Spanish-speaking customers at Tortillas Blanco occasionally point out the grammar error in the business name.

In Spanish, the plural, feminine adjective “blancas” would be correct with the plural, feminine noun “tortillas.” Business owners Mark and April White knew this when choosing a name for their shop. Drawing on his visits to Mexico and south Texas as a teen, Mark dubbed the place “Tortillas Blanco.”

“Down there they called me ‘Marco Blanco,’ because my name is Mark White,” he said.

So the name of the business came from putting together the product, tortillas, with the name, White.

Customers usually find this explanation humorous, Mark said. Likewise, first-time customers tend to find humor in discovering non-Hispanic proprietors at the establishment.

“Sometimes Hispanic customers come to the take-out window and laugh because we’re white,” Mark said. “Then they’ll ask why we have a Hispanic sign.”

The Whites opened up shop at 1000 Frazier Street in Athens in October, after traveling to Bend, Ore., to learn the ins and outs of mass tortilla production.

“When I was a little boy, my granddaddy took mission trips to Mexico a lot and I would go with him,” Mark said. “The quality of the authentic food there was so much better. The families would go to these tortillerias and bring home fresh, hot tortillas and they were great.”

With the local Hispanic population booming in recent years, Mark saw an untapped market.

“It occurred to me that there are a lot of Hispanics here but no tortillerias,” he said. “So I started to investigate what it would take.”

Perusing Internet sites, Mark found a small, successful tortilla shop in Oregon. He called the proprietor, Mario Huerta, to ask for business advice. Soon, Mark and April were on a flight to Oregon, where they would spend eight days working alongside Huerta, learning the ropes of tortilla production.

Upon their return to Athens, the Whites spent four months tending to the details of launching a new business. They found, purchased and expanded a small building on Frazier Street, bought business licenses and took delivery of equipment purchased from a small shop in Utah that went out of business while they were visiting Oregon.

Since early October, Mark, 26, and April, 21, have arrived at Tortillas Blanco at 7:30 each morning to fire up the oven, mix the dough, and cook and package both corn and flour tortillas, a process that takes about two hours.

Not only do they own the business but they also serve as the only employees.

From 9 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday, the Whites sell the fresh, hot tortillas at $2 per 2 pounds of corn tortillas and $2 per dozen of flour. They also recently began offering tacos and burritos after quite a few lunchtime customers requested the items.