Michael Mendes

Since late 2013, CEO and Director Michael Mendes has led Just Desserts, a well-established San Francisco Bay Area creator of baked desserts and sweet snacks. His focus with the firm has been on growing the business, contemporizing the brand and product offering, and automating operations. Michael Mendes launched a new line of organic and vegan products, and revitalized the core natural offering through new packaging, artwork and an integrated marketing campaign. In 2018 Mendes completed building an automated large scale commercial bakery in Northern California, with expansive frozen and cold storage capacity well suited to support Just Dessert's rapidly growing national US customer base. Recently Mendes elected to sell Just Desserts to Trive Capital/Rubicon Bakers.

Before assuming his current role, Mr. Mendes held leadership positions with Diamond Foods, where he served as CEO and president for 14 years. He achieved sustained profitability, and grew the company from annual sales of $200M to over $1B. He led the conversion of the firm from a cooperative to a corporation and conducted a successful initial public offering. Mr. Mendes pursued a pathway of strategic acquisitions that included the purchase of Kettle Foods from Lion Capital and Pop Secret from General Mills. In his private life, Michael J. Mendes has a passion for running and has completed seven Marathons, including the New York, Rome, Los Angeles, Chicago, and the London Marathon.