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Giant killer: Mexican Accent, Inc. fights the Goliaths of the tortilla business with the stealthy strategies of a modern David. The company arms its sling with below-the-radar marketing, smart technology, quality products and the limitless confidence of a ...

Article Excerpt
"We're the largest shelf-stable tortilla manufacturer east of Kansas City," exclaims Ken Levitt, president of Mexican Accent. Although some companies might challenge this claim, modesty is obviously not a word Levitt uses to describe how this Midwest food producer turned itself into a $30 million tortilla manufacturer with nationwide ambitions.

Launched in 1987 as a tortilla chip producer in Racine, Wis., Mexican Accent has grown into one of the top tortilla wholesale operations in the nation, with customers as far away as the Caribbean and even Europe.

"We started with a small tortilla chip factory south of the city of Milwaukee," Levitt explains. "Then we found out about an empty facility available on the other side of Milwaukee at the same time that a friend started telling me about how they make fresh, warm, flour tortillas out in the Rockies. Whoever heard of fresh tortillas up here in the Midwest?"

At the time, few non-Hispanics in the region were buying tortillas of any kind. Grocers who retailed Hispanic food products to the non-Hispanic market did little to merchandise their chilled tortilla products, with the result that they went unsold. Levitt believed he could produce the kind of tortilla that would attract a non-Hispanic consumer following.

"We saw this as an opportunity, but it would mean reorganizing the company to take advantage of the chance" Levitt remembers. "We decided to move all the different elements of the company--a tortilla chip operation and a tortilla production plant--under one roof."

The consolidation of Mexican Accent's production operations coincided with a change in fortune for Manny's, a local distributor who was the company's largest customer and who was headed into bankruptcy. Levitt and his partners bought the company, which serviced all the grocers in the Milwaukee area, and thereby acquired the Manny's brand. Practically overnight, Mexican Accent became a private label and contract manufacturer with a largo distribution network, a local customer base and a strong local brand.

The central issue was which way to point the operation. "We grew the private label and industrial segments," Levitt says. "It's nice but the problem is that...

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