Mendocino Farms does not look like a chain. The sandwiches have names like the Not So Fried Chicken, the menu changes with the seasons, and the rooms are calm and a little upscale. Signs talk about farm partners and seasonal produce. So people ask a fair question: is this a neighborhood restaurant, or a well-dressed chain?
Is Mendocino Farms a chain? Yes, 100 locations and counting
Mendocino Farms is a chain. It opened its 100th restaurant on June 30, 2026, on State Street in Santa Barbara, and it operates in six states. TPG Growth, part of the global private equity firm TPG, has held the controlling stake since November 2017.
A hundred company-run restaurants with an institutional owner is well past any honest definition of local. The profits go to a fund, not to the people behind the counter.
| Question | Mendocino Farms |
|---|---|
| Is it a chain? | Yes |
| Who owns it? | TPG Growth (majority since 2017); the founders and Whole Foods Market kept minority stakes in that deal |
| Publicly traded? | No. Its parent, TPG Inc., trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker TPG |
| Franchised? | No, every location is company-operated |
| Locations | 100 as of June 2026, in six states |
| Founded | 2005, downtown Los Angeles, by Mario Del Pero and Ellen Chen |
| Locally owned? | No |
Who owns Mendocino Farms?
Follow the money and you get three private equity chapters. L Catterton, the consumer-focused buyout firm, invested in 2012, when there were five restaurants, and built a majority position. Whole Foods Market bought a minority stake in October 2015 and started putting Mendocino Farms counters inside a few of its stores. Then in November 2017, TPG Growth bought L Catterton's majority stake outright. The price was not disclosed. Mendocino Farms had 16 restaurants at the time, all in Southern California.
Mario Del Pero and Ellen Chen stayed on as the largest individual shareholders, and Whole Foods kept its minority. TPG installed Harald Herrmann, the Yard House co-founder, as CEO, then replaced him in July 2019 with Kevin Miles, who had taken Zoës Kitchen from 21 units to 268 and through an IPO. Miles is still the CEO, which tells you what the owner hired him to do.
In September 2023, Reuters reported that TPG had hired the investment bank North Point to sell the chain for more than $400 million, on annual earnings (EBITDA) above $30 million. By March 2024 the process was shelved, with sources telling Mergermarket there were no plans to restart it. TPG still owns the company, and the unit count has grown from about 70 at that point to 100.
Is Mendocino Farms publicly traded? Is it a franchise?
Mendocino Farms itself is private, with no ticker. But its majority owner, TPG Inc., has traded on the Nasdaq since its January 2022 IPO, so the ultimate beneficiaries of your sandwich include TPG's public shareholders and the pension funds and endowments invested in its growth fund. That is about as far from a family-owned deli as ownership gets.
It does not franchise. The founders said early on that the service and cooking were too involved to package for franchisees, and the company has stuck to that. Every one of the 100 locations is company-operated. No local operator owns a piece of the Mendocino Farms in your neighborhood.
How many Mendocino Farms locations are there?
100 as of June 30, 2026, when the Santa Barbara store opened. About 70 of them are in California, concentrated in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, the Bay Area and Sacramento. The rest are spread across Texas (Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin), Washington (Seattle), Arizona (Phoenix and Scottsdale), Colorado (Denver) and Illinois (Chicago).
The pace has picked up under TPG. The chain had 16 restaurants in 2017, 27 when Kevin Miles arrived in 2019, about 70 in early 2024, more than 80 at the end of 2025 and 100 by mid-2026. Chicago, Denver, Austin and Scottsdale were all entered within the past year, and the company says more openings are planned through 2026 and beyond.
Why Mendocino Farms feels local when it is not
The local feel is not an accident. Mario Del Pero grew up in Marysville, California, where his father ran a century-old meat company. He and Ellen Chen opened the first Mendocino Farms in 2005 in an 800-square-foot space beneath a downtown Los Angeles office tower, a spot so quiet that the Starbucks before them had given up on it. The idea was a sandwich market built on seasonal, locally sourced food. That origin story is real, and it still shapes the brand.
The branding does the rest. Every location talks about farm partners and seasonal produce. The design is warm wood and soft light rather than corporate laminate. The menu skips the usual fast-food signals. If you associate that kind of storytelling with independent restaurants, Mendocino Farms reads as one of them. It is doing what a good independent does, at 100 addresses, for a private equity fund.
- A real founding story rooted in California agriculture and a genuine local-sourcing vision.
- Farm-partnership language on menus and walls that sounds independent even at 100 units.
- Boutique, eco-friendly design that avoids the visual cues people associate with chains.
Is that a bad thing?
Not automatically. The sandwiches are genuinely inventive, the sourcing is more thoughtful than most fast-casual competitors bother with, and the rooms are pleasant to sit in. Private equity ownership is not a disqualifier for good food.
But if you chose Mendocino Farms because you thought you were supporting a local, independent business, you were not. You bought lunch from a 100-unit chain that is very good at not looking like one. That is the whole reason the question gets asked.
A thoughtful sourcing story and a quiet logo do not change who signs the lease and where the profits go.
Find independent sandwich shops and delis near you
Almost every city has owner-run sandwich shops, delis and lunch counters that have been doing this for years, often with sourcing stories just as good and no fund behind them. The trouble is that Google Maps and Yelp bury them under sponsored results and chain listings.
That is what Anything But A Chain fixes. The map shows only independent, locally owned restaurants and filters every chain out automatically, Mendocino Farms included. Search sandwiches or delis near you, and everything you see is the real thing.