This is the full transcript for Episode #340 of the Wild Business Growth podcast featuring Ted Xenohristos – CAVA, Mediterranean Food Defender. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
Ted Xenohristos 0:00
It’s a wild & crazy ride, but it’s fun while we’re doing it.
Max Branstetter 0:17
Yassou, welcome back to Wild Business Growth this year, place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer at MaxPodcasting. That is and this is episode 340, today’s guest is Ted Xenohristos, the Co-Founder & Chief Concept Officer of CAVA, the delicious, delicious brand of Mediterranean food that is now up to over 400 locations and is a publicly traded company. In this episode, we talk how Ted and the fellow co-founders Mediterranean and Greek roots inspired kava, how they went from a casual dining restaurant to many, many, many, many, many fast casual restaurants and an all Greek edition of Rapid-Fire Q&A that will have you buying a ticket and salivating. Have you met Ted? Enjoyyyyyyyy the showwwwwww! Aaaaaaalrightyyyyyy we are here with Ted Xenohristos, a name I’ve been saying since birth, Co-Founder & Chief Concept Officer of Cava, just one of the most fan favorite brands and delicious food companies out there, Ted. Thank you so much for all you do in the culinary space, as well as for making time joining us today. Thanks. How you doing today?
Ted Xenohristos 1:59
I’m doing great and great pronunciation on the name. I don’t think you could say it any better unless you were Greek. So
Max Branstetter 2:06
thank you. Well, I think I’ll, I don’t think I’ll ever say it again. I think thanks for that big fan of all things Greek, though, but I let’s just start like early, early on, because I know obviously restaurants, Greek food, Mediterranean food is a big, big part of your life. Can you take us to what your life was like in the early days, like, seemingly the movie esque role of growing up in a restaurant?
Ted Xenohristos 2:33
Yeah. I mean, it’s funny, because it’s so cliche, but it’s true. And you know, my aunt and uncle owned a restaurant, and my mom, it was my mom’s sister, so when she came to this country, that’s the first place she worked. And she worked as a server, basically, for about, I mean, 30 years, so maybe even longer. And she used to take me to work all the time. And I really would love it. My dad, who also immigrated here from Greece, would take me to work at a construction site. And I was like, oh, man, I got to figure out something to do. But when I got to go with my mom, it was such a treat. I loved interacting with the customers. I loved bussing tables. They would leave me nickels and quarters back then, when they were worth a lot more than they are today, you know, I got to wash dishes and run food, and I just enjoyed it so much. I love the hospitality. I love being around the people, the energy, and it was just truly amazing. And I think it it just was in my veins and in my blood to always want to be in and part of a restaurant.
Max Branstetter 3:30
What was like the first lesson about restaurant ship, restaurant hood, whatever you want to call that, that you learned at an
Ted Xenohristos 3:37
early age, My other uncle, so I got a lot of uncles and a lot of restaurant owners in my family, so he owned a restaurant, and it was my first job, and I was pretty young, and I waited tables for him, and the food was really good, right? And it wasn’t like out of this world. It wasn’t Michelin star. I didn’t have any write ups or reviews, and I really realized that people enjoyed going there because they enjoyed him. They enjoyed the hospitality. He was such a jovial he was like a magnet for for like, happiness, and people just love being around him. He was rambunctious and loud. He would people would sit at the table and he’d be like, Oh, he remember everybody’s name, and he’d be like, Oh, you guys didn’t get your calamari today. And he’d yell to the kitchen. Be like, kitchen, be like, bring out a calamari over here, you know? And I realized that they loved sure the food was good and the space was nice, but they loved the hospitality part. And there were lines on the door at this restaurant, and they came for him, and they came for that experience. And so I realized it was more about treating people well and taking care of people equal to the food obviously being good, right? People don’t want to eat bad food, even if people are super nice. So
Max Branstetter 4:52
let’s get to cava, which you started at age seven. You were the youngest restaurant, entre, no, I’m just gonna not quite that young. You’re pretty young. So I think in doing research, this blew me away. I think most people would be surprised to learn that Cava actually started as, like, a sit down restaurant at first, like, before the whole scaling and chain thing. What was that like? How did that first restaurant come about for you? Yeah,
