually significant items shifting to overall performance. Our general and administrative expenses for the quarter including equity based compensation and executive Transition costs were 9.9% of revenue compared with 10.5% of revenue in Q1 of 2025. This 60 basis point improvement was driven by leverage from higher sales partially offset by investments to drive future growth and higher performance based incentive compensation. Preopening expenses were 6.2 million in the current quarter compared with 4.5 million in the prior year quarter. The $1.7 million increase includes a higher number of units under construction. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was 61.7 million, a 37.6% increase versus Q1 of 2025. The increase in adjusted EBITDA was driven by 9.7% same restaurant sales growth. The number and continued strength of new restaurant openings partially offset by investments to support growth including higher reopening costs. For the first quarter of 2026, equity based compensation was $7.7 million. We continue to expect equity based compensation which includes our new programs to provide equity grants, GM and performance based LTI to be between 22 million and 24 million in aggregate for the full year. In the first quarter our effective tax rate was 21.5%. For the full year fiscal 2026. We expect our effective tax rate to be between 23% and 28% with the rate in Q2 being consistent with Q1 based on the timing of equity based vesting. As a reminder, the increase in our tax rate in 2026 versus the prior year is due to the lower permanent benefit from equity based compensation, our cash taxes will continue to be immaterial until we fully utilize our net operating losses. During the first quarter we reported 23.6 million of net income compared to 25.7 million of net income in Q1 of 2025. Diluted EPS was $0.20 in the first quarter compared with $0.22 in the first quarter of 2025. The decrease in net income and diluted EPS is due to the previously mentioned higher permanent benefit from equity based compensation within income tax in the prior year, partially offset by nearly 50% higher earnings before taxes. Turning to liquidity at the end of the quarter we had zero debt outstanding, 403 million in cash and investments and access to a $150 million revolver with an option to increase our liquidity if needed. Cash flow from operations for the first quarter of 2026 was 64.1 million compared to 38.6 million during Q1 of 2025. Free cash flow during the quarter was $15.5 million. Now to our outlook for full year 2026, we are raising our guidance to expect the following 75 to 77 net new CAVA Group Inc restaurant openings, same restaurant sales of 4.5% to 6.5% Kava restaurant level profit margin between 23.7% and 24.3% preopening costs between 22 million and 22.5 million and adjusted EBITDA including the burden of pre opening costs between 181 million and 191 million. I'd like to provide some additional thoughts on our outlook. Turning to same restaurant sales, we increased our full year outlook to to 4.5% to 6.5% growth. Our updated guidance reflects the continued strength we are seeing across the business while remaining appropriately balanced against the current macroeconomic and consumer backdrop. Remain confident in the underlying health of the business supported by the strength of our unit economic model. While same restaurant sales trends in the second quarter are in line with the first quarter and tracking above our revised full year guidance. Our updated outlook contemplates a more moderate mid single digit comp assumption for the balance of the year. Overall, we believe our guidance appropriately balances the momentum we're seeing in the business today with a prudent view of the external environment. Shifting to restaurant level margin Our outlook reflects the strength of our business and incorporates a 20 to 4040 basis point headwind to capture a more cautious view on elevated energy cost impacts given ongoing geopolitical uncertainty. On the labor front, our guidance invents further investments in team member wages and other opportunities to deliver on an exceptional guest experience. As a reminder, beginning in the second quarter we introduced Salmon nationally, which we expect to be a margin rate headwind of approximately 100 basis points. Reopening expenses reflect increased investments in operator readiness, including onboarding general managers earlier to allow for more comprehensive training ahead of opening. We believe these investments help position our teams to execute consistently at a high level, finally shifting to general and administrative expenses. While we experienced leverage in the quarter driven by outsized sales performance, our general and administrative outlook for 2026 remains unchanged and we continue to expect G and A as a percentage of revenue to be relatively flat year over year as we remain committed to making targeted investments to support the long term growth of the business before we open the line for questions, I want to thank our team members across the organization for their continued hard work and commitment to delivering for our guests every day. It is because of their passion and dedication that we are able to fulfill our mission of bringing cart health and humanity to food and create meaningful experiences for our guests. With that, we'll open the line for questions.

