About Us
Family History
Antonio Dominguez first came to Hood River, Oregon in 1937. In 1953, after marrying Juana in California, our family moved to The Hood River Valley, one of the first three Mexican families to do so. After a return to Mexico, our family found themselves in a situation with no money to return to The Hood River Valley, the valley we now regarded as home.
We worked and saved and continued to dream. For Juana, working in a Californian tortilla factory, the dream was for a family-run operation that would turn out “a good tortilla”.
In 1967, we were able to return to Hood River. There were still no fresh tortillas on the market, only a frozen counterpart could be found, imported from California, which was heavily limed and too expensive for the Dominguez family. Consequently, Juana continued to make the family supply of tortillas at home, without ever losing sight of her dream. In 1977, ten years later, as the children grew older, her dream began to become a reality.
Hard work, patience and a family philosophy of, “Don’t take anything for granted, work hard, do the best with what you have and keep things simple.” has paid off and made Dominguez Family Enterprises into the success story that it is!
Company History
Juana’s dream of building a family business became more feasible as the children grew older. In 1977, after two years of planning, we rented a room in a building in The Heights district of Hood River. With the older family members still holding down full time jobs, we made tortillas at night.
With no money and no credit to start the operation, the dream was still pursued, confident the product we were making would fill a market need. As the business grew, family members gradually gave up their other jobs to work full time for the Factory.
Our first tortilla making machine, affectionately referred to as the “Model T Ford” in the business, has been replaced since by the “Cadillac”, a stainless steel, computerized version.
To obtain our special masa mix, we drove a family van to a flour factory in Madera, California. making a twelve hour drive to pick up the sixty 50 pound bags of masa (all the van would hold), seeing truck load of Corn Masa we wondered how anyone could make that many tortillas. “Just keep at it,” we were told “and some day you’ll make it.” The sixty bags of masa mix would supply the family business for two months in those days.
These days we utilize over 30,000 bags a year, and buy masa by the truckload just like those tractor-trailer rigs we saw back when we were picking up six bags every two months!
