While other fast-casual chains have struggled with value perception over the past year or so, Cava did something simple:
The fast-casual chain didn’t raise menu prices very much.
It's a bold strategy. And it's working.
Cava’s fast-casual peers responded to what CEO Brett Schulman called “short-term cyclical pressures” on consumers with discounting and promotional activity.
But Cava stuck to a long-term strategy, which is to position the brand as accessible—and flexible—offering entry points for guests seeking value but also more premium items, like the recently rolled out salmon, to “bridge the K-shaped economy.”
Cava’s same-store sales rose nearly 10% in the first quarter, with traffic up 6.8%. That’s lapping a same-store sales increase in the first quarter last year of 10.8%. The chain raised its projections for the year, saying comparable sales are expected to increase between 4.5% to 6.5%, up from earlier estimates of between 3% and 5%.
Cava did increase menu prices 1.4% in January on some items, but the base bowl and pita prices did not increase. And no more menu price hikes are planned for this year, despite anticipated higher energy costs and fuel surcharges, Schulman said.
Adding salmon, the chain’s first seafood offering, which is expected to be on the menu through the end of the year at least, will also raise food costs for the chain. But the protein is priced to be “penny-profit neutral,” Schulman said.
Cava is also testing a new garlic shrimp, which could be the next seafood offering.
But, fundamentally, menu price increases have been kept to a minimum at Cava. The brand’s menu price hikes since the end of 2019 have represented roughly more than half of the cumulative rise in the Consumer Price Index, Schulman said.
“We’re mindful of the pressures everyone’s feeling out there,” said Schulman, according to a transcript from financial services site AlphaSense. “We are very focused on making sure we don’t have to pass through any inflationary pressures to our guests, and that’s 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.”
That strategy, of course, also means Cava is eating some of those costs.
But sales leverage has offset that ding to margins. For the quarter, restaurant-level profit margins were flat at 25.1%, and the chain expects margins to range between 23.7% and 24.3%, which is a slight uptick from the projection in February that put the high end of that range at 24.2%.
And, after seeing some consumers step back last year as they held tighter to their wallets, traffic was back in the first quarter.
Cava said traffic growth was spread across all regions, all vintage of restaurants, and all cohorts. In fact, the chain saw strong performance among lower-income consumers, and the recovery of guests ages 25 to 34, which Schulman attributed in part to a slight increase in marketing spend and pent-up demand as the chain reaches new markets.
The 459-unit chain is pushing into the Midwest, for example, with a restaurant opening Wednesday in Columbus, Ohio, following a recent opening in Cincinnati. Units are coming to Minneapolis later this year. In 2026, Cava expects to open between 75 and 77 restaurants, bringing it past the halfway mark of reaching 1,000 restaurants by 2032.
Cava’s first quarter, however, comes in sharp contrast to fast-casual peers Chipotle, which reported a same-store sales increase of 0.5%, and Sweetgreen, which saw same-store sales tank almost 13%.
Of those three, Cava holds the value position. Chipotle’s average check in 2025 was $17.35, according to Technomic Ignite Price Pulse data. Sweetgreen was in the middle at $16.80 and Cava’s was $16.05.
But where Chipotle is pushing protein and Sweetgreen is rethinking its pricing architecture (and promoting new wraps), Cava is sticking with serving Mediterranean cuisine “at the most reasonable price that we can deliver it with great hospitality,” said Schulman.
The better than-expected report sent Cava’s stock up on Tuesday in after-hours trading, which continued on Wednesday. The chain’s stock closed at $80.53, up more than 37% over the past 12 months.
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