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Mendocino Farms is a fast-casual restaurant and catering company founded in 2005. Its menu combines reimagined comfort-food favorites with globally influenced dishes, supported by dine-in, pickup, delivery, mobile ordering, group catering, fundraising, and gift-card services. The company operates in the food and beverage, hospitality, and consumer sectors, with a broad team supporting its restaurant and catering operations.
Director of Restaurant Design - Texas Remote
Lead restaurant prototypes, design standards, and guest environments for Mendocino Farms. Direct design partners and delivery across new locations, remodels, refreshes, and operational improvements.
Description
- Lead, mentor, and develop internal designers and external design partners
- Match design capacity and expertise to the development pipeline
- Provide senior design leadership for complex, highly visible, or high-risk projects and decisions
- Own and advance restaurant prototypes, standards, material palettes, finishes, furniture, fixtures, lighting, equipment integration, and repeatable design details
- Preserve a consistent Mendocino Farms experience while responding to site conditions, market requirements, and business priorities
- Translate brand strategy into a distinctive and practical creative direction for restaurant environments
- Maintain standards that support guest circulation, ordering and pickup, digital and delivery activity, seating, accessibility, storage, serviceability, and daily operations
- Collaborate with Operations, Culinary, Facilities, Construction, and equipment vendors to improve kitchen layouts, back-of-house flow, equipment integration, ergonomics, throughput, food safety, and maintainability
- Apply lessons from restaurant openings to future layouts, prototypes, and specifications
- Direct design delivery for new restaurants, remodels, and refresh programs from feasibility studies and concepts through permit-ready documents and construction support
- Implement design QA/QC and phase-gate processes for complete, coordinated, code-aware, and timely deliverables
- Lead cross-functional reviews, convert stakeholder feedback into clear direction, and identify risks and tradeoffs early
- Work with Construction to preserve design intent, strengthen constructability, and limit rework, RFIs, and change orders
- Select, brief, oversee, and assess architects, interior designers, engineers, and specialty vendors
- Collaborate with Construction and Real Estate to evaluate design cost drivers and value-engineering options
- Balance brand expression, operational effectiveness, durability, cost, schedule, and long-term unit economics
- Monitor design-function performance, capacity, risks, and priorities, using post-project reviews to improve standards, tools, and partner results
- Create the annual design operating plan with Real Estate, covering capacity, priorities, budget requirements, and key risks, and provide regular delivery updates
- Report to the VP of Design & Construction
Requirements
- At least 10 years of progressive experience in restaurant, retail, hospitality, architecture, interior design, or a related built-environment field
- Experience leading a design team, studio, function, or significant network of external design partners across multiple concurrent projects
- Extensive experience in restaurant or similarly operationally intensive commercial design, including prototypes, new-unit expansion, remodels, and site adaptation
- Strong knowledge of restaurant operations and design, including front- and back-of-house flow, kitchen equipment, labor and ergonomics, guest circulation, accessibility, pickup and delivery, food safety, storage, and maintainability
- Experience managing architects, interior designers, engineers, and specialty vendors to quality, schedule, scope, and budget targets
- Working knowledge of construction documents, design QA/QC, permitting, building and health codes, detailing, accessibility, shop-drawing review, and constructability
- Financial understanding of design budgets, cost drivers, value engineering, specification tradeoffs, lifecycle durability, and unit economics
- Bachelor’s degree in Architecture, Interior Architecture, Interior Design, Environmental Design, Product Design, or a related discipline; equivalent relevant experience may be considered
- Proficiency with Bluebeam Revu, Excel, PowerPoint, and project-management platforms
- Working knowledge of AutoCAD and/or Revit and SketchUp preferred
- Excellent written, verbal, and visual communication skills, including concise recommendations and executive-ready presentations
- Willingness to travel occasionally for market visits, project milestones, and team meetings
- Ability to lift 25 pounds
- Capacity to sit or stand for 6–8 hours
- Ability to perform single grasping, fine manipulation, pushing, and pulling, as well as bending, twisting, squatting, and reaching
- Bachelor’s degree in Architecture, Interior Architecture, Interior Design, Environmental Design, Product Design, or a related field; equivalent relevant experience may be considered
Benefits
- Competitive salary
- Meal privileges
- Health benefits
- 401(k) plan
- Paid vacation
- Occasional travel for market visits, project milestones, and team meetings