‘I never dreamed it would get this far’: A Northern California family’s 85-year legacy of tortillas

The soft slap of masa — Spanish for dough — being patted in a person’s hands is a familiar sound in the homes of many Latinos.

For the Berber family, it’s no different. In fact, it’s what became their family legacy for over 85 years in Northern California.

“ Mi Rancho began in 1939,” Manuel Berber, the owner of the business, said to FOX40.com. “My grandfather to my dad, to myself, and now to my two sons who are continuing the business.”

Mi Rancho started off as a grocery store in downtown Oakland selling items like spices, baked goods, and, of course, fresh handmade tortillas.

“Back in the day, as my dad would always say, it was the only game in town for Hispanics to come to look for their Mexican products,” Berber said.

Year after year, the demand for tortillas only grew. The Berber family decided to expand and lay down roots in Elk Grove in 2020.

“As I look back, I think every day that I walk through this facility here, I’m just amazed of where we came from, where we started from and where we ended up and where we’re at now,” explained Berber.

From a 3,000-square-foot storefront in its first years to now a 155,000-square-foot building in Elk Grove, Mi Rancho produces about 8 to 10 million tortillas a day.

“I never really dreamed that it would get this far,” Berber said.

Their staple items are corn tortillas, but not just any kind.

“There’s nothing better than a fresh corn tortilla that’s made out of fresh corn. There’s very, very few manufacturers that do what we do,” said Berber.

FOX40.com got to see the process from start to finish, which is called nixtamalization and involves cooking, steeping and grinding the corn grain before it is turned into masa, which then can be baked into tortillas, all of which takes about 14 hours.

“It takes us back to our roots. It’s actually what they do currently in Mexico with fresh corn,” added Berber.

The family tells FOX40.com that they plan to continue to expand, including to the East Coast, but for now, they’re content celebrating that they are already several generations deep in their 85 years in business in Northern California.

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