OPERATOR

We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question. To ask a follow up, please rejoin the queue. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, please press star one Again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality if you are muted locally, Please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q and A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Sara Senatore from BoA. Sarah, your line is now open.

Sara Senatore

Thank you. Just I guess a question about the new store productivity. Obviously very, very impressive. I think, you know, in the past we've talked about a honeymoon period. It's been a relatively modest drag. So I don't want to overstate it, I think maybe 100 basis points. But I guess anything you can share about new stores, any commonalities across which markets have the highest NSP, you know, and based on a 2025 cohort, you are those highest volume stores the ones that have the honeymoon period? Or are the two things I guess not not correlated. Just trying to think through, you know, as we think through there as they enter the comp base. And then just a quick clarification, you said I think Kava's food, beverage and packaging costs will increase for the rest of the year because of salmon. So does that mean you plan to keep it on the menu through the end of the year. I guess I thought that initially it was targeted through 3Q. Thank you. Hey Sarah, thank you for the question. So talking about new store productivity, first, we are very pleased with the openings of our new restaurants again in 2026. Our new restaurant openings are exceeding our expectations. With AUB it's about $3 million and performing at 100% or greater productivity. We are finding that across all geographies, all types of formats, all markets, and can't find any commonalities in trends that are tying them to particular behavior overall, other than we haven't found a market yet that doesn't love Cava and we're very happy with their performance. What we are seeing with those 24 openings as they come into 2026, while we talked about the honeymoon last year, what we're seeing with the 24 and the entering into the comp base or in comp base in 2026 is that they're outpacing our expectations and that they are performing better than we expected and after 18 months continue to show positive momentum and are contributing significantly to overall same restaurant sales performance. The 25 vintage in 26 is performing very similar to 2024, so no significant difference there and we would expect them to perform like 24 as we move forward and that's how we reflect in our guidance. Your second question was regarding cost and impact of salmon. So yes, we launched salmon at the beginning of the second quarter. It's anticipated to run in the second quarter and third quarter and our guidance reflects that impact in the fourth quarter as well. Thank you.

David Tarantino (Equity Analyst)

Thank you for your question. Your next question comes from the line of David Tarantino from Baird. David, we are just opening your line. It is now open. Great, thank you. My question's on the margin outlook. Tricia, you know you raised the comp guidance which is encouraging but didn't really touch the restaurant level margin guidance very much. And if you called out energy costs, but I guess are there other factors that are limiting the flow through on the additional revenue that are worth calling out or is this all about an assumption that energy costs will be higher for the balance of the year? And then secondly, I wonder if you could just comment specifically on the other operating cost line because I think that line surprised at least some of us this quarter and maybe if we can unpack, you know, the fairly big variance in that line versus maybe where we had it modeled. Thanks.

Tricia

Appreciate that, David. So regarding the margin outlook, our model is incredibly robust and has tremendous flow through and we're seeing that continue to perform. But there are a number of factors that we included in our guidance that we want to specifically touch on. One is salmon. So that is certainly going to have an impact overall on margin rate. But remember that salmon is priced to be penny profit neutral so the dollars will be the same. The other piece is the energy cost impact and it hits a couple of different line items. And as we called out in the prepared remarks, we're contemplating an additional 20 to 40 basis points of an impact related to those that would likely more be more significant in the third and fourth quarter as fuel surcharges will kick in. We're starting to see early signs of that, but that if this persist will continue to escalate as you go into the remainder of the year. And then you're also going to see some potential utility impacts on the other operating expense line. And then within input costs related to food, beverage and packaging, you've got polyethylene costs that are anticipated to also be impacted. And we built all that into our guidance which does have an impact on the overall Flo3 flow groups to a lesser extent. We did layer in some additional average wage investments and some flexibility to make some investments in our guest experience in terms of labor that will be less impactful but is included in our guidance overall. And keep in mind David, we did increase the top end of our restaurant level margin guidance range by 10 basis points. Going back to the robustness of the model itself, but contemplating the uncertainties that are out there and how they might impact our performance overall. The other OPEX line as we called out digital mix, is impacting that. And so you're seeing some increase in overall fees on that line. Digital is designed to drive profit neutrality, so it's a little bit of an optics impact as you look at that. And then there are others fairly immaterial amounts across a number of different categories between other operating expenses. And those are fairly one time in nature. However, as we think about other opex as we go through the remainder of the year, it'll be a little bit above where we were on the full year basis as a percentage of revenue versus 2025. And that's largely due to the digital mix that I mentioned earlier.

