Based in Los Angeles with many of its 67 locations in California, a few vegetarian and vegan menu items were table stakes for Mendocino Farms. But these items typically came in at the bottom of the sales mix.
“We realized that chasing only vegans and vegetarians shouldn’t be our main goal,” said Jeremy Bringardner, corporate executive chef of Mendocino Farms. “We wanted to capture the attention of flexitarians too, by rotating in more variety, more innovation and more appealing menu items.”
The Food Institute, a food industry researcher, reports that 72 million households in the U.S. identify as flexitarian or those that occasionally eat meat. These consumers crave flavorful, indulgent ingredients that can readily stand in for real meat, Bringardner believes.
Meating expectations
The chef was an early fan of the Impossible brand meat alternative as “it was more compelling to flexitarians because it was so close to meat in flavor and texture,” Bringardner said. He spiced the ground product like chorizo and used it in an Impossible Taco Salad “that went gangbusters,” he said. “It’s now on our core menu.”
Previously, Bringardner had developed items with soy-based chorizo and house-smoked tempeh, but while vegans were okay with it, flexitarians didn’t find them especially compelling. Now he was ready to try the next wave of meat analogs beyond Impossible, he said.
“I was looking for a product that could stand in for meat but one that didn’t have a health mystery about it,” he said, referring to the overprocessing and long ingredient lists of some meat analogs.
The founders of Mendocino Farms introduced the chef to Fable, a mushroom based meat alternative with a clean label listing only seven ingredients. “It’s 44% shiitake mushrooms and I loved the meaty texture and versatility,” said Bringardner. “It has umami but tastes more neutral than straight mushrooms. Fable made me really excited about R&D, but it took me a while to figure out how to transform the product into a menu item.”
The Philly Shroomsteak is just one item in the current LTO, which also includes the Farmer's Market Pesto Salad and Thai Sweet Potato Soup.
Going for indulgence
Mendocino Farms had recently brought back its Happy Hippie sandwich, “an ode to vintage vegetarian style,” said Bringardner. It’s filled with healthy raw veggies such as avocado, cucumber, carrots, beets and sprouts along with hummus and cheddar.
“I was looking to develop an indulgent meatless sandwich to contrast with the Happy Hippie,” he said. A spin on the Philly cheesesteak turned out to be his answer.
To create the cheesesteak sandwich, the Fable meat alternative goes into an impinging oven to get a little caramelization, then it’s topped with plant-based American cheese and returned to the oven to melt the cheese. At the same time, roasted red peppers and sweet onions are reheated in the oven.
“We tested a lot of vegan cheeses, but just one rose to the top,” said Bringardner. The Follow Your Heart brand performed the best in terms of flavor and meltability, he added.
The sandwich is completed by layering the cheese-topped mushroom-based meat with roasted peppers and onions, a choice of mild or hot giardiniera and green peppercorn aioli on a toasted sesame roll.
“I like to get creative with aioli, and most of our sandwiches include that as a condiment,” Bringardner said. He tried the aiolis that were already in house to take advantage of cross-utilization. “They were good but not great,” said the chef. “I also wanted to differentiate this sandwich with a unique flavor profile.”
He ended up bringing in green peppercorns to enhance a basic aioli because “green peppercorns go well with ‘steak.’ Plus, green peppercorns are not an ingredient you see a lot of in fast casual.”
Bringardner would like to extend Fable into other menu applications and is playing around with a couple of ideas. “My original thought was to substitute it in our best-selling ‘Not So Fried’ Chicken,” he said. It features roasted, shaved chicken topped with ‘krispies’ and herb aioli. “But I didn’t want just a vegan version of that sandwich,” he added.
Instead, he’s excited about using the mushroom-based “meat” as a protein option on salads and is working on a barbecue-style sandwich with slaw for summer.
Seattle spawns a salmon collaboration
Mendocino Farms recently opened two locations in Seattle—an expansion that prompted a new menu item developed in collaboration with favorite local restaurateur, Tom Douglas.
“When we go into a new market, we always partner with a well-known chef in that market to give us some street cred and help launch in a new place,” said Bringardner. “It was really fun to work with chef Douglas on a sandwich.”
The sandwich he’s referring to is the Sockeye Salmon Roll, running in the two Seattle units through March 3. And $1 from every roll sold benefits the Mid Sound Fisheries Enhancement Group, an organization Douglas is passionate about that’s dedicated to supporting salmon fishermen.
Douglas initiated the R&D on the sandwich, sketching out some concepts, then Bringardner brought the final idea to life in his test kitchen.
The recipe is basically a fish taco turned into a sandwich, he said. It begins with Bristol Bay wild sockeye salmon seasoned with Douglas’s “Rub with Love” fish taco spice, then roasted at high heat. The cooked salmon is tucked into a buttered and toasted brioche shaped like a lobster roll, then topped with chipotle aioli, avocado slices, Mendocino’s Cosmic Crisp apple-lime slaw, and fresh mint and dill.
“The only fish we ever had on the menu before was tuna in a tuna melt,” said Bringardner. “This was a challenge, as we had to teach the teams how to handle and cook raw salmon. But we cut the fish to spec in sandwich-size portions and it cooks perfectly every time.” Up in Seattle, the Sockeye Salmon Roll is going gangbusters, he added. “It’s the No. 4 seller on the menu.”
What’s next
Bringardner was eager to bring healthy wraps onto the menu, “but first, I needed a great wrap,” he said. He set out to replace the current tortillas in inventory by substituting a flour tortilla from his favorite burrito spot.
“It’s a small place but they had started a retail business selling the tortillas, so I asked if they were able to scale up the volume to supply Mendocino Farms, he said.
The answer was “yes,” and that “great” flour tortilla is now the carrier for a new Hummus Crunch Wrap that’s in test. It features a filling of chicken, hummus, sprouts, veggies, pita chips, seasoned feta and a mint labne sauce. “The sauce brought it all together,” said Bringardner. “It can make or break a dish.”
The combination of textures—creamy, crunchy and fresh and crispy—makes the wrap “less Mediterranean and more Mendocized,” he added.