CAVA Group, Inc.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the CRAVA Q4 and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Tuesday, February 24, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Matt Milanovic, SVP Finance. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and welcome to CASA's fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial results conference call. Before we begin, if you do not already have a copy, The earnings released and related 8K furnished to the SEC are available on our website at investor.cava.com. The purpose of this conference call is to give investors further details regarding the company's financial results as well as a general update on the company's progress. You will find reconciliations of any non-GAAP financial measure discussed on today's call to the most directly comparable financial measure calculated in accordance with GAAP to the extent available without unreasonable efforts in today's earnings release and supplemental deck, each of which is posted on the company's website. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that this call will contain forward-looking statements. For this purpose, any statements made during this call that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Investors should be aware that any forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed here today. These risk factors are explained in detail in CABA's most recent annual report on Form 10-K that may be updated by its reports on Form 10-Q and other filings with the SEC. Please refer to these filings for a more detailed discussion of forward-looking statements and the risks and uncertainties of such statements. All forward-looking statements are made as of today and, except as required by law, CABA undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information future developments or otherwise. And now, I'll turn the call over to the company's co-founder and CEO, Brett Shulman.

Thanks, Matt, and welcome to the call, everyone. 2025 was a milestone year for Kava, made possible by more than 13,000 team members who deliver on our mission of bringing heart, health, and humanity to food every day. Before diving into the quarter and fiscal year, I want to thank our teams for their commitment to our guests and to one another. Their dedication is what continues to fuel our growth and made this another successful year at Cava. In 2025, we continued to build with intention, strengthening our position as the clear leader of the Mediterranean category, guided by an unwavering, long-term strategic focus. It was a record-setting year marked by our first full fiscal year, surpassing $1 billion in revenue and our strongest new restaurant opening class to date. The year also marked a transition point, shifting from a newly public company to a large-scale sustainable growth enterprise as the model we've been building began to grow more broadly with strong new restaurant performance translating into meaningful market share gains. We believe our momentum reflects more than just expansion. It signals that our value proposition is resonating with today's increasingly discerning consumer. As guests become more intentional with their spend, They are choosing brands like Kava that deliver real differentiation through bold flavors, helpful food, and hospitality that creates meaningful human connection. Our fourth quarter highlights include a 21.2% increase in Kava revenue and a 55.5% increase over the last two years. Same restaurant sales of 0.5%. Restaurant level profit margin of 21.4%. 24 net new restaurants. adjusted EBITDA of $25.8 million, and net income of $4.9 million. And full-year highlights include a 22.5% increase in CAVA revenue and a 63.1% increase over the last two years, same restaurant sales of 4%, 72 net new restaurants, ending the year with 439 restaurants, a 19.6% increase year-over-year, adjusted EBITDA of $152.8 billion, a 21% increase over the full year of 2024, net income of $63.7 million, and $26.1 million in free cash flow. Just last month, we celebrated our 15-year anniversary, and when my co-founders and I started this business, our ambitions were simple, to make Mediterranean cuisine accessible to communities across the country, deliver it with genuine hospitality, and create a platform where our team members could build a career, not just have employment. That simple but powerful idea continues to shape our culture and how we serve our guests and support our teams every day. As we enter this next chapter of growth, I'm excited to welcome Doug Thompson as our new Chief Operations Officer, whose operational leadership will help us scale thoughtfully and sustainably. With our growth comes an even greater focus on the choices we make for our guests. Today's industry environment is dominated by price discounting, a reflection of many brands who aggressively raised prices in recent years. We believe it's more important than ever to deliver real value every day and exceptional experiences. In recent years, we've taken less than half the price increases of industry peers while underpricing CPI by over 10%. It's these intentional decisions made consistently over time that reinforce trust with our guests and strengthen the long-term foundation of our brand. And that foundation comes to life through our four strategic pillars, starting with our first pillar, expand our Mediterranean weighing communities across the country. During the fourth quarter, we opened 24 net new restaurants, ending the year with 439 locations across 28 states and the District of Columbia. 