California sandwich and salad chain Mendocino Farms opens its 22nd location on Thursday, October 18. The new location at 238 South Lake Avenue in Pasadena is decorated with historic images of area farms, thanks to a partnership with the Pasadena Museum of History—and the wall art reflects the company’s deep connections with their farmers.
The co-founders of Mendocino Farms, husband-and-wife team Mario Del Pero and Ellen Chen, see their business as more than a sandwich shop, but a way to support small farmers. Del Pero and Chen change the Mendocino Farms menu seasonally, tweaking the offerings based on the needs of the farms they work with.
The fall menu features a new seasonal item, the Pachamama Spanish Bocadillo sandwich. Del Pero explains that it was inspired by one of their farmers, Michael Antoci of Pachamama Farms in Oregon, who reached out to them for help after one of his restaurant-customers cancelled an order for 24 pigs.
“Now to give you an idea, 24 pigs is 3500 pounds of finished meat per week. It is a big figure. We’re talking about someone who only has at any given time, 50 to 70 pigs,” Del Poro says. “[Antoci] goes, ‘I’m in deep financial trouble. I’m freaking out.’ Ellen and I were like, ‘Let’s brainstorm.’ We already had a sandwich for this season done, and we decided to pivot, put all our resources on it, and figure it out. We had to use most of the animal, so it had to be ground pork.”
They considered riffing on an Asian-style ground pork dish with Taiwanese influences, but didn’t think they would sell enough of it. Then they thought, “What about chorizo? We could do a Spanish chorizo—sort of Serrano ham-like, but prosciutto.”
Another farmer they work with, Dan Drake, of Drake Family Farms—whom they refer to as “Dr. Dan,” because he’s also a vet—had called a few months earlier. He had too much goat cheese, so they decided to use some of that, too. The resulting sandwich includes Pachamama Farm’s chorizo, Creminielli prosciutto, Drake Family Farm’s goat cheese and manchego spread, pickled tomato relish, Scarborough Farm’s arugula and smoked paprika vinaigrette on a toasted sesame roll.
Mendocino Farms also finds mutually-beneficial ways to work with other emerging restaurants. “Right now, we’re looking at buying grassfed cows, and we’re looking at getting two or three other emerging brands that are thinking the same way as us to buy the cows together, so we can go directly to the ranchers and tell them, ‘We’re going to buy most of your cows,’” Del Pero says. If the rancher is interested, they tell them how they want the cows to be raised. Instead of viewing the other restaurants as competitors, Del Pero says, “I’m locking arms with them. It’s the solidarity of saying, ‘Can we extend better practices and then provide that to our guests at a cost that’s affordable?’ It’s a win for the rancher, it’s a win for the guest and it’s a win for us. The only one losing is some broadline distributors.”
Chen adds, “It’s interesting because it almost makes [the broadline distributors] start to shift their mentality. I think it’s elevating how everyone thinks about food, because it’s supply and demand. If no one’s going to them, then they have to reshift their values and their paradigms of how they source and how they treat the vendors that they work with.”
Del Pero and Chen named the company Mendocino Farms because they wanted to tap into the ethos of Mendocino County and its hippie ethic of supporting each other. From the beginning they knew they didn’t want the company name to have an apostrophe s on the end. Instead of making it possessive, they made it inclusive.
Connecting with their guests is just as important to them as connecting with farmers. Del Pero says they tell people, “Hey, you love this Drake Farms sandwich? Let me share with you where you can buy that goat cheese—and here’s the recipe for how to make that sandwich at home,” where other brands might consider that giving away their competitive advantage.
“This really falls under what [Whole Foods co-founder] John Mackey popularized. We are a conscious capitalist company. We make money. We’re not shy that we’re very profitable. But we’re doing it with values,” Del Pero says. “One of the things we talk about all the time is that we didn’t help save Drake farms. We didn’t help Pachamama Farms in a jam. Our guests did. At the end of the day, we only put in the first order. If our guests don’t actually buy it and support it, and understand the price point to support it, then we don’t get to do the reorder.”
They encourage their customers to support farmers by buying their food at Mendocino Farms, but as Del Pero points out, “At some point, you’re not going to order the same Drake Farms salad just because it’s for a good cause—it better be delicious.”