OPERATOR

Thank you for your question. Your next question comes from the line of Danilo Gargiulo from Bernstein. Your line is now open.

Danilo Gargiulo (Equity Analyst)

Thank you. I have a first of all a clarification on Tricia on your statement that April or you know, the recent data is tracking on track with the first quarter actual. So I was wondering whether you were referring to the average that you have achieved in the first in in the first quarter or whether you were referring to the exit and then stepping back. Maybe this is more for Brett. Like if you were to think about the swinging factors that you have at your disposal for this year, what do you think is going to be driving you to get to the high end of the guidance versus the low end, given that you have significant opportunities ahead of you and you've already demonstrated that in the first quarter. Thank you.

Tricia

So regarding your question about our same restaurant sales assumptions and what we're experiencing, our same restaurant sales trends in the second quarter are in line with our overall same restaurant sales in the first quarter and tracking above our revised full year guidance.

Brett Shulman (Co-Founder and CEO)

And Danilo, to the second question. We're going to stay steadfast on our long term strategy with consistent radical menu innovation to excite our guests that doesn't create operational complexity. Tricia talked about some of the potential investments that we've accounted for in restaurant level margin to continue to lean in and elevate our warm Mediterranean hospitality and continuing our operational execution while mitigating menu price increases. We are very focused on making sure we don't have to pass through any inflationary pressures to our guests. And that has been something we've worked very hard on in recent years. That whether it's underpricing peers by more than half, whether it's taking less than half the price increase of CPI that has delivered great value every day that we think drives that traffic over the long haul. So we'll continue to focus on those. And again also we've talked in the past about the opportunity to continue to lean in and pull our marketing lever. It has been, you know, a smaller portion as a spend of our percentage of revenue versus our peers. And we see opportunities to continue to be, you know, very cost effective with our marketing but elevate the awareness. We've grown our awareness now from 62% to 66% across the country. So that certainly helps drive more people to try kava. And when they try it, they like it and they come back more frequently.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Charles from TD Cohen. Andrew, your line is now open.

Zach Ogden

Great, thank you. This is Zach Ogden on for Andrew. So the acceleration you saw in same store sales to start the year is contrary to what most of your peers saw. Do you stack rank the drivers of that acceleration between white sweet potatoes, any marketing investments, any improvement in your consumer or maybe some other factors as well?

Brett Shulman (Co-Founder and CEO)

Certainly when we look at same restaurant sales in Q1. We believe it's a combination of our amazing culinary bring a cuisine where taste and health unite to guests across the country at a time where it's meeting the needs of the modern consumer and meeting their desires from an experience standpoint. Also bundling that with warm hospitality and delivering on what Brett talked about is a great value every day. And those things together are significant contributors to the overall performance. You mentioned white sweet potatoes. You know, we brought back a fan favorite of white sweet potatoes and our guests just love it. It drove frequency, brought in new guests and created a unique option for our guests. As a complimentary main item, it doesn't appear to be a single factor that was driving the overall same restaurant sales performance. When you look at the comps across the country, saw great strength in every region of the country see great strength across all of our vintages. And in fact, when you look at our restaurants based on their median household income in their market, all of those cohorts are performing very well and our lower income cohorts continue to outperform as we bridge this K shaped economy.