2025 was a strong year for expansion, and we're excited to continue that momentum in 2026 with upcoming new market entries across the Midwest. including Cincinnati, St. Louis, Columbus, and Minneapolis. All new restaurants will open with the full project soul design as we remain on track toward our next milestone of at least 1000 restaurants by 2032. As we bring our Mediterranean way to more communities, our food remains at the heart of how our guests experience our brand. With the new year just beginning and many guests leaning into healthier choices, We're meeting that moment with menu innovation rooted in both flavor and purpose. Our most recent culinary launch, our largest update yet, brings back the fan favorite and deliciously creamy roasted white sweet potato and introduces new offerings such as sumac slaw, power greens, tangerine Aleppo juice, and sumac sour cream and onion pita chips. By leaning into spices like coriander, paprika, sumac, and Aleppo-style pepper, we're delivering bold, satisfying, high-quality food that feels both authentic and deeply craveable. That same focus on health and balance carries directly into our next major culinary moment. I'm excited to share that towards the end of the first quarter, we'll be launching pomegranate glazed salmon, our first-ever seafood offering and a natural extension of our menu. Salmon fits seamlessly into the Mediterranean diet and naturally expands the variety of choices we can offer our guests. inviting even more people to our COVID table. Our roasted flaky filet is marinated in a subtly sweet blend of pomegranate, harissa, red wine vinegar, and bold spices. As we prepare for this upcoming launch, we've taken a thoughtful and disciplined approach to testing to ensure a great guest and team member experience. We're excited to bring this to life in the coming months and can't wait for our guests to experience it. Shifting to our second pillar, deepened personal relationships with guests, even as we scale. This past fall, we rolled out tiered status levels as the next phase of our loyalty program. Through this evolution, we've been able to deliver differentiated benefits, surprise and delight moments, and recognition through our sea, sand, and sun tiers. While still early, the introduction of these tiers has already strengthened engagement and created new, personalized ways for guests to connect with our brand. Building on that foundation, we recently introduced OASIS, our invite-only tier designed to recognize our most loyal guests and strengthen long-term relationships. OASIS gives our most engaged members access to enhanced earning opportunities, additional perks, exclusive merchandise, and special events throughout the year. This tier is another example of how we will utilize our new loyalty architecture to lean in to more tailored and personalized guest experiences over time. As we deepen our relationships with our guests, delivering on that promise requires a clear focus on our third pillar, running great restaurants every location, every shift. Our team members remain at the core of our business, and enabling them with the right tools and technology is essential to delivering great guest experiences every day. A strong operational foundation allows us to consistently elevate hospitality, improve order accuracy, and enhance speed and service across our restaurants. Over the past year, we've continued to invest in technology that simplifies execution and makes our restaurants easier to run, including the rollout of our kitchen display screen system. In 2025, we completed all scheduled retrofits and opened every new restaurant with the new system, ending the year with our KDS live in 370 locations with the remaining 69 retrofits to be completed this year. This is a meaningful cross-functional effort driven by a shared focus on supporting operators and improving the day-to-day restaurant experience. In that same spirit, we've completed the rollout of Turbo Chef ovens across our entire restaurant base, giving team members the equipment they need to execute consistently as our menu continues to evolve. These ovens have already played an important role in delivering the quality and consistency guests expect, including our recent white sweet potato one. and they will be a key enabler of our upcoming salmon launch. By simplifying execution and delivering faster, more consistent cook quality, these ovens help ensure our culinary innovation shows up in restaurants with the same integrity and care we design it with. As we continue to focus on running great restaurants every location, every shift, leadership in our restaurants matters more than ever. As I noted earlier, Doug Thompson will be joining CAVA as our Chief Operations Officer this March. Doug brings deep experience developing and mentoring restaurant leaders, building durable talent pipelines, and creating environments where people can grow careers, not just hold roles. His leadership philosophy is closely aligned with our belief that great restaurants are built by great people, and we couldn't be more excited for him to partner with our teams as we enter our next phase of growth. Doug's arrival builds upon the foundation that we started last October when we launched our Flavor Your Future initiative, a holistic team member development program designed to attract, develop, and retain HAVA's next generation of leaders. One of our first actions under this program was the introduction of the assistant general manager role created to build a deeper bench of role ready leaders as we continue to scale. Today, we are on schedule with 60% of AGM roles filled and a majority of them coming from internal promotions. While still early, we're seeing encouraging signs that this approach is having a positive impact. Restaurants with AGM coverage are outperforming those without, as AGMs provide additional leadership support during peak dinner and weekend shifts, helping to strengthen execution across every shift, develop future team members, and create more sustainable restaurant teams. In addition to the AGM role, given our dynamic new restaurant growth, We are making deliberate changes to our field leadership model to support operator development and elevate standards as we scale. First, we introduced two zone leaders who will be reporting directly to Doug, splitting the country to increase focus, accountability, and leadership proximity to restaurants. Second, we narrowed spans of control for our regional leaders, enabling deeper restaurant engagement and more consistent coaching in the field. And finally, we added a new market leader role to create a clear span breaker between regional and area leaders, strengthening day-to-day support and execution at the local level. Together, these changes increase in restaurant leadership presence, reinforce hospitality, and build the leadership pipeline needed to support long-term sustainable growth. As we look ahead, we'll continue to scale with purpose staying grounded in our mission while building a business designed to endure for the long term. The strength of what we've put in place gives us confidence in the path forward, and none of this would be possible without the dedication and trust of our team members across the field and support centers. Thank you to our teams and to all of you who continue to believe in our mission and the growth we're creating together. And with that, I'll turn it over to Tricia to walk you through the financials.