Tortilla-makers make run for border
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/04/2010 (5832 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
AN infusion of new blood into the family business has a small, rural tortilla-chip manufacturer planning an expansion.
For the last 26 years, La Cocina Foods, owned by the Peter Warkentin family, has been churning out tortilla chips and tortilla wraps from two small production plants on the family farm near Ste. Anne.
If that news to you, you’re not alone.
“Everybody we talk to is surprised we make tortilla chips here,” Warkentin said.
Until this year, La Cocina was content with quietly peddling its products mainly to retailers and food distributors in Manitoba. Warkentin wouldn’t reveal sales or production numbers, but he estimated the company has 200 to 300 retail customers, including most of the Canada Safeway and Sobeys stores in the province.
But now his son, Patrick, who lives in Lloydminster, is involved in the business, and he’s eager to grow it. So he’s started to aggressively market the company’s chips to retailers in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Peter said if Patrick’s efforts bear fruit, the company will need to expand its production operations. It has a 6,000-square-foot plant that produces the chips and a 2,000-square-foot one that makes the wraps. The two facilities employ Peter and up to seven part-time workers.
“I’m sure we will expand,” he said. “But we’re not sure if it will be this year or next year.”
So how did a grain and chicken farmer from Ste. Anne get into the tortilla-chip-making business?
Warkentin said it was his sisters, Edith and Eleanor, who got the ball rolling when they started selling homemade tortilla wraps to friends and neighbours. By the early 1980s, it was too difficult make them by hand, and they asked him to find equipment to produce them.
“So I got involved,” he said, “but I wanted to do chips, too, because the market for (wraps) was too small.”
So he found some chip-making equipment, too, and the rest is history. Warkentin said once the tortilla operation was running, he quit the poultry business. But he still grows grain.
He said he’s ready to hand over the business to his son in the next few years.
murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca