CAVA — Restaurant in Denver

Arrived here about 40 minutes before close. The restaurant had all the classic signs of employees wanting it to look closed— blinds down, exterior signage turned off, lights dimmed. The look on the cashiers face when our car parked in front of the store couldn’t have been more unwelcoming. Normally would have gone running for the hills but after a few days of nothing but juice I was hangry and had my mind set on CAVA (first timer too, recommended by partner).

Never having had CAVA in the past you’d think the team member would have recognized the doe eyed look in my eyes as I tried to figure out how it worked. Zero help. Only scoop and stare. I was shocked at how small the portions were. They defaulted to a to go bowl without asking (only just found out they have actual bowls from pics on reviews). I had to nudge the other employee for more than 2 cherry tomatoes (as in 1 whole tomato, cut in half) and three chunks of quartered cucumber. A teaspoon literally of each. After asking for extra of anything I was informer it would be “extra”. For the record what they consider “extra” is what chipotle would consider “hardly adequate”. $42 for dinner for 2. Rice was cold and dried out, meatballs were half inedible and the rest actually tasty as they’d been swimming in broth. The extra veggies I asked for prompted the manager (who was serving me) to proclaim “wow now there’s some color on that bowl!!”

All of their drink fountains were shut down. I’m assuming they normally have lemonades or flavored waters/teas. Soda was out of CO2.

As we’re sitting down I can overhear the cashier complaining about having to work. The manager comes out and tells her that they needed 3 more customers to hit their sales goal for the day. The irony.

After reading reviews , it’s obvious this place is lacking management and I’m not sure it ends at the store level. This place needs a new staff with a new attitude and some new management. Any staff that thinks they have the right to decide how much revenue their restaurant makes is a staff that needs to go.

Seeing former team members on here writing about how filthy the place is and complaining about how people shouldn’t be so offended by employees with piss poor attitude is proof that trash is attracted to trash. This place has so much potential but needs a serious overhaul.

I did bring this up to corporate and they actually replied on a Sunday within 12 hours of me emailing these exact concerns. The response I got was pretty friendly and they defaulted to offering a refund. No attempt to really try and get me to come back and to be honest I wasn’t looking for a refund or an invite back but probably will be some time before we give...

Update: It's been 6 months, so thought I'd give it a try again and see if it's improved at all -- flavors are pretty good so if it were run as well as a chipotle it would be a solid choice. Have given up on ordering online here (see below), so walked in to a find a strangely slow line, not many people, but just... slow. As I walk up to order the counter guy yells, "good on chicken!" while looking straight at me, the guy back on the grill says "need chicken??", counter guy repeats "good on chicken!!", grill guy, "so you need more chicken?", counter guy finally turns around and yells, "no, we have enough chicken!!!". M'kay, psyched to order... Order a greek chicken wrap, first guy starts to make it and then hands it off to the next guy on the line without saying a word. Second guy is confused, says what is this?, followed by grumbling back and forth. He's unsure of how to finish it off, grabs a squirt bottle, but the impassive cashier who's watching tells him it's the wrong thing. So he turns around, walks back to a fridge, and grabs another bottle of the exact same thing and starts to use it, and the cashier say, "nope", but doesn't offer to help him or tell him what's wrong. Guy kinds of hems and haws and then just uses the first squirt bottle. Cashier looks at me and says "sorry". Think they used Italian dressing -- whatever. Get home and find that the grill guy must never scrape his grill because the chicken is inedible with chunks of burnt black chicken that must've been burning on the grill for hours. Just hard, gritty, inedible. This has to be the consistently worst run fast causal I've ever seen.

10-1-24 Been here a few times, and... it's not run very well. Most recent time placed an order, then knew from prior experience to show up 5-10 mins after they say. So bike over after ~20 mins, and, of course, it's not ready. Just a simple salad bowl as well, and the place is pretty empty. And yet the the cash register guy couldn't check for another 5 mins, and when he checked it still wasn't ready. Another 10 mins go by, so now we're at over 30 mins for a salad bowl. There was no one in the walk-in line, so they certainly could've made it there as well, but, nope, some mystery person in the back is taking 35 mins to scoop a few items. Finally get it (no one says sorry about the wait), take it home, and it's inedible. There's a super hard, gritty black substance in it, maybe they burned the lentils?? Should've asked for a refund, but not going to bike all the way back, so instead just won't go here again. So, yeah, not a great experience, and going to be a loooooong time before going to a...

Poor Management and unfriendly staff. Cleanliness isn’t a concern here with food covering the service line and floor, bathrooms are gross, the glass on the line is always covered in finger prints and the place is over all just really unorganized, just look behind the line and you’ll see what I mean. Even when they’re slow nobody bothers to clean up. COVID safety precautions aren’t practiced here, the lobby/bathrooms aren’t sanitized hourly including the doors, the card reader, register, tables or any high traffic areas aren’t sanitized. Food safety is a joke here with a lot of cross contamination, improper temperatures for holding food, and they leave the back door to the kitchen propped open for some unknown reason. The “Hot food” is never hot and they don’t seem to care. Not to mention it’s old and dried out from sitting out for hours because they put so much food out at once. The rice and chicken are filled above the top so you can see why it’s cold. When they bring out “fresh” food to the front the old food is brought to the line in the back that’s used for online orders (you can’t see) so if you order Online/delivery just know you’re getting the food that’s been sitting out for a long time and will almost never be fresh. Even with a line specifically used for online ordering, prepare to wait awhile. The food is NEVER out on time due to the lack of anyone having a “sense of urgency” so just plan on adding an extra 10-45 mins from your pickup time. It’s a really great concept but this store is just a disaster filled with people who don’t care and just want a check or are just to ignorant and fail to meet basic standards and they make no effort to change or fix it. You would think after failing multiple food safety audits (which I know for a fact) that they would realize the problems. This place is overall just disgusting, unprofessional and a Hazard. I’ve worked in many restaurants for years and I can’t stress enough that nobody should eat here. It’s shiny and new but past that it’s filled with problems and disrespectful that they are okay with serving food they way they do. It’s only a matter of time before they get shut down if it...