Whole Foods is investing in Mendocino Farms in a big way to help them open and grow in San Diego and San Francisco with more to come? It was just a matter of time with Danny Meyer’s Group buying a big chunk of Tender Green. Is Lemonade next? Thoughts?
http://nrn.com/emerging-chains/mendocino-farms-receives-investment-whole-foods-market
As long as it doesn’t impact Mendocino Farms’ excellent sourcing and recipes, I’m all for more of America discovering Mendocino Farms. 
I’d take that any day over much of the “fast crap” we have in so many cities.
Sandwiches at Mendocino are tasty. Sides have become better over time.
My only gripe is that some of the sandwiches are light in the protein department. I often get bread and veggie only bites near the ends of the sandwich. The biggest offender is generally the pork belly bahn mi.
I know this classifies as a first world problem. Wonder if they have a double meat option?
You can get extra meat on any sandwich for an extra $2.00.
Seems like a relative bargain compared to the price of the sandwich. I am a dummy for not asking if this is an option.
I usully get the pork belly bahn mi as well and I think that the amount of pork belly seems to have declined recently. it now seems a little veggie heavy, but still delicious.
that looks really, really great. don’t they also have a steak & blue cheese (gorgonzola?) sandwich? one of these days I need to pull myself away from the bahn mi.
Here is the Eater LA Story from today…“don’t be surprised if Silver Lake’s Whole Foods 365 comes with a side of Mendocino Farms attached”
They offer blue cheese on the sandwich Wiener posted. It’s not as good with it.
ahhhhh. thanks for that clarification. looking @ the photo, I can see how the blue cheese would prob overpower the rest of the ingredients.
MF has been in need of operational guidance from my experiences. They would F-up my orders probably 60-70% of the time. I usually ordered five-six sandwiches and one or two salads at a time. It got so bad that I sent an email to their corporate - never got a response. So I boycotted them for a long time.
i went back there this past weekend out of desperation and was glad to see they have a computerized order system that rectifies the flaws in the previous manual system. I don’t know when the upgrade happened but it was long overdue. Still, what concerned me was the fact that MF went with their old system for years that had so many potential pitfalls in it before the upgrade.
I can see WF being an effective partner in logistics, funding, expansion and operations. I just hope they stay out of MF’s test kitchen - most of WF’s prepared foods are about a 4-5 on a 1-10 scale.
Love MF. Hope the quality and creativity doesn’t suffer with the departure of genius, Chef Judy Han.
the quality and flavor of whole foods prepared foods have been sliding for the last several years. most of the items are tasteless and overpriced. we’ve been stocking our work fridge w/ prepared items from WH for the last 5 years or so and we’re @ the point where nobody wants to eat anything from them any longer.
With the exception of the in house smoked pork belly and st. louis-style ribs. Pretty dope.
That pork belly has been converted into 101 meals in our household.
speaking as someone who hits up the wine bar/snack bar at the playa vista whole foods at least a couple of times a month:
they really should get an industrial engineer in that place to straighten up the procedures.
imho, at this point, it bears too much a resemblance to a clown car.
i would NEVER go there if time was of the essence… . .
