CAVA — Restaurant in Houston

CAVA: If Chipotle and Whole Foods had a baby that grew up and spent the summer abroad in Greece.

Quick Summary: Over 600,000 combinations of high quality ingredients and good flavors prepared into "bowls" by friendly and helpful staff. Catering to the nutrition-conscious crowd but not pretentious about it.

How to build your CAVA bowl: Enter and be greeted in a friendly manner by staff who ask if it's your first time. They'll explain the process to you as well. Choose to either create your own custom bowl or select one of CAVA's pre-configured bowls. Pick a "Base" of greens, grains or a combination of both. I got the "Greens and Grains" combining the SuperGreens and Saffron Rice which was very good and the dark greens weren't bitter at all. Pick your "Dips and Spreads". Range of thick sauces that give the bowl an extra burst of flavor. You can pick 2 or 3 but I recommend the Crazy Feta and Red Pepper Hummus. Pick a "Protein". Good selection of flavorful standard and vegetarian protein options of which you get 2 small-ish scoops that you can mix and match or just get a double helping of the same option. The "Honey Chicken" and "Braised Lamb" are both delicious. Pick your "Toppings". No limit here, go wild, load 'em up! Many options to choose from that will alter the flavor of your bowl and bulk it up some. Pick your "Dressing". Again, a good selection to alter the flavor and give your bowl some "liquid". I personally like the "Greek Vinaigrette".

I was surprised by the drink options and made a custom blend of the"Strawberry Citrus" with a little bit of "Classic Lemonade". And yes, they have the crunchable "Sonic ice".

Calorie information is printed on EVERYTHING so you can calculate exactly what you're taking in if that's important to you.

Real, metal utensils are nice but the paper straws are a bummer. They do have plastic available if you ask though.

The individually wrapped desserts were okay but I probably wouldn't order them again.

All in all, I'll definitely be returning to try other options and bowl...

So I want to start off by saying that I know and understand working in an assembly line fast casual restaurant is hard, I worked at a MOD so this is similar. There’s a lot of moving parts to getting great service and the most important part is staffing enough workers for busy shifts, like lunch and dinner.

Consistently, I’ve taken out food from this location, seeing only overworked, tired, and (mostly) teenagers or young adults with only at most 3 a shift and this is during weekday dinners, where it is busy. Because of that, the line is a mess, with one employee scrambling to finish the orders, one employee struggling to fill up the stock on the line, and one employee handling the p.o.s. and other tasks all at once. Unlike some of the other reviewers, where the blame is placed on lack of customer service, I don’t necessarily think that’s the real issue. It is a bit dismaying that the service is lack luster, but who could blame them when the problem is clearly the top.

The Management/Owner obviously doesn’t want too many people on shift during weekdays as a way to have a better bottom line. But what this ends up doing is that everyone suffers! The employees suffer cause they’re stretched too thin. Customers suffer cause of the lack of good service and quality of food going down. And then eventually the owner suffers because no one wants to eat at a place that either 1. Doesn’t provide great service for the amount of money you spend or 2. The teenagers that end up working here, spread word that the place sucks to work at and that the food isn’t worth the time. Which clearly, Kingwood relies on teenagers and young adults working these types of jobs since it’s the only type of people I see when I come up here, so it would do everyone a lot of good to treat them with, idk, decency.

Honestly, having enough workers with clearly laid out tasks for each position would improve the quality dramatically. However I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Omg do...

Usually the service here is PHENOMENAL. The managers and some of the staff have been incredible and quite a pleasure to come across.

However, recently I visited this establishment with a fellow colleague and met Javier (staff member that appears to work the grill). Javier was abrasive, rude, confrontational, and unremitting in all aspects of aforementioned behavior. He had used foul language directed towards my colleague and I, calling us “broke a**es that couldn’t afford a meal.” When I originally heard his statement, I was bewildered. I stated that it was quite unprofessional. Javier doubled down and became confrontational and escalated the situation. After I asked to speak to a manager, Javier attempted to breach the private conversation to intervene. Even after the manager had listened to us and chose to spoke with Javier privately, he continued to glare and make unnecessary derogatory comments while we continued to place our order in line.

Upon my second encounter, this behavior persisted but in a new fashion. Javier questioned our career paths, graduate history, etc and made further comments about not being able to afford to eat at CAVA.

Truthfully, to see this behavior at CAVA and have it seemingly addressed but see that it had done nothing to change the underlying issue is sad. The manner in which this staff member chose to speak to patrons - for whatever reasons he may have had - is unacceptable and I hope something can be done.

Furthermore, I don’t usually write reviews but it has come to my attention that this particular staff member (Javier) in this review is close friends with upper management and as such, I was told no action would be taken. Additionally, as the issue and behavior persisted during a second encounter, I felt strongly inclined to leave...