Ted Xenohristos 5:14
so, I mean, I grew up, like I said, my both my parents were immigrants and from Greece and Cyprus and so, you know, my mom worked all day as a waitress and still found time to come home and make dinner almost every single night. I’m amazed by it. I have two kids, and me and my wife try to figure out if we can, like, squeeze something in the oven and get it done in like, a few hours. And my mom somehow found a way to make these huge meals like braised lamb and homemade tzatziki and pita bread and like so I grew up eating this food, and I didn’t really know it was kind of good for you until later, right? I don’t think you really realize that your mom’s making it. So you think it’s just everything’s great and good for you. And as Mediterranean started to really grow, and people started to have this kind of, like health halo around it. It was really cool to see all the stuff I was eating being considered a healthy food. But we really wanted to share what we saw as Greek Mediterranean food, because what people knew it as was, you know, right? You know, pasticcio musaka, like your typical and I love that stuff, by the way. My mom hates that stuff still today, but there was so much more to it. And I think when you look at the Mediterranean, you see Italy, they have a technique, and they’re driven by the way that they make things right, like you must make the sauce this way. You must make a bolognese like this. And same for France, right? They’re very strict in their technique, driven culinary, whereas Greece was all about freshness and all of the Mediterranean, when we say the Mediterranean, we say, like Greece, Turkey, the Levant, you know, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, like all the countries there in the Northern African coast, they all share this common their food is similar, but different, but they show this common kind of like this, this happiness and jovialness around food, and it’s all about the freshness of it. It wasn’t about, Oh, I gotta do these tomatoes this way. No, I gotta find the freshest tomatoes. When we were creating our crazy feta, we couldn’t get the same fresh red peppers that grow in Northern Greece, right? And so we used jalapenos because they were close by, and they were the freshest pepper we could use and and normally that dip is called Tito Cafe, and it’s more mild, and this was, like, the spicy, and it’s really, oh, that’s crazy. And it literally got the name crazy feta. So it was really just the visits to Greece, growing up eating this food the way my mom cooked, and saying, like, how do we share this with people and really show them what Mediterranean food is, because it’s not just a hero,
Max Branstetter 7:43
right? I have to stop you right there, because my wife, Dana, one of her all time favorite movie scenes is in my big fat Creek wedding, when the girl’s like, moose, Kaka, yeah,
Ted Xenohristos 7:55
there’s a lot of great lines in that. Yeah, all
Max Branstetter 7:57
that stuff is so good. And we were fortunate to do a trip to Athens and then the Greek islands, like, pretty early on in our relationship. And we did a cooking class, and they taught us how to make Tzatziki. And, like, we make it. It’s like, every other week, it feels like now, it’s unbelievable. It’s so good. So you I would say, I would go out on a limb and say, You guys have a good taste in
Ted Xenohristos 8:17
food. Call it the ketchup of Greece. So his ketchup
Ted Xenohristos 8:21
right? Yeah, it’s about fresh garlic and
Max Branstetter 8:24
the ultimate refreshing thing, yeah. So it’s cool, but if you think of that first like more of a sit down restaurant, besides just the nature of being like a sit down dining restaurant, what else would you say was, like, really different about that first location versus, like, what somebody thinks about today when they think of a location
Ted Xenohristos 8:40
