The scent of fresh, warm corn tortillas greets customers as a line grows in the mid-afternoon outside a bright yellow and green trailer on Sebastopol Road in Santa Rosa’s Roseland neighborhood.
Unlike the other trucks, trailers, and pop-up tents lining the busy street, you won’t find tacos, burritos, or tamales at Tortillería Apatzingán. Instead, you’ll find a machine inside churning out tortillas by the dozen, destined for dinner tables that evening, still steamy and pliable an hour or two later.
Tortillería Apatzingán is one of two mobile tortilla factories, or tortillerías, that have opened recently in Sonoma County, with yet another on the way.
“This trend is spreading fast,” says Tortillería Apatzingán’s owner, Cristian Alvarez. The 33-year-old opened the North Bay’s first mobile tortillería in early 2024, opting for a trailer over a brick-and-mortar store, which he was able to move easily from Modesto where he’d launched the business the year before. “It’s easier to move (your business) in a trailer,” he says…