Don Julio upgrading tortilla 'press'

CLEARFIELD — At Don Julio Foods Inc., a new $3 million press that can make 3,800 dozen flour tortillas an hour is expected to improve efficiency — a strategy chief executive officer Nate Fisher hopes will help the company cope with the erratic rising and falling prices of wheat, corn and oil in today's economy.

The 15-year-old company sells tortillas and tortilla chips under the Don Julio label, and potato chips under the 70-year-old Clover Club label — which Don Julio purchased in December 2005 — in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. Sales growth in tortillas, tortilla chips and potato chips has been strong. Company executives declined to give growth numbers because the company is private but said sales are about $10 million a year.

One snack foods industry expert attributed growth to people substituting snacks for actual meals in these tough economic times.

Yet, despite sales growth, the price for raw goods and fuel needed to make and transport Don Julio products have increased to new highs in recent months, followed by quick falls and more increases, reflected by the commodities markets on which they're traded.

Surrounded by such economic uncertainty, Fisher, who took the reins of Don Julio in 2006 when his father, Craig Fisher, was called on a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, decided to focus resources on what the company could control.

"We're a Utah's Own company," Fisher said, referring to the program that promotes local companies and products. "We understand that, so we're trying to do everything we can to keep our products at an affordable value to the customer, by taking costs out of the system.

The new 52-inch tortilla press will make almost three times as many tortillas in an hour as Don Julio's two 32-inch tortilla presses, which each make 1,300 an hour. The new press requires fewer employees than the older presses — three instead of 11 — and burns 30-40 percent less butane than the older units.

The new tortilla press, which was delivered to Don Julio headquarters at the Freeport Center about three weeks ago from Southern California, arrived in five semi loads and took 10 13-hour days to assemble. "It has to be lined up perfectly and balanced and everything," Fisher said.

"We used a 30,000-pound forklift to bring this equipment in," said Jacob Toscano, director of operations for Don Julio.

Toscano explained that the press contains all the components of tortilla-making on a mass-production scale: It mixes dough, then raises the dough in a proofer, bakes the clumps of dough to become the flat round shape of tortillas, runs the tortillas through a metal detector to ensure no slivers of machinery metal have gotten into them, exposes the tortillas to UV light to slow growth of any mold, then packages them in bags.

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