our first restaurant. We called it Cava Mezze. So the name Meza means small play. It’s meant to be shared, right? So we wanted to take what we were experiencing in Greece in those visits with our families. You know, I would go back to my dad’s village, and it was a very poor village, and but they, whenever we visited, they always found a way, no matter who I brought from our friends, my family, and it was always about like, oh, we have to eat, right? And it was a big table, it was a huge spread, and it was whether the food, the food was always great, right? But it wasn’t about just the food, it was about being together. So we wanted to kind of create that atmosphere and that vibe, along with showcasing what the food was. So we started this full service restaurant, and it had 2025, small plates on it. We did, of course, our tzatziki and hummus and all the stuff that you see in our kavas today all came from that full service kind of Chef D was my partner and chef, and created all those recipes, and a lot he took from his mom, so great recipes. I’m not sure he’s giving her all the credit she deserves today. We were waiters. We were we built the place by hand. We built this restaurant for less than 10 grand. Everything was from like Target and Marshalls and the dollar store, and we somehow got it open. And we didn’t have a sign, we didn’t have. Register, and we really our marketing plan was to just take care of people and just treat them like we would treat any family member or friend. So people would come in, we’d send appetizers, we’d buy them drinks, we’d buy them dessert. We’d keep the bar open late night. We’d let people step behind the bar and make their own drinks. Yeah, we just it was such a fun, jovial place, like people would then come, and all of a sudden we were like 45 minutes, hour outside DC, and this place had a line out the door, and it was like an hour wait just to get in before we even open. We were written up in Washingtonian magazine as restaurant tours of the year. I mean, it was crazy, it was wild. It was going on. We were 2627 years old, and all the time, meanwhile, we were living with our parents because we were making no money while it was all going on. So sometimes we’d even sleep in the restaurant. But it was really about, I wanted to change the culture of restaurants. My mom worked in it for so long, and it’s a it’s a grind, it’s it’s brutal work, and at the end, she had nothing to show for it. So we wanted to take care of people. We gave people percentage of ownership profit sharing. We limited the number of hours you worked and paid the same amount that you paid that other restaurant managers would get. And then we wanted to share the quality of the food of the Mediterranean, which we did through the menu. And then we really wanted to share that hospitality and the generosity, you know. And we talk about generosity at kava all the time. We have this love button. Today, our team members can use someone comes through the line if they’re having a bad day or, you know, you’ve seen this customer three times this week, they can hit that love button and buy the meal for them. And that all stemmed from that first restaurant, like just taking care of people. So, you know, the recipes were chef driven, they transferred over to our fast casual format. The generosity transferred over. And taking care of our team members is probably one of our top if not one of our, you know, top priorities, the top priority. So taking care of our team members who take care of our guests and sharing that hospitality and Mediterranean food with
Max Branstetter 12:04
them. Well, you guys are on a roll. You don’t need any advice from me, but I think you missed a huge opportunity to have kava branded sleeping bags that promote people sleeping in the restaurant. I think that’s like the next product extension for you. That’s
Ted Xenohristos 12:16
literally the number one request. Yeah, not just sleeping bags, but anything with kava on it. Yeah, where’s your merch store? I was like, well, we’re trying to open up 1000 restaurants by 2032 or trying to focus on that,
Max Branstetter 12:27
which, by the way, like hot off the press, I know, with the hot harissa meal, you got, you guys now have, like, the little plushy pita chip toilet, which are, like the cutest little thing ever. Who doesn’t want a little like, Pita, a stuffed pita, literally, plush pita thingy.
Ted Xenohristos 12:43
Yeah, our marketing team did a great job. And Peter Chip is we call them, and then there’s garlic Gus, and there’s a few characters there. And I honestly think, you know, we open up restaurants all over the country now, and I get messages, oh, thank you for opening. Like or when are you opening here? And the biggest response I got was, can you get me I’m missing this one plushie? I’m missing. I’m missing garlic Gus. I’m missing, you know, Peter chip. And from family members to people I haven’t heard from in years, to, like, investors of ours. And they were like, I’m out of the country. Can you get all four of them for me? I was like, I don’t even have all four.
Max Branstetter 13:20
As a sucker for puns, Peter chip is just too perfect. It’s right on the money, delicious. How did you guys first, like, realize that this is something that could actually be scalable in, like, a slightly different format?
