Avoid if you want a work life balance or a sense of accomplishment - Manager CAVA Employee Review

1.0
Jan 3, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Food is decent, the benefits are good, good starting pay for team members

Cons

Cava drinks their own coolaide and expect you too. Area team leaders expect you to breathe, sleep, and dream Cava. Area team leaders and above can’t work a grill shift however they expect the gm to run the store from the grill. They have you hire too many people to start, then don’t advertise locally, when sales are low the gms are given the advise to cut hours until people quit, then want you to rehire. Corporate has no idea how an actual Cava runs however they implement policies and procedures that don’t actually work in store. There is no trust in a seasoned manager to do their job correctly. There is no pleasing upper management, there is always something wrong.

Explore other reviews about CAVA

5.0
Jul 5, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- leadership cares about development - work/life balance is solid

Cons

- no real issues, loved working for Cava

2.0
Jul 14, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Grill cooks make a dollar more at entry level Easy way to gain kitchen experience and enter the culinary industry

Cons

Cava intends to function as a real restaurant, while lacking so many of the basic necessities of one. There is a shocking lack of dishwashing equipment such as a simple dishwashing machine despite having hundreds of dirty dishes daily. There’s no dedicated prep cooks or dishwashers as one singular employee is typically simultaneously assigned to both each shift. Which leads to neither being done properly. Prep food is always missing, and dishes are often neglected because of this leading to unnecessarily late closes, as well as closes being sloppy and rushed. The management seemingly randomly decides when it’s ok to prioritize efficacy/efficiency over policy and vice versa, which means your employers approval is rarely tied to your actual performance. Staff is largely teenage boys, so workplace culture ends up being pretty immature. Management has been extremely poor since opening, only to suddenly change entirely last month but has yet to actually find stability, and management styles are extremely inconsistent. As a result, extremely high employee turnover rate since opening. With only a handful of employees having been there for more than 3 months, most of if not all of which had quit, not been fired. The place remains understaffed and under equipped, making the work much more difficult than it should, or than it is at other locations. There is a lack of adequate training in all departments, even with newly hired management. I was there for over a month and still was not fully trained in my responsibilities or the standards of the day to day, yet was expected to perform as such. I ended up quitting do to rule cherry picking and disrespectful coworker behavior.

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