OPERATOR

Great, thank you.

Gregory Frankfort (Equity Analyst)

Your next question comes from the line of Gregory Frankfort from Guggenheim Securities. Your line is now open.

Brett Shulman (Co-Founder and CEO)

Hey. Hey. Thanks. Thanks for the question. I just wanted to maybe unpack the digital sales and I think you hit almost 40% this quarter. Just a few years ago that was maybe 35%. And how much of that's being driven by, you know, 3P delivery versus, you know, your 1P digital channels and I guess what's the strategy or goal for that breakdown over time? Thanks.

OPERATOR

Yeah, Greg, when we, when we look at our digital mix, we are seeing improvements. And going back to what I said earlier, we designed our channels to drive the same level of profitability on a dollar space as across the board, regardless of how they choose to dine with us. And when we look at the quarter itself, we are seeing improvement in third party delivery mix overall and we're seeing improvement in other channels as well with digital that are driving to that increase from the 36% level in prior years, closer to 40% today.

Brian Harbour (Equity Analyst)

Thank you for your question. Your next question comes from the line of Brian Harbour from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Brett Shulman (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, thanks. Good afternoon. I guess, you know, could you comment on what you've seen from Salmon so far? I guess the quarter date comments suggest it's doing well. But you know, anything about new customers, about frequency, are you sort of happy with the consistency of the product when you, you know, look across your Store base. And then I guess that, you know, you. It sounds like you expect it to sort of remain there through the balance of the year. So, you know, is the assumption that this is kind of the permanent seafood offering at this point? Hey, Brian. We are pleased with the performance of salmon and it is in line with what we saw in our market tests and to our expectations and very proud of the team. You know, they did a rigorous stage gate process to test and ensure that we could execute a delicate protein at a high level for our guests. And so we've been very pleased with the execution across the fleet and have not committed to salmon being an everyday item, but do expect it to run through the fourth quarter at minimum.

OPERATOR

Thank you for your question. Your next question comes from the line of Chris Okul from Stifel. Your line is now open.

Patrick

Great, thanks guys. This is Patrick on for Chris. Brett, I know you talked about testing roasted garlic shrimp last quarter and I was curious if you could give an update on where that is in the sage gate process. I know we've seen some emails here in our local market, but I'm not sure if that's indicative of the fact that you've rolled it out nationally yet or if we're in the test just more broadly on lt. How are you guys thinking about the pace and sequencing of LTOs, maybe relative to past years when a lot of peers have seemed to accelerate the pace of innovation and clearly you have a lot of momentum, but curious to get your thoughts on what your customer is telling you, what the business is telling you in regards to what that right pace is for Cabo. Yeah, I'm guessing you might be in northern New Jersey. That is where. Or I'm sorry, or Nashville, where our market tests are going on on roasted garlic shrimp. So that has moved to the next stage of the Stage 8 process. Originally was a market test or sorry, an operations test. We are now in a market test, which is a broader test, which would be the last stage of proof points before we would take it to a more national launch. So again, it's following the same discipline process we've been doing for a number of years now. And what our clients culinary roadmap has in a tent pole moment each year bracketed by some seasonal moments. And we think that is still the right pace for us. That is the, you know, I think the balance we're trying to strike to have the right amount of newness and excitement for our guests without over complicating operations. We are focused on delivering exceptional operations. Every restaurant, every Shift with warm hospitality. And so we want to be mindful of how much newness we drive in and operational compliance complexity on our operators while balancing the excitement our guests have when we bring them new culinary. So I would continue to expect a tent pole moment each year bracketed by a few seasonal moments like you saw with roast white sweet potatoes. We have a few fun things coming this summer or even collaborations like we did with AZ and Yaxel around the NCAA tournament time.

Brett Shulman (Co-Founder and CEO)

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Mullen from Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.

