How to Make Culture More Than Words on a Wall
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, I had an inspiring conversation with Kelly Costanza, Chief People Officer at CAVA, to unpack how one of the fastest-growing restaurant brands is turning culture, hospitality, and frontline careers into a real business advantage.
Kelly shares why culture cannot just be a word on a wall. At CAVA, culture is operationalized through values, competencies, recognition, career pathways, frontline listening, stock grants, mental health benefits, and leadership rituals that make the employee experience feel just as intentional as the guest experience.
Most importantly, Kelly explains how CAVA is building a place where people can have a career, not just a job, from hourly team members growing into general managers, to leaders staying connected to the restaurants through shoulder-to-shoulder service, town halls, and practical feedback from the frontline.
🎓 In this episode, Kelly discusses:
How CAVA turns culture into everyday operating practices
Why frontline careers are central to CAVA’s origin story and growth strategy
Why support center leaders work in restaurants every quarter to stay close to the frontline
How values like generosity first always show up in benefits, recognition, and guest experience
How CAVA is building career pathways through Flavor Your Future, stock grants, and leadership development
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[00:00]->[00:32]
I always say you have to operationalize culture.
It can't just be a word that you throw around.
You have to put things in place to bring your culture to life.
Our mission is to bring heart health and humanity to food.
You can only do that if you bring heart health and humanity to team members.
Well, how do you do that?
Well, you have to have them understand what are your values.
So we have five values that fall under that mission.
And the very first one, for example, is generosity first always.
And that generosity, that spirit, that Mediterranean hospitality of generosity shows up in giving stock grants or mental health benefits, right?
[00:32]->[00:37]
You have to be generous to your team members and to your guests if you're going to say generosity is your first value.
[00:54]->[00:55]
Kelly, welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
[00:56]->[00:59]
I'm doing terrific.
So great to be here.
Thanks for having me, Chris.
[00:59]->[01:03]
Since our last call, all I've been thinking about is when am I getting my hands on some kava?
[01:03]->[01:06]
I know we got to get you to the restaurant and feed you.
[01:06]->[01:13]
How have I been in New York that many times and not had kava?
Or the US actually, in general?
I don't know.
[01:13]->[01:17]
We're going to get you and we're going to make you a fanatic like the rest of our fanatics.
[01:17]->[01:20]
What's your go-to?
What's your favorite?
[01:20]->[01:42]
My go-to, I always get the same.
And we have found...
Our best guests get the same bowl.
So meaning like they have a go-to.
So my go-to is basmati rice, a scoop of tzatziki, a scoop of hummus, a scoop of crazy feta,
one scoop of chicken and one scoop of steak.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
You can do half portions.
[01:42]->[01:47]
You don't have to just limit yourself to one protein.
I'm in for half and half.
You can have whatever you want at Kava.
[01:48]->[02:04]
And then I add tomato cucumber and pita crisp.
We have these crunchy, delicious...
Homemade little pita crisps that make every bite have a crunch.
What is that?
What's that?
So like it's pita bread and it's cut up and fried and it is delicious.
[02:05]->[02:35]
I never even heard of that before.
All right.
Now I'm hungry now.
I shouldn't have asked that question.
It's so good to have you on the show.
And I felt like yesterday when we had a chat beforehand, I was like, I hope we just, I wish we just hit record.
It was such a fun conversation.
I love the work you're doing.
And you're always on, even though if those are watching right now, even the, you know, flavor your future.
I was like, yeah.
I love a bit.
I love it.
Isn't it amazing?
It's so on brand for us.
[02:35]->[03:06]
It's our internal career platform, but our marketing team is just, they're incredible.
And they came up with this headline for us.
And we're all so passionate about it because we've had such a long standing history of so many people that have grown in their
careers at Kava.
And so now we have this incredible campaign that's live and available for the world to see.
It's on our...
Www.cova.com slash careers so everybody can go check it out and anyone listening right now as always that link will be below in the chat
[03:06]->[03:13]
in in the description of whatever platform um that you're on please tell me that you've got some flavor your future merch we have
[03:13]->[03:43]
merch i can get you some merch is it flavor your future like on the merch
It's not on our um so we do sell merch we have a merch site and you can get incredible things like a feta
hat wait so people love oh my you really do have a call like the fact that you got merch says everything and and it's
as soon as we went live with it last year we had some items sell out immediately so we've got this incredible sweatshirt feta
sweatshirt hoodie that's sold out we have a hat that says feta all kinds of fun stuff we'll get you some gear
[03:43]->[03:50]
What makes your, did you say the words crazy feta earlier?
What makes feta crazy?
[03:51]->[04:00]
It's our special proprietary blend of spices with feta.
And it's got a little bit of jalapeno in it to give it a kick, but not too much.
[04:01]->[04:25]
So if you want to be adventurous and try a little spice, but not too much, it's the perfect addition to your bowl.
All right i love by the way i love the fact that it felt like you just read that off a teleprompter by the way
that replied oh i did it i'm joking i'm joking before we jump in anymore i mean you get carried away um tell everyone
a little bit more about your personal background and sort of your journey to where we are now yeah so my my current role
[04:25]->[04:56]
as chief people officer of kava has an interesting beginning i didn't actually start in human resources as my career my first job was
in retail i was an hourly sales associate for
A company called The Limited, it was a fashion brand and I was in heaven when I went to work there.
I was just so excited to work in service of the guest and wait on people in the fitting room and ring people up.
And as I was mentioning before, I even cleaned the bathrooms and did what I needed to do as someone who works in hospitality
[04:56]->[05:30]
and guest service.
And then I always tell our team members here, my street cred for restaurants is that I worked at Red Lobster.
I was a server.
When I was in college.
And so I put on the uniform and went and served the guests in that role as well.
And it really gave me some great insights into just, again, guest service, the importance of hospitality.
And then I went and studied business at the University of Pittsburgh and graduated, went into store management.
And then in the buying office, back in the day when department stores were thriving and alive and well, and I'm now
[05:30]->[06:04]
Federated is really known as Macy's.
So I had a great start, and I think a lot of HR professionals who find their way into HR start in the business
somehow, start in operations or some other part of the business.
So then my career started in HR as a recruiter with American Eagle Outfitters.
So that was my first gig, if you will, in HR, and that was in the late 90s.
And had an incredible experience there.
Great culture, fast growth, opening a lot of stores, and quickly grew into the VP of HR position.
[06:04]->[06:18]
So spent about 20 years, 25 years in retail, HR, and then came to Cava six years ago.
So started here May of 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic.
And everybody thought I was nuts.
They were like, you're going to restaurants?
[06:19]->[06:21]
The things that are going away?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
[06:22]->[06:33]
Right.
Like, are you crazy?
But I knew as soon as I met our founders, when I talked to Brett Schulman, our CEO and co-founder, and Ted's, you know,
Christos, who's one of our co-founders, and he's our chief concept officer.
[06:33]->[06:36]
What a job title, by the way.
I know, right?
[06:37]->[07:03]
So chief concept officer.
So him and his friends started the very first Kava.
That ever existed.
It was Cava Mesa and it was a full service concept.
And so, you know, he's the brains behind all of our delicious food.
So he leads the culinary team.
That's part of his responsibilities as chief concept officer.
But I knew when I met the two of them that there was something special happening here and I wanted to be a part
of that.
[07:04]->[07:09]
Yeah.
And there's also a deeper, stronger why around they started it and why they started the business.
Could you share that?
[07:10]->[07:45]
Yeah, it's actually part of our origin story that I think every HR leader would love to be a part of, like
knowing that your company is part of something that started because the guys, as I call them, these three friends,
these three Greek friends started the very first Kava because
All of their parents are immigrants and they couldn't get jobs except for in a restaurant and they got paid a dollar an hour
if they got paid at all and um ted our founder says all the time the only thing that um the restaurants gave my
[07:45]->[08:15]
mom was bad hips and he always talks about how you know they wanted to give their parents
Careers, a better life than what they were experiencing.
And so that's how the first CAVA was started was because they wanted to do that for their families.
So they opened this first restaurant that was full service and tapas, and they tell this incredible story of how, you know,
they actually had to, in one scenario where they were
Getting ready to open, they didn't pass the fire inspection.
[08:15]->[08:16]
They didn't pass the hood.
[08:17]->[08:53]
And they're like, how much does a hood cost?
A grease hood over where they're gonna be cooking the food.
And the fire inspector said, I don't know.
I just know you need one.
So they found out it costs more than$15,000.
And they're like, we don't have that kind of money.
So they go to the church picnic that weekend and they happen to win the raffle for the Jeep.
There was always like a raffle for a car and they won.
So they drove the Jeep around the block, took it to the dealer, sold it and paid to get the hood put in.
[08:53]->[09:03]
I mean, those are the kind of stories that you hear from them.
There's many like that where they figured out how to bring this concept to life.
In addition to the delicious Mediterranean food we talked about already.
[09:04]->[09:15]
Yeah.
What a great story for you and the team in terms of building your brand, right?
And attracting people.
It's like a real authentic, strong why and purpose statement.
Oh, yeah.
[09:15]->[09:43]
And it's still part of who we are today.
And you'll hear when the guys
Were introduced to Brett Schulman, our current CEO and co-founder.
He's the one who said, hey, why don't we take this delicious food that you've got in this full service restaurant and turn it
into a fast casual concept where you can walk the line and build a bowl or build a pita sandwich and
And have the delicious flavors that have it in this fast casual concept that really appeals to everyone.
And so that's how kava was born, the kava that you see today.
[09:43]->[10:06]
Yeah.
And then it kind of translates also into an experience, like a personalized experience.
Like when I asked you what your favorite, you lit up and was like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, right?
And I'm sure after our call, I said I had a group call with a number of CHROs and they were like, yeah,
we love Kava.
And they all were saying what they have.
And I was like, oh, my God, like, okay, no wonder you got merch.
This makes sense.
[10:07]->[10:37]
We have definite fanatics.
We have people who love and we've got all the data, right?
And the data tells us regardless of demographics, income strata, you name it, everyone loves Kava.
And we have a menu that's accessible to all.
And so I think that's a big part of the appeal in addition to the delicious flavor,
but there's this incredible human experience that comes from our origin story that still lives in our restaurants today.
And our team members are eager to give that Mediterranean hospitality to guests.
[10:37]->[10:45]
So for example, We have something called the love button on our registers and four times a day they can give away a free meal and and we
[10:45]->[10:55]
have so many isn't that amazing yeah and people don't know so it's a delight it's a customer delight moment yeah it's a surprise
[10:55]->[11:31]
and delight complete surprise and delight and and the team member has the authority to say hey this person's brand new i can tell
they haven't tried kava before let me give them a free meal or
We get so many messages through our customer service platform where people say, I was having the worst day.
I had my kids with me and they were being rowdy and a team member will give the free meal and then come around
and help carry the food to the table, refill drinks for that mom or whoever it is.
And so we have team members who have this great desire to offer that Mediterranean hospitality and we give them different ways to do
[11:31]->[11:31]
that.
[11:31]->[11:47]
That's super cool.
That is really, really cool.
Talk us more about like, I love, you know, the flavor of your future,
but how do you translate that into real career growth opportunities for frontline employees?
What does that look like in a practical sense?
[11:47]->[12:18]
Yeah, in a practical sense, we have individuals who can start as a team member, an hourly team member,
and they can work that line and build that bowl or build that pita.
And they can work all the way up to an area leader or regional director over several restaurants.
Ultimately, the goal is to take them from team member to general manager.
So we really focus on if you start with us and you learn how
The restaurant operates, we will take you through training and development so that you can then get to a general manager and get your
own restaurant.
[12:18]->[12:36]
And there's so many perks that come with being a general manager.
So for example, compensation is one.