Ted Xenohristos 13:34
You know, we had that first restaurant, and we were running it ourselves. Like I said, I was living with my parents. My other two partners were doing the same. We weren’t really making any money, but the restaurant was busy. It was packed. The lines were out the door. That’s when, you know, one of my partners stepped out of being in the restaurant. I started focusing on what I do best and what you know My role today as chief concept officer, Design menu, working with the chefs. My chef partner, Dimitri, stayed in, and then Ike, who’s the third founder, literally started working on the business and understanding how to make money. Now, right? We created this awesome, cool one restaurant. So once we kind of figured that out, we opened a second restaurant, and then we started selling our dips and spreads. You know, I simply figured it out. We dove into something we didn’t understand. Again, people kept buying our hummus and our tzatziki, and we just kept selling it in these tubs. So we decided to start selling it in grocery stores. So we would operate the restaurants all day, at like midnight, we would start making these dips by hand. We would package them. We would use blow dryers to melt the plastic. We would deliver them to the grocery store. So we had this like we eventually did a third restaurant, and I’m fast forwarding here and covering a lot of a lot of ground, but I really went from 2006 the first restaurant, 2008 the second one, and around two that by the end of 2010 we had three of those full service restaurants, and we were selling to about 1015 Whole Foods and other grocery stores. Within the DC region. So it was all organic. We didn’t really have a full grasp on it, and we kind of decided at that point we need a little help. And that’s where I met Brett Schulman. He’s currently the CEO, and I always like to say, I hired my own boss. I worked with him. I brought him on as a consultant. He really helped us fix that, the grocery side of the business, and he had this, you know, pitch to us, like, why don’t you guys turn this into this kind of, like, fast casual format of Kava that, you know today, because when the full service, you can only serve a certain number of people, right? It’s more expensive. And in this fast casual format, you could get everyone in for at that time, it was less than $10 for a meal and a drink. And, you know, he’s like, Oh, it’s, we can make it. It’s super healthy. And we were like, hey, hey, hold on. Like we’re not, I’m not a salad eater here, right? I love eating food. My mom makes lamb every night and grow meatballs. And, you know, he pointed out. He’s like, Guys, the food you’re making is healthy the food you’re eating. And we didn’t really kind of realized that it was like light bulbs and hummus with chickpeas and lentils and all the things that we had in our restaurants. We started to transfer to that line as we built we started to build that brand out. So it was really cool. It was this transition period of, okay, we’re full service, and we started running this kind of fast casual and trying to figure out how we’re gonna still make things we made the way we made them in a full service with chefs in a fast casual format. So that was a really fun period.
Max Branstetter 16:28
Yeah, it sounds fun. And also probably agonizing. At the same time,
Ted Xenohristos 16:32
I get very agonizing. I’m leaving out, I’m leaving out all the hard parts,
Max Branstetter 16:36
no, but, well, I want to dig it to that hard part. So like that shift from, I don’t know, I guess you call it casual dining to fast casual is fascinating. And I think there’s so much that you have to think about there. What are some things that you learned early on about, like, Okay, this will or not work and like, this won’t work in this format. We need to change it up. I mean,
Ted Xenohristos 16:57
the line has changed, uh, dramatically over the years, right? Our first ever line that you went down at the end of it had, like yogurt, and you could choose your toppings. It was kind of wild. What we had, you know? We ended up realizing that the more things you had, the more chance of kind of it going bad, right? And so we started to really hone in on what the menu was, and what we call it is menu creep. And we started saying, Okay, here’s our menu. If we add something, we have to take something off. We can’t have, you know, 50 items and then go to 80 items, because we learned very early on that just makes it more difficult. Once we figured that out, it was, hey, we were braising lamb in this pot in our restaurants, right? We take a whole leg of lamb, we braise it, we pull it off, and we turn that into our braised lamb, and we were doing that in our fast casual and then we would put it in his pans, and it would sit on the line, and same with chicken, do it on the grill, put it in these pans, and these pans were like this deep, and we weren’t that busy, because people didn’t really know what it was. And so that food was sitting there. It wasn’t crossing like a threshold of getting people sick, but it was getting kind of mushy, you know, it was getting like stale, and, you know, after 30 minutes, 45 minutes, so we started getting shorter pans. We started creating standards cook times, how long things could sit on the line. And so it’s just a different business altogether, right? In the full service, you have chefs, and you’re making stuff, and you’re prepping to get ready for dinner service in fast casual, you’re cooking to serve from from literally kitchen grill to consumer right away. So figuring that out, that dynamic, it was lots of practice, lots of learning experiences, and little stories like that, where we had to kind of tweak those things. So it was really fun. It was interesting. It was fun. It was a lot of work, but it was really cool starting to learn an all new facet of this restaurant business that we had been in for such a long time.