Brian Mullen

Thank you. Brett. You just mentioned operations. My question is on operations. You know, with Doug Thompson having a bit more time in the role, can you just talk about what he's been the most focused on so far? You know, what are the most important priorities for that role as you see it, for the balance of the year? And if you just want to layer on, you know, your very strong growth in traffic and how that might influence timing or order of priorities, anything would be great. Yeah, Three, three main priorities, first and foremost for Doug is people development. Doug is an experienced leader of people, a developer of future leaders. Very excited to have him on board. So building out our pipeline, which that AGM investment is part of, future leaders not only to help maintain operational integrity across all shifts, both lunch and dinner and weekends, but as well as building a deeper pipeline of future leaders to open those new restaurants with operational integrity. And then new restaurant opening excellence is another. Given the intense volumes we're seeing and new restaurant productivity, we want to make sure that we protect those guests experiences when they come in and experience the best version of Cobb and put our best foot forward. Very excited at some of the, you know, the additions we've made in our recent Ohio openings that have really helped deliver better experiences on these new restaurant openings. And then lastly and but not least is hospitality. You know, it's been quarter our brand essence. It's not just our Mediterranean cuisine we're tasting healthy night, but it's our warm Mediterranean hospitality. And I think we're, we're good at delivering that across the country, but we want to be great and exceptional at it. And I think we have some opportunities to do that consistently again across every restaurant, every shift. And this is something Doug has great decades of experience in delivering and excited for him to bring that experience to Cava and help us elevate from good to great. Thank you.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of John Ivanko from JP Morgan. Your line is now open.

John Ivanko

Hi. Thank you. First and I'm sorry if I missed this. An operations related question. First on catering, you know, Brett, can you talk about, you know, your experience of catering, you know, particularly in some of the busier, more urban stores, if you do want to do it out of existing cava outlets or if maybe some purpose built assets, we kind of make sense, you know, to better achieve the catering day part. That's the first question. And then secondly, you know, you guys have long talked about, I guess, you know, human resources. Developing talent is probably the number one gating factor to the speed of growth, you know, which I think makes a lot of sense. But you know, Tricia, you did mention on the balance sheet you do have 400 million of cash. You have 150 million undrawn revolver. You're generating cash. It seems like you might be in a pretty good position, you know, to maybe think about some asset types of deals that could potentially be converted to CAVA at some later date. So, you know, just as an idea. So where are we, you know, in terms of potentially using the balance sheet and your overall cash flexibility to maybe accelerate development? Obviously not this year, but over the next couple of years as opportunities arise. Thank you. Yeah, John, I'll address catering and then let Tricia address the balance sheet question. We are, we have a market test going on in Houston that we've spoken to in the past. We plan to expand that to a second city, a second market later this year. And you know, one of the goals of the test and really we think is the critical aspect of it is understanding capacity management and load balancing. We have tremendous demand in catering. We know there's a lot of demand that's out there, but we want to make sure we position our operators to successfully meet that demand and meet our commitments experience on the catering front. And so to your point, we do have 20 plus purpose built locations that include, we've spoken about our hybrid kitchens and our digital kitchens that have extra capacity, hub central production capacity. And we are testing in regular cava restaurants to understand, you know, strategically how do we want to move forward. Is it more purpose built, centralized production complemented with the regular copper restaurants or is it just that centralized production? And we want to be very patient and methodical and disciplined because we know that that revenue potential is out there for us. But we want to make sure when we do open the spigots or you know, roll out catering that we need it with operational integrity and more to come. But again, we will expand it later this year to a second market test to make sure we're Understanding how we want to move forward with our load balancing and capacity management.

Brett Shulman (Co-Founder and CEO)

And John, as it relates to our balance sheet, we are in a very strong position there that you called out and certainly at the highest and best use of our cash are investing in new restaurant openings. And as you rightfully acknowledged, the biggest governor to that growth is ensuring we have a bright pipeline of role ready leaders to open those restaurants successfully. So we will consider and evaluate asset deals and understanding how to further augment our very robust real estate pipeline that we have but want to be thoughtful and not go after assets that we weren't able to support. And at the same time, as we've looked at opportunities to invest in real estate through different acquisitions, there's we find that it's often better to just wait and acquire those assets on their own through different means and it's a more effective deployment of capital in the end and less of a distraction to the business. So what our balance sheet provides is lots of flexibility and optionality. We're always evaluating different investments that we can make in cash to drive drive incremental returns for the business. But at this time the highest and best use of capital is in New York restaurant openings.

