Brett Schulman started his professional career as an investment banker, and though he loved the principles of finance, he found his job unfulfilling. He left that behind for ventures in the food space, and eventually got a call from a college friend, who needed advice for his cousin who was struggling with a Mediterranean restaurant and snack business.That business grew into Cava, the fast-casual chain that has seen its reach and profits grow—even as upscale fast-casual restaurants in general have seen a slowdown. In its most recent earnings report earlier this month, Cava reported 31.3% year-over-year revenue growth, with same-restaurant sales increasing 9%—and traffic at each restaurant growing 5.3%. In the last quarter, Cava opened 17 new restaurants, and has more underway. I talked to Schulman, CEO and co-founder of Cava, about the inner workings of the business that are helping it grow. Of course a restaurant needs to have good food, but Schulman said Cava’s career and ownership culture—and emphasis on loyalty—also drive growth. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.Until next time.This is the published version of Forbes’ CEO newsletter, which offers the latest news for today's and tomorrow's business leaders and decision makers. Click here to get it delivered to your inbox every week.Economic IndicatorsAn electronic display on a bus stop in Washington, D.C. shows the national debt last Wednesday.Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty ImagesIn the last week, the economy has seen highs and lows—but these highs aren’t the type that anyone really wanted to see. Last week, the national debt hit the new milestone of $40 trillion—and there currently are no major plans underway to reduce it. The debt has more than doubled in the last decade as domestic spending has outstripped revenues, CBS News reports. The milestone caused drops on Wall Street, and big changes in the bond market as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pledged to double the planned buyback of long-term Treasury securities as a way to head off borrowing costs. What this is likely to mean, according to the Washington Post, is there may be either tax increases or spending cuts coming from Washington in the near future. In the meantime, gold, silver and cryptocurrency prices have been rallying.But—as has been the case since President Donald Trump’s second term began—tariffs are also at the center of economic upheaval. After negotiations between the U.S. and Canada went awry over the weekend, new 50% tariffs on several Canadian products took effect on Saturday. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. will take effect next month. And while the new tariffs only apply to about 5% of the $380 billion worth of Canadian products the U.S. imports and likely will not have a large impact on U.S. consumers, they are likely to have long-lasting effects on the relationship between the two nations.Meanwhile, many companies are seeing refunds from tariffs that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled were unlawfully imposed by the Trump administration. Forbes’ Allison Durkee analyzed several big retailers’ earnings reports and found while many received hundreds of millions in refunds, only a couple committed to using those funds to lower consumer prices. Walmart CFO John David Rainey told CNBC it plans to use its refunds that way—something that might help spur growth after the world’s largest retailer posted its slowest U.S. sales growth since 2020 last week.Notable News“Small business” may be getting bigger soon. Forbes’ John Schroyer writes the U.S. Small Business Administration plans to broaden its definition of “small business” soon, allowing 110,000 more businesses to take advantage of its programs. SBA published a notice detailing the pending changes in the Federal Register last week. Some industries would see the employee headcounts increase—like semiconductor manufacturers with fewer than 2,800 employees would qualify, more than twice the prior limit of 1,250 employees. And those in the “animal production” industry could be defined as small businesses if they have annual receipts of up to $71 million—a more than sixfold increase over the previous limit of $11 million.This could be good news for some businesses, but Schroyer points out it only affects 0.3% of the current small businesses in the U.S. It also isn’t necessarily a done deal. The proposal needs to undergo a public comment period and formally become adopted, though SBA indicated to Schroyer the rule change will take effect by the end of the year.Tomorrow’s TrendsHow Cava Serves Up Career Paths And Customer LoyaltyCava co-founder and CEO Brett Schulman.Cava, Smith Collection/Gado/Getty ImagesIt’s tough in the restaurant industry nowadays, but quick-service chain Cava is bucking the trends. And while Cava’s better-for-you Mediterranean offerings are the kind of food consumers are looking for today, strategic internal cultural and management decisions are also driving its success. I talked to co-founder and CEO Brett Schulman about some of those aspects. This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity.You’ve said Cava was built to give employees not just a place to work, but to build a career. How do you architect that for the quick service restaurant industry?Schulman: One of the biggest advantages we have to create those