We have a competitive compensation package, both in salary and bonus, but
We just rolled out annual stock grants to general managers as well.
So not a lot of organizations do that.
They keep stock grants at higher levels.
[12:36]->[12:37]
Especially in your space as well.
[12:37]->[12:52]
That's right.
That's right.
And so it's a real exciting thing to get to be a part of something as a general manager where you have
Stake in the game, right?
Not just your restaurant, but all restaurants that could be part of the garden that you're in or throughout the company.
[12:52]->[13:06]
Yeah.
How do you ensure that you stay engaged and connected with those frontline workers, right?
And that you have that sense of culture and connective glue, if that makes sense.
[13:07]->[13:38]
You have to be really intentional about it.
We have several programs that we bring to life.
I always say you have to operationalize culture.
It can't just be a word that you throw around.
You have to put things in place to bring your culture to life.
And so one of our things that we've put in place and we've rolled out over the last six years is something called our
MVC.
And so instead of an MVP or something like that, we have our mission values and competencies.
And we start at the top with our mission.
Our mission is to bring heart health and humanity to food.
[13:39]->[14:10]
And we always say that you can only do that if you bring heart health and humanity to team members.
Well, how do you do that?
Well, you have to have them understand what are your values.
So we have five values that fall under that mission.
And the very first one, for example,
As generosity first always.
And that generosity, that spirit, that Mediterranean hospitality of generosity shows up in that love button example that I gave you.
It shows up in giving stock grants or mental health benefits, right?
You have to be generous to your team members and to your guests if you're going to say generosity is your first value.
[14:10]->[14:14]
So that's just one example of how a value connects to something very operational.
[14:15]->[14:18]
And then underneath the values, we have seven competencies.
[14:18]->[14:49]
And those are seven behaviors that we created, again, six years ago.
And we said, you know what, these are the most important things that people need to know in order for them to behave and have
success at Cava.
So for example, accountability, service mindset, enterprise leadership, emotional resilience, those are some of the competencies that we have.
And the thing that I think people have a lot of passion around is that a team member all the way up to an executive
Have the same competency, they'll have different behaviors depending on their level.
[14:49]->[15:22]
So we're all unified in the behaviors that we expect from each other and instead of having different competencies depending on the level.
So that's another thing I think that really brings those those competencies to life.
And so that enterprise leadership competency, for example, one of the things we do to bring it to life is we have this partners
and service program.
So under our partners and service umbrella, we have something called shoulder to shoulder.
Every support center team members required every quarter to put on a uniform and go work the line so or go to a restaurant
[15:22]->[15:29]
and prep serve the guests somehow and so executives included once a quarter wow that's a lot i mean that's great i mean but i
[15:29]->[15:38]
love that yeah i just think that you have to stay connected to your frontline workers to understand what's really going on and what
[15:38]->[16:06]
what do they need from you the enterprise you to have the best
Work experience to have that career that we want them to have so we ask them in those shoulder to shoulders what's working what's
not working our ceo loves to ask this question if i could wave a magic wand what could we give you and that's how
some of the things that we've rolled out have come to life so we've rolled out pre-cut onions believe it or not chris we
used to have Are red onions, every single one of them, hand cut every day.
[16:06]->[16:33]
I used to do that in the kitchen.
I worked in a kitchen for the first four years of my career.
My brother was a head chef and I would do like, what, probably about four hours of prep every morning,
including cutting the onions and grating the cheese and basically everything.
The prep is actually 90% of the work, as you probably know, right?
Doing that in the back end, no one sees that, but I'm sure the amount of hours saved not doing that.
That's right.
[16:34]->[17:05]
And the mindset of the team member too, right?
And how much easier it is for them now that the onions come in pre-cut.
And that's just one example of many things that we'll learn in a shoulder to shoulder.
And then on the other side of that, we have under that partners and service umbrella, we have something called center at the source.
So every quarter we have a town hall here in the support center in Washington, D.C.,
and we will invite team members from around the country, entry level team member, grill cook,
team leader or general manager to come to the support center.
