Tortilla Business Plan, With a 12-Month Projection

A tortilla business plan sets out what you'll make and who buys it, what a pack costs and sells for, the kitchen and equipment it needs, and the first year month by month. Flour, fat and salt for ten flour tortillas come to well under a dollar; what a handmade tortilla business sells is the hands. Every tortilla is weighed, balled, pressed, cooked and cooled, about 36 seconds of work each, so the price of a pack depends on how many minutes it took. That makes the channels very different: a pack at a farmers market pays far better for the same minutes than a dozen for a restaurant. In the example below, a maker in Tucson sells packs at markets and to grocers, dozens to restaurants, and chips made from the seconds, makes a profit from month 4, and ends the year about $16,000 ahead on $63,600 of sales, after paying $20 an hour for the work. Below is a description example, each part of the plan, what each channel earns per hour, the projection, the startup budget, and a free template.

The short version

• Describe the business in a paragraph: what you make, where you sell, the kitchen, the goals.
• Cost a pack with your time in it: flour and fat are the small part.
• Compare channels by what they leave per hour of making, not just per pack.
• Turn the seconds, torn or misshapen tortillas, into chips; they earn the most per hour.
• Date every pack; fresh tortillas sell in days.
• Budget for a griddle, a mixer and a heated press before the first market.
• TaroStack keeps every batch with its lot and date, and the flour on the reorder list. More below.

Part 1: the business description

Saguaro Salsa Co., a made-up salsa and tortilla maker in Tucson, Arizona, I use in these examples, writes:

Saguaro Salsa Co. makes handmade flour tortillas in a licensed kitchen, sold in packs of ten at two farmers markets and to local grocers, by the dozen to restaurants, and as tortilla chips made from the seconds. Every pack carries its make date. In our first year we plan to supply 8 grocers and 5 restaurants.

Part 2: what a pack costs

The labor is six minutes for a pack of ten, 7.2 for a dozen, three for a bag of chips. It's 60% or more of every tortilla line. How to put labor into any cost is in how to compute labor cost in baking; a tortilla is the same arithmetic.

Part 3: customers, prices and what each earns per hour

"Left per hour of making" is what each product leaves, after the $20 wage and its other costs, for each hour of work. Restaurant tortillas leave the least: the same minutes as a market pack at a lower price. They still fill the griddle on weekdays and bring steady orders. Chips leave the most, because the tortillas in them were seconds that would otherwise be thrown away. How to set a wholesale price that holds up is in how to price baked goods for wholesale, and the same method works for tortillas.

Part 4: the first year, month by month

Fixed costs are $1,295 a month: the kitchen lease ($900), insurance ($60), market fees ($150), the vehicle ($120), the website ($30), and software and card fees ($35). Sales start at 15% of full speed and reach it by month 11, when the kitchen turns out about 13,600 tortillas a month, about 146 hours of work:

The year's sales are $63,580 and the profit $15,964, on top of $20 an hour for the work.

Part 5: dates and labels

Fresh flour tortillas sell in days, so every pack carries its make date, and grocers rotate the oldest to the front. Wheat is the allergen to declare, and customers ask whether a tortilla is made with lard or vegetable shortening, so say which on the label. What a dated code on a pack can look like is in how to create lot numbers.

Part 6: the startup budget

The heated press is the line that changes the hours: pressing instead of rolling by hand cuts the minutes per tortilla, and the minutes are most of the cost.

Get the template

Download the tortilla business plan workbook. Four sheets: your products with price, variable cost and monthly volume at full speed; the year, month by month, with sales, profit and cash; your fixed costs; and your startup budget with working cash. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

Thirteen thousand tortillas a month, in packs dated by the day, go out to two markets, eight grocers and five restaurants. A grocer says a pack was stale, the flour runs out the morning of a big restaurant order, and nobody knows how many seconds went into chips and how many in the bin.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps every batch with its date.

Batches with dates. Each product is a recipe of flour, fat, salt and baking powder, with a scrap % for seconds, and units convert: flour bought by the 50-pound bag, weighed by the gram. Recording a batch takes the ingredients off stock from the lots used, at what you paid, and gives the packs their lot and best-by date, so the oldest go out first and lots close to their date show in your alerts.

Seconds into chips. Seconds can be kept as their own item, and chips are a recipe with the seconds as an ingredient, so the bin isn't the only place they go. Anything thrown away goes off as an adjustment with its reason.

And the orders. Grocer and restaurant orders are sales orders for their delivery day that show whether the packs to fill them are made while you're still typing, the flour is on the reorder list in days of cover, and margins are reported by product and by customer.

Recipes, batches, lots and margins by product and customer are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

Is a tortilla business profitable?

It can be. In the example, a handmade flour tortilla maker selling at markets, to grocers and restaurants, and chips ends the first year about $16,000 ahead on $63,600 of sales, with $20 an hour paid for the work.

How much does it cost to make a pack of tortillas?

In the example, $3.25 for a pack of ten at a market: 73 cents of flour, fat, salt and baking powder, 10 cents of gas, an 18-cent bag and label, $2 of labor and the card fee.

How much should I charge for homemade tortillas?

Cost a pack with your labor, then price each channel separately. In the example, a pack costing $3.25 sells for $8 at a market and $5.25 to grocers; a dozen costing $3.75 sells to restaurants for $6.

How much does it cost to start a tortilla business?

In the example, about $10,550: $7,550 for a griddle, a mixer, a heated press, racks, bins, packaging, label design, permits and a market setup, and $3,000 of working cash.