Tricia

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Vaccaro from Raymond James. Your line is now open.

OPERATOR

Hi, thanks and good evening. You noted the strength in the third party delivery channel and just curious what you'd attribute that to. Are there tangible improvements in execution, order, accuracy, et cetera, or any changes in the agreement with third party delivery partners that are worth noting. And then just to follow up on the AGM program, could you just remind us what percentage of the store base today has an AGM in place? Thank you. Hey Brian, if you remember, last year we spoke about our kitchen display screen investment and rollout and that is absolutely driving better productivity, better order accuracy, better digital order management. So that's driven both growth in our 3P channels as well as our 1P channel and digital ordering pickup and pick up by car. So that again has helped equip our team with the tools to be more successful and deliver on our guest commitments, which is driving overall growth in the digital channels.

Brian Vaccaro (Equity Analyst)

And with regards to AGMs in our restaurants, we are focused at those restaurants with higher volumes and placing AGMs in those locations. So haven't yet disclosed the actual number. I would say it's approaching above 50% of the locations. It's a progressive process.

Brett Shulman (Co-Founder and CEO)

Your next question comes from the line of Jacob. I can Phillips from Melius. Your line is now open.

OPERATOR

Great, thanks. So Much for the question. This is Sam on for Jacob. I just want to focus in on the Kava core and the data infrastructure that you guys mentioned in the remarks. As that rolls out, where do you expect the earliest measurable benefits to show up? Is it demand, forecasting, labor deployment, something else? And is the bigger opportunity near term restaurant execution or more longer term guest engagement? Thanks. Yeah, I think it's both of those and a third which is, you know, you've got restaurant operational efficiency, you've got guest engagement and you've got business intelligence insights, you know, at the corporate level. And what we're seeing already is some significant productivity enhancements across our enterprise.

Brett Shulman (Co-Founder and CEO)

When you think about automating a lot of manual and spreadsheet type tasks, whether it's in the finance function or other functions and then at the restaurant, what this does is it gives us a foundation to now leverage for predictive prep, predictive cook labor scheduling and inventory management. So this sets the foundation for us to be able to pull those levers, take that complexity out of our team members mind share and help position them to deliver again fresher food, mitigate waste and deliver on our operational commitments without having to do a lot of the manual computations and tasks themselves. So very excited for what this lays the groundwork for. I've talked about in our shareholder letter the last couple years. This is the early stages, I think of a decade plus of transformation. And what it will do is enhance our team members experience across both our support centers and and the restaurants. We always talk about using technology to enhance the human experience, not replace it. And this will empower our team members to be more productive, be more powerful and be more successful and ultimately at the restaurants free them up to deliver that heart, health and humanity through hospitality.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Margaret May Bishto from Wolf Research. Your line is now open.

Margaret May Bishto

Hi guys. Thanks for taking my question. I first wanted to just ask Brett, you said that national awareness built. I just wanted to understand how are you guys scaling your marketing investments in newer markets to build awareness ahead of unit growth. And then I just also wanted to follow up, Brett, I think a couple quarters ago you said that the 25 to 35 year old cohort had lost some frequency. Would it be fair to say you're seeing that recover? Thank you.

