Mendocino Farms

Mendocino Farms is a chef-driven fast casual brand founded in Los Angeles in 2005. It opened its 100th restaurant in 2026 and has recently expanded into Chicago, Denver, Austin, and Scottsdale. My work with the brand began with audience research for a brand pitch and grew into running its social content end to end, from strategy and concepting to production and performance reporting, including content for the 100th opening, in partnership with Mendo’s brand and marketing team.

Role: Brand and social strategy, end to end. Contract, 2026 to present.

01

Listen

I scraped and analyzed thousands of TikTok and Instagram comments across Mendo mentions, competitors including Sweetgreen, Cava, and Panera, and category conversations from ingredient transparency to health claims. A curated high-signal set, tagged by theme, showed what earns trust in the category: real over polished, showing over telling, and the story behind the food.

From comments on Mendo and competitor content

02

Strategy

I distilled the research into brand pillars, validated with Mendo’s brand team, then audited their Instagram and reset the goal around sends, one of the signals Instagram weights most. The audit showed phone-shot chef POV videos outperforming expensive campaign shoots, so I built the content system around that.

• North starSends. People share what they want to order or do together.
• FormulaSensory hook, craveable lighting, elevated and clean set dressing, tight framing.
• PillarsCraveability, chef POV, new store openings, and playful, human-first posts.
• GroundingA brief on how Instagram actually ranks content, sourced from Meta’s own documentation.

03

Produce

Each week I own four feed posts plus daily stories, and I personally produce 12 original posts a month. I develop every concept, built the system the team uses to review them, and present in biweekly brand team meetings. I write the production brief and shot list, creative-direct on set alongside a production partner, then edit, write captions, schedule, and manage the account day to day, from comments to DMs. My content also runs in Mendo’s paid ads.

04

Measure

Weekly and quarterly reports, with organic and paid tracked separately, shape each month’s plan.

05

Systems

To run a full content cycle as one person, I built AI agents and workflows for research synthesis and on-voice first-draft captions. Concepts, production, and final edits stay with me.