Flores Family Puts Press on L.A. Rivals in Tortilla Market

Arthur Flores and his three brothers have always pitched in to help the family business. When he was 5, Arthur recalls, he and his older brother Larry loaded crates of eggs in the back of his father’s pickup, then helped to sell them and other produce in Latino neighborhoods of Huntington Park and South Gate.

When their father, Lorenzo, saved enough to open his La Tapatia tortilla plant in Bell in 1971, the boys swept floors or helped prepare the masa, a dough made from ground corn, for the tortilla oven.

Seventeen years later, Larry, 34, and Arthur, 31, still work in the family’s South Los Angeles tortilla business. But now Larry is president and general manager, Arthur is vice president, there are two bustling plants and La Tapatia (which translates as woman from Guadalajara) has become one of the largest producers of corn tortillas in Los Angeles, the nation’s biggest tortilla market.

It’s estimated that about 100 manufacturers are battling for a piece of the Southland tortilla market, where about $100 million worth are sold every year. The Flores family ranks its business No. 1 in corn tortillas, but verifiable figures are hard to come by in this fiercely competitive industry made up mostly of privately owned companies.

Two younger Flores brothers, Richard, 23, and David, 17, also help run the larger La Tapatia factory, which is at 310 E. Florence Ave. The older brothers each handle a daily eight-hour shift, enabling the factory to operate around the clock and crank out an estimated 1 million corn and flour tortillas seven days a week. Their 59-year-old father, who is chairman, oversees the operation but also spends much of his time managing a cattle ranch in Chino.

Even competitors tip their hats to La Tapatia’s rapid growth. “They literally came out of nowhere and established a beachhead in the industry,” said Frank Morales, marketing director for La Reina Foods, based in Los Angeles, one of the area’s five biggest tortilla manufacturers, according to some industry estimates.

The tortilla giant in the Southland, however, is Mission Foods, a subsidiary of Mexico-based Gruma Corp. and the only tortilla manufacturer in the United States to distribute nationally. Although the company will not disclose sales figures, Mission is estimated to sell nearly 30% of the tortillas sold in Southland supermarkets. It has six factories in four states, including one in Canoga Park. Mission ships chilled tortillas as far east as Florida, and sells to both grocery chains and institutions, such as Taco Bell.

‘Just Looked for Customers’

La Tapatia has sales of about $12 million annually, according to Larry Flores. Its sales growth has come from the strong base the company established in East Los Angeles during the its early days and its gradual expansion into other areas.

Since its second factory opened in 1980, outproducing the smaller Bell plant nine to one, annual sales have tripled. “Larry’s a pretty good manager; he’s done a good job for his dad over there,” said Bill Dreesen, spokesman for California Milling Corp., which supplies La Tapatia with about 200 tons of corn and about 90 tons of flour per week.

“We mainly just went out and looked for customers. That’s what it’s all about,” said Larry Flores. “It was tough at first. . . . You had some big leaders back in those days, and we were competing with them, people who had a brand name.”

Larry Flores says sales have been helped by the area’s growing Latino population and La Tapatia’s quality product, which he claims is more “authentic” because the company uses only stone-ground corn. Other manufacturers, of course, make such claims, but many use maseca , a corn flour largely distributed by a Gruma Corp. subsidiary.

“We have a very low profit margin,” Larry Lopez said. “The only way we’ve done it is volume.”

Corn tortillas in general are inexpensive, going for an average retail price of 66 cents for the usual package of three dozen, while flour tortillas are almost always sold by the dozen for an average retail price of 83 cents, according to Joel Oakford, an account manager in the Mission Foods marketing department.

Industrywide, flour tortillas account for a third of the poundage sold but produce two-thirds of the profits, according to A. C. Nielsen Co. statistics on supermarket sales.

“(La Tapatia does) an excellent job on their corn tortillas, but corn is not a very big profit item for most manufacturers,” said Oakford, who ranked La Tapatia No. 1 locally in corn tortillas.

According to Mission Foods estimates, 30% of the tortillas sold in Southern California are purchased in supermarket chains. The vast majority is still bought in small neighborhood stores, where many Latinos, who eat 10 times more tortillas than others, frequently buy their staple foods.

Focus on Chains

“Our strength is in the chains. Our aim was to gain the biggest distribution through the chains. La Tapatia is much more focused on independent retailers in East Los Angeles,” says Diane Huth, vice president of marketing for Mission Foods.

But La Tapatia also claims to do well in supermarkets. In 1982, the Ralphs chain began purchasing its tortillas. Now, La Tapatia also sells to the Boys, Vons and ABC chains, and supplies the masa for Vons’ Latino-oriented Tianguis store in Boyle Heights, which produces its own tortillas in the store.

La Tapatia’s rapid ascent came without the trappings of formal training. None of Flores brothers has a college education.

“I started from the bottom,” Larry says. “Everything from pushing the broom to bookkeeping to manufacture of the product, sales, anything that has to do with the business. We were always taught that if you’re going to tell something to an employee, you’d better know what the heck you’re talking about.”

Of course, they learned the business from their father, who came to the United States from Guadalajara, Mexico, when he was 15. “He doesn’t have much education, and he doesn’t speak English too well. . . . He didn’t have much money (in the beginning),” Larry says. “It was just slow but sure. He had a dream that he wanted to be the biggest.”