Her family made tortillas in Phoenix for 60 years. Now, she's a Hall of Famer
Josie Ippolito always knew she was going to own a tortilla factory.
At ten years old, she was rounding out dough balls wearing a white apron that hung low around her neck alongside women who were decades older at her family’s restaurant La Canasta in Phoenix.
She placed the rounds on a cookie sheet so they could be oiled on the outside and dabbed with some flour in the dusting area before the making their way through the rollers. The tortillas were then hand-stretched and cooked on a griddle, Ippolito said, adding that she distinctly remembers her father telling her to stay with the ladies, to keep feeding the dough machine and to keep her hands out of the rollers.
“The grill burners were so hot in this Arizona weather, especially in the summertime. The heat would radiate onto the concrete and did not allow us to stand in one place so we would actually have to jump up and down while we were working."
Today, Ippolito serves as president of La Canasta Mexican Food Products Incorporated and founder of My Nana’s Best Tasting Products, a company that has stocked the shelves of Valley grocery stores with tortillas, tortilla chips, salsas, buñuelos and buñuelo chips over the last 29 years.
And on May 18, Ippolito was inducted into the Tortilla Industry Association Hall of Fame at the annual convention in Las Vegas in honor of her lifetime contributions to the tortilla industry.
Ippolito never expected to be inducted into the Tortilla Industry Association Hall of Fame, and when they called she said she got "choked up."
"I'm very honored. You know, there are 2,000 members of the Tortilla Industry Association throughout the country," she said. "And to be one of them, I was like, wow, this is amazing."
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A childhood spent in the service industry
Everything Ippolito learned about business, she learned from her parents.
The idea to make tortillas came about naturally while her father was working as a butcher. He found an already established restaurant that had a small corn tortilla line and a griddle they used to make the hand-stretched tortillas, which were then delivered to the the surrounding community and other local restaurants.
Even though all seven Abril siblings helped out in the restaurant six days a week, Ippolito was the only one who expressed interest in the business. If she or her father were especially tired, they would take naps on a makeshift bed of white aprons and sacks of corn in the restaurant office, Ippolito said.
Growing up in a restaurant may not have always been easy, but her mother Carmen Abril Lopez found a way to keep things interesting for them, she said, describing how her mother would make the siblings compete to see who could chop the onions the fastest or make tortillas the fastest.
“If we look back today, they would all say we had a good life working together — it was just part of what we had to do,” Ippolito said.
When her mother was left with the business and seven children to raise after her husband died unexpectedly in 1974, Ippolito stepped in to help.
Though her father never realized him dream of having an automated production line for the tortillas, his family ended up making that dream a reality.
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Turning a tortilla stand into a tortilla empire
From strategizing when the prices of corn went up or down to tightening up production, by 1982, the family made the decision to expand beyond the restaurant to open La Canasta Mexican Food Products Incorporated which would supply tortilla chips and tortillas to restaurants, schools and grocery stores.
Operations started off in a smaller building, but they moved into a 68,000-square-foot manufacturing warehouse a couple years later. Ippolito said she didn't believing they would be able to make use of all the space, but it didn't take long for them to use every square inch.
Ippolito and her sister Linda Rios assisted in the day to day factory operations, while the other siblings owned and operated five other restaurants around the Valley in addition to the original La Canasta restaurant.
Eventually, Ippolito told her mother that she was going to start her own business, My Nana’s Best Tasting.
She figured that if their tortilla business was selling to all these restaurants, she was also sure that the consumers would also love to buy a bag to take it home.
“'I wanted the opportunity to grow and grow the business as well. So I said, I'm not going to compete with you because I am going into the grocery stores and you’re not in the grocery stores now," she said. "But what I am going to do is bring business to La Canasta so that you can grow your business and I can grow mine under the brand."
Creating a tortilla legacy
After her own business had grown, Ippolito agreed to return to La Canasta, on the condition that she could be president of the company.
The decision to let Ippolito take the reins was not easy for her mother, she said, because there were three older and three younger siblings to consider, but ultimately her mother trusted her vision for the company. Her induction into the tortilla hall of fame affirms that the decision paid off.
Despite the tremendous success Ippolito and her family have had over the last six decades, what means the most to her is the reputation the company has built.
“For me, it's having a product that people love to enjoy and people enjoy My Nana’s Best products because they're reliable and consistent in quality. I’m proud of that, to share with anybody, including my family,” Ippolito said.
Though her father Richard Abril did not live long enough to see his small tortilla assembly line at La Canasta become an automated tortilla production facility that employs 130 people and produces over 2.5 million tortillas daily, Ippolito knows her father would be incredibly proud what they have been able to build.
"If dad could only see what we have now because he used to dream about those kinds of things," she said. "And that dream became a reality for us even though for him, it was really a matter of survival and providing for our family."
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Reach features reporter Amaris Encinas at amaris.encinas@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter @amarisencinas.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Phoenix family honored by Tortilla Industry Association Hall of Fame
