Cava might be turning around the slop-cession.

The Sad Desk Lunch King’s stock is up over 25% and counting on Wednesday, as the company posted a clear fourth-quarter earnings beat and cleared $1 billion in annual revenue for the first time.

It’s a remarkable turnaround for Cava, which fell nearly 50% last year as inflation and tariffs forced consumers to choose cheaper office lunches. That, and the fact that remote work means more people are simply eating at home than pulling up to slop-bowl troughs like Cava, Sweetgreen, and Chipotle.

But Chief Financial Officer Tricia Tolivar said the company was able to “bridge” the k-shaped economy by lowering prices, and that boosted same-store sales, the ever-important metric in the food business.

“[W]e want to be accessible for everyone, and we’re doing our best to ensure that our amazing culinary and incredible hospitality is there for all customers across the country,” she told CNBC.

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The Street’s analysts forecasted a same-store sales decline of 1.1%, but the company blew past that, reporting a 0.5% increase. The bulk of that growth came from lower menu prices, which offset a decline in foot traffic.

For Q4, Cava reported $275 million of revenue, above consensus estimates of $268 million, and 4 cents of earnings per share, above the 3 cents analysts expected. The company went public in June of 2023 at $22 per share, hitting a high of about $150 per share in December of 2024. It’s now trading around $85 per.

Other slop-bowl stocks are running on Wednesday, too. Sweetgreen is up about 7%, as it reports earnings on Thursday after the market closes. It’s still down 17% this year. Chipotle also gained about 1.5% as of this writing.

Expect Cava’s run-up to have legs if same-store sales continue to increase and beat expectations. But slop-bowl purveyors only have so much power to over-ride macro headwinds, as they can only reduce prices so much. If inflation stays persistent, and the AI-related shocks to white collar work that some prognosticators expect come to fruition, then it may be a price war race to the bottom among the bigger, publicly traded fast-casual chains.

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