Michael Mendes

Michael J. Mendes is currently the CEO of the Farm Supply Company, a leading California home, garden, and farm supply retailer.

Michael Mendes was the CEO and Managing Partner of Just Desserts, a well-established San Francisco Bay Area creator of baked desserts and sweet snacks. He succeeded in growing the business, contemporizing the brand and product offering, and automating operations. 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, 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 the Abbott Seven Star Marathon World Majors, which includes New York, Boston, Berlin , Chicago, Tokyo, Sydney and the London Marathon. Mendes also ran the Rome and Los Angeles Marathons.

Michael is married to Wendy Berry Mendes, the Chris Argyris Professor of Psychology at Yale University