Tastes like success
On a wing and a prayer to tortilla
HOW can a small, familyowned Queensland food manufacturing business not only survive but thrive amid the COVID-19 pandemic? One that’s Mexican can, it seems.
Diego’s Authentic Foods, which specialises in making soft tortillas for retail and restaurant customers across Australia and overseas, says it has stared down economic shocks including the global financial crisis and now the pandemic to quadruple turnover in the past decade.
Run by husband and wife Deann and Colin Thomson, the Gold Coast-based company has managed to carve out a lucrative niche in a Mexican food market dominated by multinationals Mission and General Mills (Old El Paso).
From making about 20,000 tortillas a month in its early days to 3.2 million a month now, Diego’s has defied the downturns to notch up its 25th year in business.
The company started modestly as the San Diego Tortilla Company — named after Mrs Thomson’s home city — in 1995.
A marine engineer by trade, Mr Thomson had met his future wife at the World Hobie Cat Sailing titles in San Diego in the late 1980s and they later settled in his home city of Geelong.
Mrs Thomson’s only disappointment on moving to Australia was being unable to find soft white tortillas for her favourite Mexican fare.
After moving to the Gold Coast, they toyed with the idea of starting a Mexican restaurant but decided to go into the tortilla trade.
With Mrs Thomson’s US-based parents, retired food broker Bill and wife Janet as partners — and her brother Randy helping on the production line — they imported a second-hand tortilla machine from the US and set up shop in Miami.
Diego’s was the first in Australia to release a soft corn tortilla in supermarkets, its gluten-free offerings snapped up by Woolworths and Coles.
With 50 staff, some of whom have been with the business as long as 17 years, the company now supplies tortillas and other products to independent grocers including IGA and Drakes, and exports to New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Malaysia.
“We started out on a wing and a prayer and never thought we’d get to where we are today,” Mrs Thomson said.