[17:05]->[17:22]
We celebrate them in front of everyone at the town hall.
And they will rotate through with the executive team and we will talk to them and say what's working in the restaurants what's not
working so it's just another way to celebrate and connect with that frontline team member to understand what we can be doing to make
their career easier yeah
[17:24]->[17:39]
How do you go about, you mentioned the frameworks and obviously the MVC competency model.
How do you measure whether you're moving the needle and that those leaders are showing up and walking the walk?
What does that look like?
[17:40]->[18:15]
Yeah, that's a great question.
We embedded the competencies into every part of the talent life cycle, I call it.
So I'm drawing this circle for a reason.
So it starts with talent acquisition.
So we have behavioral interview guides with those seven competencies and we have specific questions.
We have everybody asked to make sure, is that person really going to show up the way we want them to?
We have impact plans.
Everyone writes goals at the beginning of the year, including competency goals.
We then at the end of the year evaluate you and we compensate you based on how
Not just the goals that you achieve but also your behavior so they're actually woven into the overall score of of that impact plan
[18:15]->[18:46]
also all the training that we offer we have an academy summit coming up here so the if you become a general manager and you
want to become a training general manager that's called an academy general manager for us and so in june we have our academy summit
coming up and we have an opportunity for them to become the best of the best in our competencies we call it our competency
champion Trainer, and we make sure that they know how to train the trainer on the competency.
So there's many ways that we have woven it into all of our practices.
[18:46]->[19:13]
And then ultimately, our employee engagement survey, we ask people, are you seeing these behaviors at CAVA?
Is CAVA a great place to work?
Yes or no?
What would you like to see happen differently?
And we use something called the Denison model, which suggests that
You know, over 50 is considered a highly engaged culture.
Over 70 is best in class.
We continue to be a best in class employer when it comes to our engagement survey.
So it's pretty incredible.
[19:13]->[19:36]
Yeah, I love the fact that everything you've been saying to your point earlier, you're operationalizing all of this, right?
You mentioned operationalizing culture because it needs to show up in the way in which you work, right?
In the systems, in the tools, in the compensation, in the conversations, in the hiring,
or like you have to be very intentional and this doesn't just happen, right?
[19:38]->[20:09]
I tell my team all the time, connect all the things.
It's really important to connect all the things.
Otherwise, you're just throwing out a training class here, an interview approach here.
If you ground everyone back to those competencies and behaviors and they come to life in all of your programs.
In addition to that, we do a ton of recognition.
So we have the values celebrated.
Every day through something called our values cards.
[20:10]->[20:21]
So I mentioned generosity first always.
We have other values like passion for positivity, collective ambition, and we hand out these values cards.
And I don't know if it's going to come into screen here, but we have these giant values cards.
[20:21]->[20:34]
Oh, there we go.
So constant curiosity is one and it defines the value.
By the way, I love the fact that you defined it because it's one thing you could have that, but giving
the people the language and being specific about it.
I love that.
Yeah, that's right.
[20:34]->[21:06]
So for those who can't see, this one says we're eager to learn, grow and explore beyond the obvious.
And we just love when people ask questions, right?
And then you can write something on the back and give it to the individual.
And then we take pictures.
We have something in the back called communication boards,
and we have our general managers putting the values cards that they hand out to people all over that communication board.
Some of our general managers get really creative and they have photos of all of their team members and their family members.
Plastered all over the back of the restaurant, just celebrating people, you know, for living the values, but also being who they are.
[21:06]->[21:37]
Yeah.
We had something similar back in the day.
I used to run like large, like sales teams.
And we did a thing where everyone's desk kind of represented their culture and their heritage.
And people would be like, walk into our office and be like, well, I've never seen, like, if you went over to, you know,
AJ's desk, you knew who AJ was.
He's got his flag there.
He's got some home trees.
He's got like, it like, it was, and it looks,
and it was so cool because it brought like all different cultures and like people's home lives into it.
And we had, we all had vision boards.