Max Branstetter 18:50
It’s really fun to hear about, like, the early days and experimenting like that. And like contrast that now with like, at the time of this recording, like, you guys have opened your 400th location, you’ve you’re a public company, you’re in, you know, so many different cities and states across the US. I always think back to, like, when I was living in the city, and for those not New York area, everybody calls New York City the city. When I was living in Murray Hill area, my friend Alex, like, walked me, like, halfway down Park Avenue is like, Dude, you got to try this place. And like, we walked all the way down to that Park Avenue Cava location. And we’re like, Wow, that’s amazing. And we went many times. And then our good friend Spence was working in in Soho at the time, and when that Soho location opened, like, right across from his office, the line was, like, all the way down the block. And so, like, clearly, you guys did something right from the buzz standpoint, and I’m sure there’s still a lot of buzz with new locations like that. What do you think’s kind of like the secret sauce, if you will, of how you’ve created, like, such a buzzworthy brand that people have such an appetite for? Look,
Ted Xenohristos 19:54
I think it starts with people, right? And we want to start, we start by taking care of our. People. I remember back in like 2013 we went to like $13 an hour minimum wage, which, you know, in most jurisdictions we were in at the time, it was like seven bucks minimum wage. So we’re almost double in most places. And that 13 was the minimum in some places. It was higher, right? Obviously, New York was higher. Los Angeles urban areas, and we’ve continued investing in our team members. And are we perfect? Are we exactly where we want to be? Of course not. But as we grow, we’re able to do more and more, right? We’re able to increase pay, salary opportunity as we grow. And so I think it starts with that. I think that team members really enjoy working at a place knowing they have an opportunity to grow a career, right? I think I started this by saying the restaurant business was super hard. My mom worked in it for a long time. She got beat up. And people, when I worked in the restaurant industry, they always looked at it and said, Oh, I’m just working here until I get a real job. And I was like, Well, this is a real job for me, you know, like, what it is for you, but, and so, like, I know, for so many people, for my mom, for me, you know, I didn’t, I didn’t finish university. I didn’t, I wasn’t able to finish and so this was my real job, and I want people to have opportunity to grow and create careers at Kava. So I think he starts with that. The second part is what I still do today, right? It’s the food. I think that my job here, the way I look at it, I have a fancy title of Chief concept officer. But I really look at it as defending our food, right? And saying, like, as we grow, and I see comments all the time, oh, compass corporate now, oh, their food is this? No, the food is exactly the same. We get our lentils from Montana. We get our olive oil from Greece. We get our olives from Greece, my good friend, Stavos. People probably read about it. You know, he he grows these with his family. It’s a huge Co Op. I get to visit there every year. And so knowing where our food comes from is super important to me. We have no freezers, we have no microwaves, we don’t use butter like we focus on the quality of the food that which is what we started with, right? It’s all fresh. It’s made by hand. Falafels made by hand. Lamb meatballs are literally made by hand. I would challenge anyone to come in the back of our kitchens and sit there and scoop lamb meatballs all day, marinating chicken and throwing it on the grill. We cook with fire, and like we work so hard, and we have an amazing team of supply chain and culinary and chefs that work so hard to continue making it easier on our team members, those little cucumbers that you get in the restaurant as you’re walking through the line, the pregnant cucumbers. Someone’s sitting there hand cutting those every single day. So I want people to know that that the freshness and the quality are something that we believe in. It’s my job to defend as a founder. As we grow, of course, we have to have more supply, and we have to find it, because you actually run out of stuff. We’re running out of fresh dill for Tzatziki. We gotta figure out where it’s gonna come from, and so we’re investing in finding ways to grow it in greenhouses, so we could still use fresh dill versus if you go into grocery stores today and you’re buying tzatziki off the grocery shelf a lot of time, it’s powdered garlic and powdered dill and powdered, you know, spices. So I think the food and the people are really what’s bringing people in. And now we’re investing in what our spaces look and feel like. We’re really trying to bring that Mediterranean kind of feeling into a lot of greenery, bringing in some olive trees and soft seating. So I think the combination of all those keeps people coming back.
