At 2 a.m., most of Gilroy is sound asleep. But for Julian
Torres, Romero Lopez and their crew, the day is just beginning.
Torres and Lopez are co-owners of La Piedad Tortilla Factory in
downtown Gilroy. The factory turns on its machines in the wee hours
of the morning and sometimes doesn’t quit until the early
afternoon
– but that’s what it takes to get tortillas out the door as
fresh as possible to be sent to restaurants.
At 2 a.m., most of Gilroy is sound asleep. But for Julian Torres, Romero Lopez and their crew, the day is just beginning.
Torres and Lopez are co-owners of La Piedad Tortilla Factory in downtown Gilroy. The factory turns on its machines in the wee hours of the morning and sometimes doesn’t quit until the early afternoon – but that’s what it takes to get tortillas out the door as fresh as possible to be sent to restaurants.
And, despite the fact that Lopez has been at the factory site near the corner of Monterey Road and Seventh street for two years as La Piedad Tortilla Factory and for three years prior to that as La Piedad Bakery, the owner said the factory is virtually unknown.
“I have gone (to meet customers) in Hollister, Morgan Hill. No one knows we’re here,” he said.
And while that may be the case, it’s hard not to be intrigued by the pleasant smell coming from the factory early in the morning as the eight employees and six other family members turn out corn and flour tortillas and package them.
“We can manufacture any kind of tortilla you can ask for,” Lopez explained. “We can make it thin, we can make it bigger … whatever you want.”
La Piedad’s flour and corn tortilla machines make a combined 12,000 tortillas per hour ranging in size from 6 to 14 inches in diameter and in different colors and flavors.
The basic ingredients to make flour and corn tortillas are easy to point out just by looking at the pallets full of 100-pound bags of flour, 50-pound bags of corn flour and 50-pound boxes of shortening that are stacked inside the factory. According to Lopez, the company goes through 800 50-pound bags of corn flour each week. However, when it comes to the exact ingredients that make La Piedad Tortillas special, Lopez isn’t talking.
“That is a secret formula. I don’t even know what’s in it,” he said. “Every tortilla factory has a different formula. We have three. That’s why we call it a factory, not a tortillera.”
But who does know the exact ingredients and measurements to make La Piedad’s tortillas? That would be Torres, 40, who has been working at tortilla factories since he was just 16 years old and is the resident expert when it comes to tortilla-making at La Piedad.
The San Jose native started working at Linda’s Tortillas in the city, but the factory closed in 10 years ago. But Lopez and Torres didn’t become business partners until a chance meeting with Torres’ wife.
“I was almost ready to close the business and then I met him and his wife,”Lopez said.
Lopez was selling tortillas at the market, and Torres’ wife thought the tortillas were very good.
“I met her while I was at the free market,” Lopez said. “She asked for 10 boxes, then she asked for 15 boxes. But I told her I might be going out of business because I have no customers.”
She went to her husband and asked him about joining forces with Lopez, and the business was born.
“I got into the business because I like new experiences. I like new things,” Lopez said. “We bought the machine from Pacifica and got to work.”
Tortilla-making machines, which include a press and six-tiered, cooling conveyor belt, usually cost abut $500,000, but Lopez and Torres bought one used for $100,000.
A year later, the business’ success enabled them to buy another one, giving them the ability to make flour and corn tortillas. The large machine, used for flour tortillas, runs four days a week, and the smaller one, which does corn tortillas, runs six days a week.
During the course of a single shift, as many as 30,000 tortillas easily can be made. In a week, how many tortillas come out?
“I have no idea,” Lopez said. “It’s a lot, but I couldn’t even guess.”
While the two spend at least 40 hours a week working on gaining new customers, the time spent making the tortillas varies.
“It all depends on the orders,” Lopez said.
Lopez and Torres each have their own contacts to sell tortillas to, and they deal with customers as far away as Sacramento to the north and Bakersfield to the south, but competition can be stiff, especially with larger tortilla makers.
“We don’t make much money on the tortillas, it’s on the outside stuff like the delivery,” Lopez said.
And while tortillas haven’t changed much over the years, the process has and Torres has been around to experience those changes. Torres remembers the early days of working at the tortilla factory in San Jose, when instead of using a press, workers would hand-stretch the tortillas.
“That was 20 or 30 years ago. Do you see how hot it is in here,” Torres asked as he removed the cover from the pressing machine. Workers would spend much of their day standing in the heat while they stretched the dough.
Torres also remembers a time with he used to cook the corn and grind it the next day to make the corn flour to make tortillas.
“That’s how they used to do it in Mexico,” he said about the long dough-making process. “That’s the way my mother used to do it. We can make dough in five minutes. It used to take two days.”
For more information about the La Piedad Tortilla Company, call 848-1538.