Brett Shulman (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yes. From a marketing standpoint, last year we increased from about 1% of revenue to 1.2% of revenue. So we continue to lean into it. It's not specific to new markets, it's just general across the country we have so much pent up demand when we open in these new markets. We haven't needed to add any additional or incremental marketing other than the general awareness and word of mouth and excitement in preparation for our openings. At this point though, we're focused on driving broader general brand awareness and you saw that salmon launch campaign and a couple activations we did or some of the collaborations. So we think this is something we continue to lean into from a brand building aspect. But opening new restaurants has certainly helped bring that awareness as we proliferate across the country. Yeah, and they said 30 to 45. I think what I had referenced in the past was the 25 to 34 year old cohort back late last summer, early fall where we said coming out of our last quarterly earnings that we were seeing that cohort firm up at the end of the year and that carried into this year and we've seen that momentum sustain year to date.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Logan Reich from RBC Capital. Your line is now open.

Amira Dogan

Hi there, this is Amira Dogan on for Logan. You mentioned continued strong momentum despite the current geopolitical and macro backdrop. I was just hoping if you could provide any color on changes, if any at all that you might have seen in consumer behavior post the start of the Middle east conflict relative to before the start of the conflict. We have not seen any shift in our consumer behavior. We talked about. We've seen it very consistent across regions, across age cohorts and across income cohorts and even noted, which may be a bit counterintuitive to what we've seen across some of industry peers, is that the lower end of the income strata is actually perform the strongest. We've seen strength across all income cohorts. But you know, the best performance across that bottom half of the income strata and you know that gets us excited to be able to welcome more people to our table. That's what we're trying to do every day, make our food more accessible, more affordable and the ability also in a sense to bridge that K shaped economy where we have that premium offering an experience for folks maybe at the higher end of the income strategy want to lean into our new pomegranate glazed salmon or the grilled steak, but have that accessible everyday value for folks that are a bit more price sensitive potentially. And the other thing I would say is we have not seen any deterioration in our premium incidents or attachment rate that has held very steady. So again we're very mindful and we try to incorporate in the guidance of the challenges that consumers are facing around them and the uncertainty from the geopolitical conflicts and the increase of the price of the pump. So we've tried to incorporate that in our guidance but have not seen a deterioration or impact so far in the current year.

Brett Shulman (Co-Founder and CEO)

Thank you for your question. Your next question comes on the line of JP Wollum from Roth Capital Partners. Your line is now open.

OPERATOR

Great. Appreciate you guys taking my questions. If I could just ask. On unit cadence, it looks like, you know, about 20, a little more than 25% of the full year guide came in one Q. Just curious if that was kind of some, some pull forward of two Q units that snuck in there or you know, just how you're thinking about kind of unit opening cadence for the rest of the year. Thank you.

Tricia

Keep in mind that we had 16 weeks in the first quarter, so there was outsized number of weeks in the quarter. The rest of the year has 12 week quarters in them. And I would expect the cadence of openings to be fairly ratable over the remainder of the year.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of John Tower from Citigroup. Your line is now open.

John Tower (Equity Analyst)

Great. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe Brett, you know, you'd mentioned earlier that the brand has taken a lot less pricing versus the industry versus the pre Covid levels. And you know, I'm curious one, you know, it does seem like your guests are recognizing it in the form of traffic to your stores. But I'm curious if you actually have the data behind that that suggests they're choosing you over going to competitors because of that price point. And then I guess the other question I have on top of it is, you know, seeing the strength in traffic that you have on a relative and absolute basis and the pressures on the business that are picking up sounds like more recently on energy prices, would you consider, you know, taking some price in the balance of the year to offset some of that? Yeah, John, we, we would not look to take price. I mean, I think we've tried to reflect in our restaurant level margin guidance that we look to absorb some of those fuel surcharges that we're expecting and some other inflationary pressures and not pass along to our guests. I think it's incredibly important. We're mindful of the pressures everyone's facing. You know, and I think when, when you think about choosing versus peers, we've done and we do internal brand health surveys, we do biannual brand health surveys. We just did another run of the health survey recently and we score very well on value. And we score very well on, you know, we even ask a question about recreating this food at home. And we are very unique and distinct in that. And so it's a good op. You know, it's a good comparison to someone who's looking to make food at home. We are a differentiated, unique opportunity for them to basically us be their outsourced cook. And so we've seen that comparison, in a sense, be very strong, whether it's our peers, whether it's food at home, and strong value scores. And that's what we want to continue to focus on and make sure that we can invite more people to our table.