Max Branstetter 23:25
Well, if you need anybody to, like, fly to Greece and just kind of, like, taste test the olives, like, I’ll throw my my hat in the ring there, just you need
Ted Xenohristos 23:33
help. It’s funny, we have a lot of people clamoring to sign up for that. That one, yeah, we, we get to take the chefs out there every once in a while, and kind of experience the Mediterranean region as a whole, and eat at different restaurants, eat at little Tamara knows, you know, the side of the street. And seeing able, being able to, like, actually watch a harvest happen with olives, is one of the coolest things. Believe it or not, it’s just like wine. You can have olive oil tastings and sippings and so it’s, it’s really cool to do an experience.
Max Branstetter 24:04
You mentioned that you’re the fancy chief concept officer, and one of those responsibilities is culinary innovation or or defender of the food. I like you need, like a full like, catcher’s mitt. Yeah, catchers equipment, there attire. But if you had to look back and think of like one offering or dish, or like food that kava has introduced in recent years, that has been like a game changer, like, oh, like, we’re onto something. There’s a good spike in sales here. What’s one that sticks out
Ted Xenohristos 24:37
to you? I’m going to answer, I’m going to cheat and answer that in two ways. Like, our pita chip has been like, something that’s been like, I mean, you mentioned the plushies earlier. It’s completely taken off. Like, yeah, Peter chip is doing a great job of marketing and and now we’ve introduced a second chip flavors. We did our garlic ranch, we have our hot Hadis. We have a bunch of new fun flavors coming. Mean, and so having that two chip option has been really great, and recently we just did sauces for them. So we’re, we’re working on, you know, thinking about, like, pairing sauces with our chips. So it’s interesting to watch it. On the other hand, something maybe that’s hasn’t gained as much traction, is not as exciting, but has a big following, is our is lamb. I think that when you go look for lamb and fast casuals or fast food, or wherever you’re looking for it, it’s really hard to find. I don’t think many people are doing it, and we’re doing it two different ways. And for me, the grilled lamb meatballs, they came from the original restaurant. It’s the same recipe. They have our harissa in them to spike them, to give them a little heat. We make them fresh every day. We work with amazing lamb farmers to get some of the best land. We dial in the spec and, you know, we hit them on the grill every single day. It’s really an amazing product, and people love it. And it’s amazing to see that there’s a big contingent of people that really love lamb. And so it’s really cool, and something we’re really
Max Branstetter 25:58
proud of. I don’t know what you’re proud of. I mean, it’s really nothing to Ted,
Max Branstetter 26:06
you’ve been a fantastic sport. Let’s wrap up with an all-Greek edition of Rapid-Fire Q&A. You ready for it? Yeah, sure. All right, let’s get wild, and let’s get Greek. What is the most beautiful Greek island?
Ted Xenohristos 26:18
Whoo Paros for me. I’m one of my favorite islands. I know it’s gotten a lot of popularity recently. I’m going to give a sneak tip for anyone listening. It’s Folegandros. Is another one that’s hidden, hard to find, but worth it, and almost a better version of Santorini. So we’ll
Max Branstetter 26:35
have to look up the spelling of that and put all right, what’s the most underrated destination in mainland Greece?
