Since 1958, Jesse’s Tortilla Factory, founded by Waco couple Jesse and Esther Contreras, has provided the Waco community with fresh tortillas and chips made in-house. Jesse’s sells at both wholesale and retail level and provides for many restaurants in the Waco area.

Jesse’s co-foundress Esther Contreras inherited both her business instinct and her tortilla making skills from her mother. As a young woman, Esther’s mother, Hermelinda Niño, and her sisters sold tortillas door to door. After Hermelinda’s marriage, she opened Niño’s Tortilla Factory on South Fifth Street with the help of her husband. In an era where many barriers kept Mexican American women from being business owners, Hermelinda’s perseverance served as an inspiration to the women of her community.

In 1950, Jesse Contreras retired from active duty in the army and got a job delivering tortillas for Niño’s. Esther and Jesse soon married, and the couple took over running Niño’s after Hermelinda retired. They moved to their current location and became Jesse’s Tortilla Factory in 1958.

The original Jesse’s was a corner store which sold deli meat, bread, soda, candy, and cigarettes. The factory aspect consisted of a small rolling machine which rolled one tortilla at a time. Much of the store’s initial customer traffic came from the nearby boys’ club where the Contreras’ grandsons spent much of their free time. The building was originally a duplex. One half held Jesse’s, and the other half was the home of the building’s owner. Eventually,the Contrerases purchased the whole building and expanded their facility.

Tragedy struck the Contreras family in 1989. One morning that January, a masked man entered the store demanding money. Jesse, refusing, did his utmost to protect the store, hurling a trashcan at the assailant. The robber fled empty-handed, but not before he had shot and wounded Contreras. Jesse Contreras died a month later from the wounds he sustained in the fight. The factory only closed for a day, so that the family could attend the funeral. Esther carried on the business as sole owner, with the help of her daughter Alice Rodriguez and grandson Santos Rodgriguez.

In its many years of operation, Jesse’s has seen considerable success. They have made several changes to both their retail and wholesale offerings over the years. Under Jesse Contreras, Jesse’s only sold one style of chip, but after Jesse’s death, they began selling two styles of chips—thick and thin—with the thinner style surpassing the thicker chips in popularity. In 2019, at the suggestion of Santos, Jesse’s started selling meals to go such as tacos, taquitos, tamales, and taco salads.

Alice officially took over ownership of the business after her mother’s death in 2020. A year later, Jesse’s suffered an electrical fire. While the damage slowed production, insurance covered most of the costs, and the repairs provided an opportunity for some much-needed renovations.

Jesse’s produces about 45,000 corn tortillas a day and uses 1,800 lbs. of corn a day. The entire tortilla-making process takes place inside the factory. A silo on-site holds corn which is cooked and then soaked in water and lime for five hours. After this, the corn is transferred to a stone grinder, which grinds the corn into a dough called masa. This dough is rolled out and cut into disks on the tortilla rolling machine, which then drops them onto a conveyor belt which takes them through the oven. About ninety percent of these finished tortillas are then cut into quarters and fried to make tortilla chips.

The factory has grown to employ a staff of about a dozen people. This family business invites their community to be a part of their family and so makes a lasting legacy of love and support for the Waco community.

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The Hammond Laundry Cleaning Machinery and Supply Company of Waco, Texas, began in East Waco on Elm Street in 1911 when Texas native William Hammond decided to try his hand at the laundry business. By midcentury, the Waco company boasted operations and sales throughout the world.

Born in Hearne, Texas, on December 5, 1881, William Hammond moved to Waco in 1911. Almost immediately, he joined with Albert Vawter to form the Hammond-Vawter Tailoring company, with stores in Waco, Taylor, Bryan, and Hillsboro. Hammond’s work in the men’s clothing business sparked his interest in dry-cleaning equipment, which he soon began selling as well. Hammond was not content to simply sell cleaning equipment, however. Thanks to self-educated engineer Fred Winslow, who came on board at Hammond’s company in 1923, the company eventually produced a machine of its own, dubbed “the Hammond.” Throughout the 1920s, Hammond utilized his charisma and skill to singlehandedly establish and maintain markets in Central Texas and neighboring states.