[21:37]->[22:06]
It was like the opposite of like this cold sales floor thing that you think you would see, right?
Like with cubicles and stuff, it was like full of brightness and energy.
And it was like,
Super like I did it as like a silly idea that I had and it never went away every year it kind of and when
a new person started they brought all their own stuff I think honestly that's one of the reasons I stayed in that county for 10
years it wasn't because of the pay it wasn't because of it was because I felt like connected yeah you were part of something
[22:06]->[22:42]
bigger than yourself yeah like and that you had real deep connections and
That is something we subscribe to as well.
There's something we follow for our EVP or employee value proposition called the Gartner Human Deal Framework.
And those two things that you just mentioned are in that.
People want to know that they're part of something bigger.
They want to know that they are recognized as a full human, right?
And the idea with this framework is that you as an employer have to meet the full scope of human needs.
I like to say that before COVID, people used to go to the workplace to have their job get better, right?
[22:42]->[23:06]
But you just talked about an experience where your life was better, right?
Like your day-to-day was better because you had that great experience with human connection.
And people want that from their employers now more than ever, especially after COVID where
You know we were disconnected we were isolating for so long i think people really want to be seen as human and they want
to have these connections and they want their employer to give them that through through different programs yeah i feel like i fully didn't
[23:06]->[23:38]
fully appreciate that until we went into you know lockdown and i've really missed being in the office
Like I struggled a lot like during that period because like it gave me a lot of energy and I could switch modes like
you know like working in everyone kind of remembers the whole working in your spare room or in my case at the end of my
bed I had a little desk set up right because I had no room and we're in a tiny apartment with a newborn baby
you know and I was like I missed that environment of like being around people right and the connectedness
[23:38]->[23:39]
You're not alone.
[23:39]->[24:06]
It's Maslow's hierarchy of needs in psychology.
The number one need after your food and shelter, your basic needs are met, is belonging.
Everyone needs to belong.
That is a requirement of our species surviving and thriving.
And I just think it's something that...
Again, you're not alone.
A lot of people want to connect.
I think people too still want their radical flexibility, right?
[24:07]->[24:09]
Of course, I still want that too.
[24:09]->[24:33]
Yeah, we all do.
And we have the best of both worlds when you can offer something like a hybrid work model like Kava has,
where we ask you to come to the office a few days a week.
You can work from anywhere the other days.
But we also have this belief that we have a seven-day-a-week restaurant operation and we're here to
Act in support of our restaurants so yeah um as you look ahead for the rest of the year like what are you most
[24:33]->[24:42]
excited about i would say just expanding on this flavor your future career path program that we have through a few different ways we
[24:42]->[25:04]
created a new position in our restaurants called our assistant general manager so that our general managers could have like a number two
And relieve some of that stress and pressure of being the only leader, right?
And so it gives us also the ability to develop people into our pipeline of new restaurants.
You know, when you open 70 restaurants a year, you need people to run those restaurants.
[25:04]->[25:10]
Oh, so you can expand because you can have that second layer you didn't have before, which is obviously a constraint,
but also opportunity for everyone else.
That's right.
[25:10]->[25:45]
That's right.
I'm excited to launch more of the specialized development for those leaders.
So We'll be launching this year, something called our FETA program, which is, I know FETA, we love FETA.
You heard the merch, but yeah, it's something that we're, you know, of course, any good training program has got an acronym.
So future excellence through action, but-
We're excited that we're going to be giving more training and development to people in not just our restaurants,
but also in our corporate support centers and at Kava Foods where we make our dips and spreads.
[25:45]->[26:08]
So that's something we're really focused on.
We're launching an emerging leader program as well for those with high potential that
We know what to grow in their careers and that'll be a little bit more specialized.
So super excited to work for a growth company that cares about careers.
It's part of our origin story, right?
And we're really passionate about giving that to the team members that want to grow with us.
[26:09]->[26:14]
When you look back on, you know, even the last few things you just said,
how does that make you feel as a HR leader?
[26:15]->[26:46]
It makes me feel like I'm in the right place, like a place that matches my own values.