Ted Xenohristos 26:44
I would say the Peloponnese region, peloponisa. I mean, it’s gorgeous. My father’s from there. It’s where our olives come from, and there’s lots of it. That was historically Venetian, and so looks very much like Venice. You got a lot of historical Venetian towns, very cool beaches are gorgeous, still very affordable, not as expensive as those other Greek islands. So definitely a hidden
Max Branstetter 27:08
spot. All right, favorite Greek basketball player of all time. It’s
Ted Xenohristos 27:12
definitely Giannis. I mean, he’s the best. Who’s that? No, just yeah, my son, my dad’s Yanis. My son is Yannis, not because the basketball player, but because we name our kids after our father. So there’s like 20 Giannis in my family, and He’s amazing. He’s he was out. He grew up very Greek. He grew up in Athens, and watching him represent Greece is really cool to watch, so and he’s amazing. So I don’t think there’s anybody been better wearing the
Max Branstetter 27:38
Greek uniform. Yeah, a decent player, if you’d have one bite of anything Greek that you could have once a day for the rest of your life, what
Ted Xenohristos 27:46
would that be? Souvlaki? I think souvlaki, for me is especially in Greece. It’s marinated pork grilled over fire, salt, pepper, so simple, little bit of olive oil. You can put it in a pita sandwich. You can eat it off the skewer. We were there this summer, and even in winter, with the chefs and I, we stopped at this one kind of road stop on the way down to the peloponnesa. And I think I eat about 20 skewers in one sitting. So
Max Branstetter 28:14
wow, that’s a lot of skewers, all right. And then, other than your last name, what’s the longest Greek word that you could think of? Probably
Ted Xenohristos 28:21
Galaktoboureko. So
Ted Xenohristos 28:23
what’s that mean? It’s a dessert. And so, like, it’s amazing desserts. My favorite dessert, it’s like a custard with phyllo dough, and they serve it warm with cinnamon. And people always say, like, what’s your favorite dessert? And like, I want to tell them that, but then it becomes like, how do you spell that? How do you pronounce that? And so I usually just say baklava, just to make it easier, but you got like, the woody goes the best Greek dessert,
Max Branstetter 28:45
awesome, rolls off the tongue. Ted, TEDx. Ted Chi whatever you thank you so much. Just absolutely love everything you’re doing at Kava. I know if you want to learn more, try out kava, you can do Ted, I know you’re on LinkedIn, you’re on Instagram, so they can connect with you there. Thanks again for joining last thing, final thoughts. It could be just like one line, just kind of words of wisdom to leave us with, take us home here.
Ted Xenohristos 29:10
Yeah. I mean, I think for anyone in the restaurant business, it’s a lot of work. It’s it’s grueling, it’s a tough business. And I think if you love it, and you love the hospitality, like I do, and you want to open up your own restaurant, or you want to grow in a company, you have to love it. You have to love people, and you have to just keep working. It never ends with restaurants, right? People always say, Oh, I wish I could have my own restaurant. Like, it’s a lot of work, but if you love people, and you love taking care of people, and I think it’s a fabulous business, it’s amazing business. And I really want to give a shout out to all our teams in the field, because they do all the things that I did in that one restaurant. They do that for us today and help us expand. So thank you to all of them. And it’s a wild and crazy ride, but it’s fun while we’re doing it,
Max Branstetter 29:57
wild and crazy, that’s the way we like it. Thank you so much Ted for your CAVA-licious CAVA journey, sharing that journey with us. Thank you, Wild Listeners, for tuning into another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to hit that Subscribe button or that Follow button, whatever you prefer, follow on your favorite podcast platform as well as subscribe on YouTube for the video versions. You can find that on YouTube @MaxBranstetter, for anything about the podcast, about my podcast production business, as well as the Podcasting to the Max newsletter, every Thursday, you can learn more and sign up at MaxPodcasting.com and until next time, Let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!
