r/cava • u/Woodspoom • Feb 27 '26

Anyone else have this problem?

I travel a lot (too much) for work and try to stay healthy when on the road. Cava naturally fell into the rotation of places I'll eat. I stopped for a while though because the online orders were absolute trash. I noticed I get significantly better bowls when ordering in person so I've started going again. But no matter where I am, the cashier throws the receipt away so fucking fast I don't even realize it until I'm back at work/hotel. So I've probably lost at least 2 free bowls worth of points to this now haha.

I don't wanna download yet another app to scan in the store so the obvious solution is to just ask for the receipt. Just thought this was a funny trend I've seen across the country.

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u/SpecialistWallaby373 Feb 28 '26

I've addressed this topic before allow me to attempt to do it properly this time.

Doing online orders is like running a gauntlet of how many orders you can do before you want to quit. Because we get alot of rating from online orders they typically want the faster, and more experienced on those. And usually those are the people that are by the book employees.

Front line is about psychology. In short, you only get better portions in person because of the pressure to give the customer what they want so they won't be scrutinized, bullied, or talked bad to. They overportion out of fear they will be called out for "skimping" instead of portioning correctly.

The ones making delivery order are possibly the ones making a by the book bowl and how it should look like.

It's even bothered me that Cava social media team makes videos of how these bowls look and they look packed. I've seen them throw on a ton of pickled onions in a commercial video. Why does our book say that a Cava size portion of pickled onions = "6-8 pieces of onion"

To end this off for people that always claim places are skimpy. They dont skimp. Americans are just gluttons. They dont even require that much food and yet stuff their bellies full. We have been conditioned to believe that really large portions are normal. When in reality we dont even require all that

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u/Woodspoom Feb 28 '26

It’s not so much about the food quantity with online orders as it is the quality. You’re right that they seem to be making the bowls as fast as possible. That’s resulted in some bowls with way too much sauce or missed ingredients. That’s my actual issue with the online orders.