John Cassimus wants a redo.
Cassimus is the son of Zoe and Marcus Cassimus, who founded the Zoes Kitchen concept in Birmingham, Ala., in 1995. He is also the guy who took his parents’ concept—which was a hit at the time—and grew it over seven years to reach 19 units in five states before it was acquired (the first time) by a private-equity firm, which later took the chain public.
In 2018, the then-260-unit Zoes Kitchen was acquired again and taken private by Washington, D.C.-based Cava Group, which set out to convert Zoes locations to the Greek-inspired Cava brand. About two dozen Zoes Kitchens remain, and most are scheduled for conversion before the end of the year.
But not one unit in Birmingham.
John Cassimus is licensing the one location in the Birmingham neighborhood of Mountain Brook. With Cava’s blessing, he is reworking the restaurant back to what it was when his mother was first in the kitchen.
And, in fact, his mother will be in the kitchen again. She’s 84 now, though her son says she looks like she’s 64. She and husband Marcus still have plenty of gas in the tank to recreate what they once started, John said.
To explain what the concept was—and soon will be again—requires telling the whole story behind Zoes and what went wrong along the way, at least from John’s point of view.
When they first opened Zoes, the Cassimuses were in their mid 50s and had been through some rough times.
“My parents went broke in 1994 and filed bankruptcy, so they were starting their life over again,” John said.
With Greek immigrant roots, family members had operated restaurants before, so they decided to try their hand at launching a small restaurant offering mostly Southern fare: chicken salad, pimiento cheese and grilled chicken.
Zoe Cassimus in the original location of Zoes Kitchen in 1995./Photo courtesy of John Cassimus.
And the concept was a hit. When John began growing his parents’ concept in the early 2000s, he said, “We were probably the most successful, highest margin restaurant chain in America at the time.”
It wasn’t particularly Mediterranean, though some techniques or ingredients were perceived to be, John said. The grilled chicken had a Greek-inspired marinade and could be enjoyed on a salad with feta, for example, or stuffed in a pita as a sandwich.
“We didn’t even promote it [as Mediterranean],” he said. “We didn’t have tabouli or tzatziki or anything like that. We were nothing close to what it became.”
At the time, John said he needed money to grow. So in 2007, he sold a majority stake in the chain to private-equity firm Brentwood Associates.
After that deal, the menu shifted to what John described as “full-blown Mediterranean,” which he saw as chasing a fad. John said he stayed for about a year after the acquisition, but soon realized the new owners planned to take the chain in a different direction, so he exited.
By 2014, Zoes Kitchen had grown to 111 units and the chain went public with an IPO. Zoes Kitchen then grew even more aggressively, more than doubling over four years to 256 units.
But by 2017, same-store sales were turning south. The next year, following the $300 million deal with Cava that also involved former Panera Bread CEO Ron Shaich, the outlook for Zoes Kitchen as a brand was grim.
John said Cava’s CEO Brett Schulman reached out to him when they acquired Zoes. The Cassimus family hosted the Cava team at a dinner in Birmingham, and John said he shared his views on what the brand needed.
The Cassimus family that founded Zoes Kitchen hosted a dinner for the Cava team. /Photo courtesy of John Cassimus.
But it wasn’t long before Schulman called again to let him know they had decided to shelve the Zoes Kitchen brand altogether.
Cava has converted more than 125 former Zoes locations, and the remaining 24 or so are scheduled for conversion before the end of this year. There is one other licensed location of Zoes Kitchen in Louisville, Ky., that was in operation when Cava bought the chain and will remain open, Schulman said.
For Cava, the move was an efficient way to accelerate growth in markets the Mediterranean brand was keen to enter, and “rapidly densify,” said Schulman in a recent episode of the podcast A Deeper Dive.
“It allowed us a known quantity of high-quality real estate with existing leases with significant remaining terms and very affordable lease rates—those leases were signed years ago,” said Schulman.
Converting a former Zoes restaurant costs about half that of building a new unit and could be done much quicker, he added. And because Zoes was considered a Mediterranean brand, Cava didn’t have to change the use clause on those leases.
“That just made it a more frictionless transition,” Schulman said. In Houston, for example, Cava started 2022 with no units and ended the year with 15 high-quality sites from Zoes conversions.
John said he holds no grudge, and, in fact, is a fan of the Cava brand. In John’s mind, the fatal blows had come long before Cava bought the company.
“The menu was changed from a simplistic menu that performed unbelievably well,” he said. “It became something it was never intended to be.”
But John just couldn’t give up the idea that what had worked in the beginning could work again, and he convinced Schulman to let him try.
So, in mid-February, Zoes Kitchen will be reborn with its original menu. It’s not the original location, but a unit in a neighborhood where John feels it will work. The restaurant is being restored to the look and branding that he developed when John began growing the chain in 2003.
The Zoes Kitchen locations of that era had a simple made-from-scratch menu that brought guests in for repeat visits several times during the week, he said.
Dishes were easy to prepare, allowing a small team to do tremendous volume in a small space. And, as a result, the unit economics were extraordinary, with average unit EBITDA of 31%, he said.
Of course, when John began growing the concept in the early 2000s, there wasn’t that much competition in the fast-casual space, and now the segment is much larger.
And the world has changed.
In the early days, John said he built his own restaurant technology—such as it was at the time. But now there are loads of tech tools available. Consumers have embraced off-premise dining and digital ordering.
How that will play out at the new-and-improved-but-back-to-the-future Zoes Kitchen remains to be seen.
John said his mom has bought a bunch of new blue jeans to get ready to come back to work. They’ve even been able to rehire some of the kitchen staff from the early years.
And already, guests on social media (which didn’t exist when Zoes Kitchen first opened) are enthused they’ll soon be able to order the dishes they remember.
“We know there will be insane amounts of traffic at first,” said John. “It’ll be like the movie ‘Groundhog Day.’ We’re going to wake up in a few weeks and reopen this restaurant, and I’m assuming it’s going to feel just like 2003.”