Corporate Framing: Frames for CAVA Grill's Restaurants
Cava Grill has brought a whole new way to think about fast-casual dining. Born out of frustration over the lack of high-quality, affordable, fast dining options out there, Cava's founders — Ike Grigoropoulos, Chef Dimitri Moshovitis, and Ted Xenohristos — launched their first full-service restaurant in the summer of 2006, and their fast-causal spin off, Cava Grill, in 2011. Since then they've opened up over 100 locations... and counting.
As friends of Cava the business and fans of Cava the restaurant (spicy lamb meatballs all day every day), we were excited to collaborate. For their early DuPont Circle location in Washington DC, we worked together to design a custom gallery wall for their restaurant. Keep reading for more from Cava's Content Engagement Strategist, Liz McAvoy, on how this partnership has helped their rapidly growing business maintain the personalized feel they strive for in each new location.
First things first, tell us a little bit about Cava Grill.
Cava started out as a full service restaurant location in Rockville, Maryland about ten years ago. The three guys who founded it are all childhood friends that grew up in the area. They are all first generation Greek-American. They bootstrapped together every little piece of that first restaurant. Spent everything they had getting it off the ground. We opened our first Cava Grill location about five years ago. We were hoping to take that same thing, and really bring a modern, efficient, health conscious spin to it.
We're not every other fast casual out there taking advantage of the right time
and the right trends. This came out of the heart and soul of a lot of people."
Can you tell us about the design/vision for the space in Dupont Circle?
Open, bright, and inviting. We wanted to make sure that we could make it as easy as possible for our customers to get in and out. I remember during our opening week we had a customer that said, "Is this Cava Grill? Is this the same one that's in Chinatown?" It was interesting to me to see that even since we've opened that location how many changes and updates we've made to our designs and to make each location feel unique.
"It really all comes back to our roots. That was what we were looking to convey with these visuals."
What did you hope to convey with your Framebridge gallery wall?
It really all comes back to our roots. That was what we were looking to convey with these visuals. We wanted to showcase the authenticity of everything being made in house every single day. We don't freeze anything, and we don't deliver anything already prepared. Our team is hard at work making our fresh juices from scratch all day long, cooking the chicken on the grill - it's all just a really interactive experience. We wanted to bring that to life. It's also about complementing the space. Each of our locations is different, and we're always evolving. It's not a box buildout. We curate each location to fit the neighborhood, to fit the size of the space, to fit the height. We're always thinking about how the design reflects the community that it's going into.
"We saw a local business doing something really great - fitting a need for efficiency and really great, effective design."
What made you want to work with Framebridge for this project?
Our team is all familiar with Framebridge. We saw a local business doing something really great - fitting a need for efficiency and really great, effective design. That was what we were looking for. We're scaling rapidly at this point. We started with five locations two years ago, and now we're at fifteen. We have fifteen more slated for the next year. So, we wanted to start making choices about scaling and efficiency, and we saw that you guys did a really great job paying attention to all those details, and taking all the effort out of it for us. A year ago we were buying all the frames ourselves, framing everything, and coordinating installation of all the different pieces. It was just a like-minded brand in our home base that felt like the right fit.
"We've been figuring out how to scale and we're not looking to sacrifice the details."
What did you enjoy most about the process?
The efficiency and simplicity of it all was really wonderful. Personally I know that being able to frame unusually sized pieces is a huge asset that you guys have. We weren't necessarily going for anything that unusual, but being able to trust you guys to do such an effective job taking all the effort out of it was our favorite part. We've been figuring out how to scale and we're not looking to sacrifice the details, but we have to figure out the best ways to achieve those details if we're going to keep growing at our current pace. We tailor each piece of design we have in our stores to the location. We really appreciated not having to base our decisions on what we could order online - being able to really tailor it to the space.
Framebridge's corporate framing program is more than just frames for restaurants. We work with clients to provide custom framing for their corporate offices, retail locations, hospitality settings, commercial properties, universities, schools or anywhere with walls for frames.
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