I had an idea to make some simple sandwich wraps for a rather large gathering, and was also thinking of commercializing the idea. To do so, I need realistically priced flour tortillas. Flour tortillas are incredibly simple and cheap to make. The ingredients to make them are less than 30 baht/kg, plus a small amount of gas to cook them. Plus the labor. The labor is the killer for me, as I can not roll a tortilla in a circle to save my life, and tortilla presses don't exist over here. Even if I could solve that issue, you just can't get good quality control making a few hundred tortillas a day manually.

 

So I thought factory sourced tortillas would be a better idea. But after contacting Danitas, they want 1300 baht/10 kg for tortillas! A reasonable markup I could understand, they are a profit making business after all, but 130 baht? They buy everything in bulk and should be paying less than me. If they had said 50 I would have understood. But 130?

 

What on earth could I possibly be missing here? I must not understand something, because no company could stay in business with that kind of unreasonable markup. So there must be some hidden cost which is keeping everyone else out of the industry over here. Industrial tortilla presses are just not that expensive. The capital requirements to launch a small flour tortilla factory just don't seem that extreme.  So without a significant barrier to entry, the only explanation is that I must not be  including an important component of the cost which justifies such a high price.

 

So if anyone knows, I would love to understand. Why is it impossible to find a realistically priced flour tortilla here? There is limited demand, sure, but not that limited.  Any Mexican restaurant could pay for the cost of importing their own industrial tortilla press in less than a year.

 

Since Danitas not only has business but seems to be growing over the years, I am left with a logical inconsistency. What do they know that I don't?

 

Any thoughts on where I can get better pricing for tortillas or explanations of why I can't get better pricing are appreciated.

 

Have you checked in Foodland for their tortillas? Usually have 2 or 3 kinds available.