pathways is our strength of our business, creating significant restaurant unit growth. We’ve given guidance for 74 to 76 net new restaurants in 2026. That’s 74 to 76 new business leaders and general managers we need. Having employees promoted internally is going to be the most successful way to open those restaurants. So they’ve got line of sight, we’ve got opportunity.How do we develop the team members to fill those opportunities successfully? That’s where we’re constantly reinvesting as we grow. Last fall, we launched our new ‘Flavor Your Future’ people development initiative. This is a very intentional structured developmental program that has our restaurant leaders accountable for developing their team members. Once workers get into the program, clear training programs and developmental tools equip them with the capabilities to ultimately be able to fill those roles. We also added a new assistant general manager position, which is an upgrade from this general manager and training position we had previously, to have more role-ready qualified leaders. And we've gone through a whole interview process of existing team members to get them placed into AGM positions.So no one silver bullet, but a lot of intentional activities and initiatives to create that platform of people to be able to move into, develop, move through, and then into a leadership position. One of the other aspects of this Flavor Your Future initiative we’re looking at is our GM compensation model. Our current model, our GMs can earn upwards of $140,000 with total compensation, which is great, but how do we even incentivize them further to be business leaders? Our general managers are running multimillion-dollar restaurants. How do we have more of a managing-partner model and participating in the upside value they’re driving in the business? We’re constantly revisiting to recalibrate to have them feel like they’ve truly got that ownership skin in the game, and that owner-operator mentality, because we think ultimately that drives exceptional guest experiences and traffic, and can pay for itself over the long run. A significant amount of your revenue comes from customers in your loyalty program. Tell me how you developed it and how it continues to grow.Back in 2013, we launched our original white-label program on a third-party backend. In 2017, we brought that in-house and built our own app platform, leveraging a third-party loyalty engine. And then we evolved and relaunched our program about a year and a half ago to move from a more transactional loyalty program—spend X, get Y—to a more value-added, earn-and-bank-points model. It was really an effort to build out our first-party audience because people, their lines of communication, their attention, where they’re spending their time is fragmenting more and more. Search engines are becoming answer engines and disintermediating connectivity of brands, and their end-user and third-party-data efficacy is declining with different privacy laws. How we continue to build out our first-party audience, where we can have personalized one-to-one lines of communication with each and every guest; understand how they interact with us, what they like; understand their behavior to create a better, more robust, more value-added experience for them as a guest—which in turn creates more value for the business. We’re very pleased with what we’ve seen. The initial phase, we shifted to an earning-bank-points model. This past fall, we launched new status levels, further recognizing our most frequent guests on Sea, Sand and Sun Tiers. Then we launched an exclusive secret Oasis tier for our heaviest users.It’s just another way to build emotional connection with our guests, reward them in unique Cava ways to really build brand affinity, and create better value in each and every one of their experiences.What advice would you give a CEO who has big challenges ahead of them?If it was that easy, everybody would be doing it. I’ve always lived by that. Don’t be the victim of your circumstances. Be the victor of your situation. Life is not fair. I’ve been dealt bad hands along my journey, and you can sit there and wait around for somebody to [right a wrong]—which they’re not. Or you can say, ‘I’m not going to let this stop me. I’m going to control what I can control.’ Often, it’s my attitude, my effort and figuring a way through—because there’s always a way through the barrier in front of you. Maintaining positive bias and having emotional resilience and perseverance has always been critical to the role—but certainly in the very fluid world we’re living in today.Strategies + AdviceAI has arrived for many corporate employees, but more than half of the U.S. workforce is made up of frontline workers who tend to get less professional exposure to the platforms. A new report from Dayforce examines some of the problems with the current approach, and gives suggestions to integrate AI into the work of all employees.While good decision making requires research, careful thought and deliberation, impactful leaders also listen to their hearts. Here’s why you should stay in tune with “heartbeat moments”: unexpected moments that make you think about something different.QuizGoogle plans to spend $10 million to acquire data to train AI from which bankrupt company?A. Party CityB. Spirit AirlinesC. Joann FabricsD. 23andMeSee if you got the answer right here.