The fast-casual bowl boom is over. Wall Street isn't sold on Cava, Chipotle deals to lure back spenders

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At 12:30 p.m. in midtown Manhattan on mid-week office days, long lines still form outside Chipotle

, Cava

, and Sweetgreen

. Fast-casual bowls remain the defining lunch of the hybrid-work era, something quick to carry, simple to eat at a desk, and familiar enough to order without thinking. But this visible popularity now sits beside a more difficult financial reality inside the chain restaurant companies that boomed with the bowl.