Director of Catering Strategy:
The Director of Catering Strategy is a critical leader responsible for building and scaling CAVA's national catering business. This role operates as the primary owner of the catering operating model, translating strategic priorities into executable systems, processes, and results across the business.
Partnering closely with the VP of Off-Premise & Catering, this leader will define and operationalize the end-to-end catering model-from demand generation and ordering through production, fulfillment, and guest experience-ensuring the business is both highly compelling for guests and executable within restaurant constraints.
This is a builder role, not a maintenance role. Success requires balancing growth with operational realities, making clear tradeoffs, and creating a model that can scale nationally with consistency and strong unit economics.
What You'll Do:
Build & Scale the Catering Operating Model
- Define and operationalize the end-to-end catering model, including demand generation, ordering, capacity management, production, and fulfillment.
- Establish and manage a catering scorecard (revenue, margin, reliability, capacity utilization, labor efficiency).
- Own day-to-day decision-making across the catering business, driving clear priorities and tradeoffs.
- Identify and execute the highest-impact opportunities to grow and improve the business.
Own Economics, Pricing & Profitability
- Own the unit economics and financial model for catering, including pricing frameworks, cost structure, and margin optimization.
- Partner with Finance to ensure clear ROI, disciplined investment decisions, and sustainable profitability.
- Balance growth ambitions with operational and financial constraints.
Design Product, Packaging & Experience (Built for Scale)
- Own catering menus, packaging, and formats across occasions and use cases.
- Ensure all offerings are operationally efficient, scalable, and optimized for speed, accuracy, and throughput.
- Translate brand standards into clear, executable workflows within restaurant environments.
- Deliver a consistent, high-quality guest experience that reflects the CAVA brand.
Align Demand with Capacity (Sales + Ops Integration)
- Partner with Sales and Marketing to build a repeatable demand generation engine aligned to restaurant capacity.
- Ensure demand is intentionally shaped and managed, not just driven, to protect the core business.
- Define and evolve catering use cases, formats, and occasions to unlock growth.
Lead Cross-Functional Execution & Systems Development
- Serve as the business owner across Operations, Technology, Delivery, Sales, and Marketing-driving alignment on priorities, sequencing, and tradeoffs.
- Partner with Technology to define and prioritize the catering product and capacity management roadmap.
- Work closely with Operations to ensure solutions are deployable at scale without degrading the in-restaurant experience.
- Build scalable systems, tools, and processes that enable national expansion.
What Success Looks Like (Year 1):
- Establish a clear, scalable catering operating model validated in test markets
- Deliver measurable improvement in:
- Reliability and execution consistency
- Capacity utilization and throughput
- Labor efficiency
- Margin and profitability
- Stand up a repeatable demand generation and sales motion aligned to capacity
- Define a national catering playbook enabling confident 2027 expansion
Qualifications:
- 8+ years of experience in catering, restaurant operations, or multi-unit food service strategy
- Experience building or scaling a business, program, or operating model from early stages
- Strong business and financial acumen, with experience owning pricing, unit economics, and P&L drivers
- Deep understanding of restaurant operations, labor models, and throughput constraints
- Proven ability to translate strategy into execution across complex, cross-functional environments
- Demonstrated success influencing and leading without direct authority
- Strong systems thinker with the ability to design end-to-end workflows, not just individual components
- Comfortable operating in ambiguity and building from incomplete information
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience
Physical Requirements:
- Ability to maintain stationary position to be able to operate a computer and other office equipment
- Must be able to identify, analyze and assess details
- For certain positions, must be able to occasionally move or transport items up to 50 pounds
- Ability to communicate with others and exchange information accurately and effectively
- Constantly positions self and move about to support ordinary restaurant or food production support or office operations, as applicable
- Ability to work in a constant state of alertness and in a safe manner
What we offer:
- Competitive salary, plus bonus and long-term incentives*
- Early Wage Access!
- Unlimited PTO, paid parental leave, plus paid opportunities to give back to the community
- Health, Dental, Vision, Telemedicine, Pet Insurance plus more!
- 401k enrollment with CAVA contribution
- Company-paid STD, LTD, Life and AD&D coverage for salaried positions*
- Free CAVA food
- Casual work environment
- The opportunity to be on the ground floor of a rapidly growing brand
- All exempt and non-exempt employees are eligible for benefits. Benefits are effective the 1st of the month following 30 days of service and you have until the day before the effective date to enroll. A new hire can enroll in our benefit program by selecting a link that is emailed directly to the new hire at their personal email address once hired.
- Please note that visa sponsorship is not available.
- The posting range is an all-cash range.
*Indicates qualifying eligible positions only