Brett Shulman (Co-Founder and CEO)

I think too, when we go back and look over time when we have chosen not to take price, for example, a couple years ago when AP 1228 went into effect out in California, we chose not to increase increased price and many others did. At the time, our traffic, based on looking at black box data out west in California was much stronger as a result of that change. So there are data points out there that would suggest that things also around it is translating into traffic performance.

Tricia

Thank you for your question. Your next question comes from the line of Matt Curtis from DA Davidson. Matt, your line is now open.

OPERATOR

Thanks for taking the question. Just circling back on the lower income cohort that outperformed. I was just wondering if you could explain why your value proposition is attractive to them, given that they are just so price sensitive. And then separately on development, I was just wondering if you're seeing any pressure from higher energy bleeding into your construction cost at this stage. Yeah, I'll take the first question and hand it to Tricia for the second question. You know, it is we don't view value as just price. We view it as a combination of factors. It's the quality of the ingredients we serve. It's the relevance of our unique Mediterranean cuisine, the convenience in which our guests can access it, and the experience that we deliver when they visit us and share a meal with us. And so it's really bang for the buck. We are not going to be the lowest price out there. That is not why guests come to us. We are not serving freezer to fryer food. We're serving fresh Mediterranean cuisine. But we need to serve it at the most reasonable price that we can deliver it with great hospitality. And that's what we've been focused on. And that's what's been resonating with guests. And so while they may be more discerning with where they're spending their dollars, our numbers reflect that they're choosing to spend their dollars at Cabo.

Matt Curtis (Equity Analyst)

And as it relates to development at this point, we haven't seen any pressure as a result of the energy surcharges. But the team is very active in always staying ahead of challenges that they're facing and doing the best that they can to make sure that we're mitigating those challenges in the best way possible and continuing to drive outsized cash on cash returns. What they've done effectively over time.

Brett Shulman (Co-Founder and CEO)

Your last question comes from the line of Saring Vora from Belz Group. Your line is now.

OPERATOR

Great, great. Thank you for taking the question. Great quarter guidance. You know, just connecting you know, to the prior question about traffic trends. You know, I was curious to know how you know, loyalty is connected to traffic. Like you know, you revamped the program, you know, about 18 months back, you know, last few quarters have been very strong. Curious to know if you know the there you are seeing increased engagement in the loyalty program that is getting converted to traffic because it seems like, you know, that can be a sustainable trend. You know, any color you can share on like you know, member growth outperformance of loyalty contribution compared to the total company. And you know our members like tearing up from like you know, CSAN to even Oasis. Just curious, any color you can share and and connected to the traffic trend as well. Thank you.

Saring Vora (Equity Analyst)

Our loyalty programs have been effective. They have increased our loyalty pool. We are seeing improved frequency as a result and seeing progression in tiers that's meeting our expectations. So really happy with what we're seeing there and we can see that the loyalty program can drive engagement and offers that we're creating can build excitement and it's an opportunity for us to continue to leverage that data to build and deepen those connections with those guests to drive improved performance over time as well.

Brett Shulman (Co-Founder and CEO)

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Brett Shulman, co founder and CEO for closing remarks.

OPERATOR

Thanks everyone for joining us today and for your continued support as we look ahead. We remain focused on building this business with the same long-term mindset and discipline that has guided us from the beginning, staying true to our mission, investing in our people and continuing to make Mediterranean cuisine more accessible to communities across the country. Before we wrap, I want to again thank our nearly 15,000 team members whose passion, care and commitment make it possible for us to deliver on our mission to bring heart, health and humanity to food every day. Their dedication is what makes CAVA special and we're incredibly grateful for all they do for our guests and one another. With Memorial Day weekend approaching, we wish everyone a safe and meaningful holiday weekend. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter.

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