What is Mendocino Farms?
Mendocino Farms is the Los Angeles sandwich-and-salad chain that Scottsdale had been asking for, by the company’s own account, for years. It arrived on Tuesday, February 17, 2026, in Suite 304 at 8777 N Scottsdale Road, in The Shops at Gainey Village at Doubletree Ranch Road, and it was the chain’s first restaurant in Arizona.
The company was founded in 2005 by Mario Del Pero and Ellen Chen, a husband-and-wife team who had sold a small teriyaki concept called Skew’s and spent two years working out a fast-casual menu they could be proud of. The first store opened on Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles. By the time it reached Scottsdale the chain had about 80 locations in California, Texas, Illinois, Colorado and Washington, a majority owner in the private equity firm TPG (since 2017) and a slogan, “Eat Happy,” that it prints on everything.
What it serves is the thing the slogan describes: sandwiches with names, salads with grains, soups by the season and housemade drinks. The Farm Club is a turkey club with applewood-smoked bacon and avocado. The Not So Fried Chicken Sandwich is roasted chicken under a crust the company calls Mendo’s krispies, with mustard pickle slaw and herb aioli on ciabatta. The Avocado and Quinoa Superfood Ensalada is the best-selling salad. The drinks, Guava Lemonade, Pomegranate Mint Lemonade, Passion Fruit Black Tea, are all vegan and gluten-free by design.
The room is counter service with a dining area built, in the company’s words, for quick lunches, casual dinners and group gatherings, and the clientele is the Gainey Village regular: the health club, the office parks along Doubletree Ranch Road, families from Gainey Ranch and McCormick Ranch, and winter visitors who know the brand from Orange County. Our verdict: it is the best weekday lunch counter on this corner, a step above the sandwich chains it will be compared with, and the first new Gainey Village opening in a decade that the whole neighborhood noticed.
Ordering at Mendocino Farms
Order the chicken sandwich first. The Not So Fried Chicken Sandwich is the dish the chain built its name on: roasted chicken, a crunchy layer of krispies, mustard pickle slaw, tomato, pickled red onion and herb aioli on toasted ciabatta, with a choice of golden barbecue sauce or mustard remoulade on the side. The Farm Club is the safer second order, and the Chicken Parm Dip and Peruvian Steak Sandwich are the ones to try on a return visit. The chain does not publish Scottsdale prices in its press releases and we have not seen them in print; expect the low-to-mid teens for a sandwich, which puts a sandwich-and-drink lunch under $20.
Build the salad half-and-half. The Avocado and Quinoa Superfood Ensalada is the house salad; the Thai Mango Salad and the seasonal GOAT (chicken, goat cheese, Pink Lady apples and farmhouse vinaigrette in its fall version) rotate. Sides are the quiet strength of the menu: Basil Pesto Shells, Oaxacan Potato Salad and the Corn and Hatch Chile Soup, a nod to the Southwest the chain added for its Arizona debut.
Timing. Hours are 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day. The lunch rush at Gainey Village runs noon to 1:30 and the lot, which is shared with the Village Health Club, Hash Kitchen, Pomo and Soi 4, is the pinch point. After 2 p.m. and at dinner it is easy. Sunday mornings belong to the brunch crowd next door, so if you want a Sunday sandwich, come after 1.
Use the app. Everything the chain gives away goes through My Mendo, its rewards program: the free opening-day entrée was members only, and the surprise rewards and menu previews the company promises arrive the same way. Ordering ahead on the app also skips the counter line. Takeout, delivery and catering (customizable spreads for office lunches, promoted from day one) are all available.
What to skip. Nothing on the menu is bad, but the kids’ menu (chicken tenders, a grilled turkey and cheddar) is the least interesting thing here, and the dinner hour is quiet enough that you should think of this as a lunch place that happens to stay open. For the full picture of the corner, see our Gainey Ranch guide.
The lunch chain that jumped the queue
The Arizona story began in the wrong place. On July 22, 2025, Mendocino Farms announced its first Arizona restaurant for Scottsdale Promenade, the Vestar center at Scottsdale Road and Paradise Lane: about 3,000 square feet with a 500-square-foot patio, opening in 2026. CEO Kevin Miles said Arizona had been “a key growth market on our list,” and Vestar’s leasing manager predicted it would become a local favorite. Phoenix New Times, KTAR, azfamily and What Now Phoenix all ran the Promenade address.
Then Gainey Village overtook it. The Promenade build-out took longer, the Gainey Village suite (a 2026 lease in a center that opened around 2000 and had not had a notable new restaurant since Hash Kitchen in 2015) went faster, and on February 4, 2026, the company announced that its Arizona debut would be at Gainey Ranch on February 17. Chief marketing officer Alicia Mowder told the Phoenix Business Journal that Scottsdale locals “have been asking if an Arizona location is coming for years.” Marketing manager Keenan Thanprathit stood at the door on opening morning handing tote bags to the first 100 guests while a branded food truck prepared to tour the city from the next day.
The chain’s own history explains the appetite. Del Pero and Chen had built Skew’s to three stores in Los Angeles before selling it in 2001; they opened the first Mendocino Farms in 2005 and ran it as a founder-led business until L Catterton invested in 2010 and TPG bought control in 2017. Whole Foods Market took a minority stake along the way and put Mendocino Farms counters inside some of its stores, which is how many Arizona snowbirds first met the brand. By 2026 the company was at roughly 80 restaurants, and the Phoenix market, with its California transplants and winter visitors, was an obvious hole in the map.
The rest of the rollout was fast: the Promenade store at 16203 N Scottsdale Road, Suite 100, opened on June 2, 2026, and an Arcadia store at 44th Street and Indian School Road opened September 1, making three Valley restaurants in seven months. What the record does not say is how big the Gainey Village room is, who the local operating partner is if there is one, or what the Scottsdale prices are; the company’s Arizona press has been about promotions and menus, not numbers.
Honest assessment: this is a chain restaurant, built to a template, and it would not be in this guide if it were on a freeway frontage road. It is here because Gainey Village is the corner where Scottsdale Road dining habits get set, and because, in the 2020s, a fast-casual lunch with real cooking behind it is rarer in this part of town than a steakhouse. The chicken sandwich is as good as the Californians said it was. The parking is not.