I think sometimes HR leaders, depending on where they work, can struggle, depending on how the enterprise and its history has seen HR.
I am completely grateful to work for a CEO and two co-founders who believe that people are
The center of your business and they are the reason for your success.
Some organizations believe HR is a supporter administrative function, right?
[26:47]->[27:12]
So for me, I always say it's like a dream for somebody like me to be able to work at Kava.
I've been able to work in some progressive fashion industry retailers as well that had the same kind of mindset.
And then I worked in places where HR was viewed as an administrative function and it wasn't anywhere near as fun.
So obviously being at a place like Cava is just a complete match for my own values and it's exciting.
[27:13]->[27:49]
Yeah, amazing.
What advice would you give to your emerging HR leaders that are kind of entering the hospitality space?
And in my experience, to your point, HR in the hospitality isn't as advanced.
It does take more of a back office.
Maybe I'm generalizing here, but that's just based on my experience on the conversation I had.
Obviously very different on your end.
What advice would you give to them so they don't get maybe caught in that
I don't say trap, but traditionally hospitality from what I'm seeing in HR isn't as progressed as it should be.
[27:50]->[28:14]
I think it's a matter of understanding the origin story of the company that you're interviewing with or going to.
What do they believe in?
What are their values?
Do they have values established?
Maybe they're even looking for someone in HR to help them create that, to create their own MVC.
That's an exciting thing to be a part of.
I think you have to understand who's in front of you and like, what do you, what are they looking for from you?
No, I love that.
[28:14]->[28:26]
Before I let you go, I feel like I can talk to you forever on this.
What message would you give to your future employees that may be listening to this right now and considering a career at Carver?
[28:27]->[28:59]
Yeah, come flavor your future here.
We're so excited for people to have the opportunity to grow just like I did.
I started as an hourly sales associate and I was a server and had the opportunity to try operations and different career paths before
I decided I fell in love with this people and culture path.
But I think that for those who are listening,
if you want to start as a team member or general manager in our marketing department or, I mean,
we have jobs posted on our career site that you can see the full scope of jobs that we have.
[29:00]->[29:32]
But CAVA is a place where you can have a career and not just a job.
We say that over and over.
You're coming to a place where
Our founders created this brand and this concept for people to have careers so you're coming to a place i always say this to people
when they join kava and i get a chance to go to our kava way which is the name of our onboarding program of course
i say Thank you for trusting us with your career, because that's what people are doing.
When they're coming to your company, they're trusting you, that they're putting their career in your hands.
[29:32]->[29:39]
And you can trust us with that, because we've got the right programs in place to prepare you and get you ready.
And we're super excited for you to think about joining us.
[29:40]->[29:54]
Amazing.
Well, Kelly, you're the best.
The last thing I'd say is I appreciate you taking the time.
Congrats to you and the team on the journey so far, right?
It's not over.
It's just beginning.
And I'm super excited next time I come to the US.
Make sure you call me before you come.
[29:55]->[29:59]
We will have a delicious meal ready to build for you because you got to build it your own.
[29:59]->[30:08]
I know.
You got to decide what flavors you like and we'll be ready to build that bowl for you.
Thanks for joining me on the show.
I appreciate you and I wish you all the best until we next week.
[30:09]->[30:22]
Hey, before we close, I have something for you.
I have a values card I wanted to present to you for constant curiosity.
And I wrote on the back, Chris, thank you for asking questions centered on the human connection and being a beacon for the full
scope of human needs.
[30:22]->[30:23]
I'm going to send this to you.
[30:23]->[30:26]
You can put this in your office.
I appreciate that.
[30:26]->[30:26]
It means a lot.
[30:26]->[30:28]
Celebrate that you're living the Kava values.
[30:29]->[30:33]
I appreciate you.
That means a lot.
Thanks a lot.
I'll catch you soon.
Thanks for coming on.
[30:33]->[30:33]
Talk soon.
Kelly Costanza, Chief People Officer at CAVA, shares how CAVA.