CAVA — Restaurant in San Marcos

Came here on April 26 it took 1 Hour past my scheduled pickup time for my order to be ready! Placed an online order for pickup at 6:30 When I arrived at 6:30 there was a pretty busy wait to order in person and a group of folks waiting for their online orders. After about 10-15 min of waiting one employee came by asked everyone’s names and checked the list of online orders confirming that all of our orders were in their queue. Nobody was given an update on potential wait times nobody was updated. When food was unavailable sauces were unavailable so after waiting for an entire hour for the order to be ready, my order was missing more than a handful of items that I had requested and rather than just letting the customer know, hey this was unavailable. Is there something else you would like? They just gave everybody their food without communicating that to them. The online pick up parking spots are for 10 minutes only so the weight should not be an hour, especially if it’s a scheduled pick up and the receipt says promised time. On top of that, the receipt for my order says it wasn’t even printed until 7 PM so a half an hour after I was supposed to pick up my order. I did go online and submit a contact me form through the Cavo website the night of this experience but have yet to hear back so now I’m coming on to leave a Review because I do feel like there should be some sort of customer...

I’ve been trying to eat healthy, and Cava is my go-to for fresh, high-quality meals. The lamb meatballs were soft, the chicken was fresh, and everything looked great without being heavy.

But what happened after I ordered is why I’m writing this. When I went to pay, my card wouldn’t go through. We’ve all been there — sometimes a card gets declined for fraud checks or random reasons — but in my case, every account I had was frozen and there was no way to fix it on a Saturday.

As I stepped aside, embarrassed, an employee with dreadlocks neatly tucked back — I believe his name was Darius — just turned the register around and swiped his own card so I could eat. Then he looked up and said, “Hey man, I’m really sorry that happened to you. I’ve seen you come in here before. Don’t worry about it.”

I work in construction and high-end sales, and I know people who make ten times what this young man does who wouldn’t think of paying for someone’s $20 lunch. Not only did this Cava serve a fresh, delicious meal, but that employee restored my faith in humanity., as I continue to be blown away by this generation who’s had Google & YouTube access their whole lives. (I think they exposure to everything they’ve seen on Instagram has made them better humans)

I hope I got his name right, but I hope he or his manager sees this — because it was one of the best customer service...

My Family LOVES Cava, but we already detest this location in particular. My advice if you're reading this is to take a few minutes to read the reviews over the past few weeks - since they opened this location. They all follow a very similar, very specific pattern. A pattern that in my family's two visits here, has been our experience.

The food continues to be great. The service is among the worst we've experienced in North County. In addition to being unsanitary, the staff is rude, and simply lies when confronted with a negative customer experience. They take no responsibility or ownership of their mistakes and instead blame outside factors.

Waiting for a pickup order for almost an hour seems to be par for the course, and was the experience of other customers, as we all sat there and jointly vented about the negative experience. Yes, this happened in both of our visits.

It's been a over decade since I left a negative review on any platform. The only aspect that keeps this from being 1 star review across the board is the fact that the food was still really good. Such a shame. But as other reviewers said, other eateries in the area are more deserving of...