While the local business grew in scale and profits during its first two decades, World War II would signal a time of rapid financial growth and geographic expansion for Hammond Laundry. This growth was, in large part, due to the work of employees who showed remarkable acumen in business, engineering, and sales. In 1942, Roger N. Conger (husband of Hammond’s daughter, Lucy Rose) joined the company at a time when its factory produced $100,000 of equipment annually and had recently relocated from Elm Avenue to 413 Webster Avenue. Conger assisted with business aspects such as marketing, contracts, purchasing, sales, and management. During World War II, when the US relied solely on domestic manufacturers for production of defense goods, the company helped in the war effort by making equipment for the US Navy, such as clothes dryers suitable for use in US Naval vessels. Roger Conger later recalled, “We [Hammond] supplied every drying tumbler that the US Navy purchased during World War II.” This would total nearly three thousand machines. The Hammond facility also manufactured small aircraft components during wartime. Through the 1950s, the Waco firm was still under contract with the US Navy to supply shipboard clothes dryers and also expanded to a new location at Second Street and Mary Avenue.

In the postwar years, non-defense production resumed on a large scale, too. Through the combined efforts of the staff at Hammond, the company expanded to fill demand for their machines from around the world. In 1958, Hammond’s California distributor, Romaine Fielding, established the “first quick-service laundry in the Soviet Union,” when it supplied units to “housing projects in Moscow.” This international success prompted Business Week Magazine to feature a story titled “Chasing Soviet Washday Blues.” Indeed, Waco-made products being sold in Russia in the 1950s was extraordinary for the time. In addition to Russia, other markets included Indonesia, Turkey, and Western Europe. In 1964, Danish representatives even came to the Waco facility to study manufacturing processes at the Hammond plant, then located at 220 South 2nd Street.

In 1961, Hammond sold ownership of the company for approximately one million dollars. The company merged with a Philadelphia firm headed by H. J. Mitchell. It still bore the well-established Hammond name and operated in Waco under the name Hammond Industries, Inc. The company’s president, Roger N. Conger, still headed the firm and became its chairman. The laundry units continued to be fully constructed in Waco, the company providing jobs for sheet-metal workers, welders, electricians, assemblymen, and skilled machinists. In August of 1973, the Waco company was sold to Economics Laboratories of Texas, Inc. (now Ecolab), although Hammond equipment manufacturing operations continued. The company’s founder, William S. Hammond, passed away in Waco on November 5, 1977, at the age of ninety-five. At the time of his passing, Hammond had seen his company grow from five workers to over two hundred and also evolve to play a rare role in local, national, and global history.

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For over 100 years, Vitek's Grocery and, now, BBQ restaurant, has remained a cherished business in the Waco area, providing residents with quality meats and a community gathering place.

The story of Vitek's BBQ began in 1915, when butcher William Martin Vitek, the son of Czechoslovakian immigrants, opened a grocery store and meat market in Granger, Texas. From the very outset, Vitek was always willing to accommodate special requests and deliveries, establishing a customer-first ethos that would define the Vitek family business for the next century. Shortly after opening the new business, William and his wife, Hattie, moved sixty miles north to Waco, eventually setting up shop at 1715 Speight Avenue. The fledgling venture changed locations several times during its first decade as it weathered both the Great Depression and the death of its original owner. Vitek's entered a new phase, however, when William Martin's son, William "Willie" Frank Vitek, took over following his father's passing.

As the small town of Waco grew and developed over the next several years, so did Vitek's Grocery. In addition to running the business, Willie also built Vitek's current location at 1600 Speight Avenue in 1958, the same year that construction of Interstate 35 began in Waco. While many businesses were unable to survive the disruption of highway construction, the creativity of Willie and his son, Billy Joe Vitek, helped the business to stay afloat. Willie began to cook barbecue on a portable pit, serving barbecue sandwiches and homemade sausage to customers. Vitek's takeout service was thus born, making the shop's premium barbecue more accessible than ever.

The building of I-35, however, was not the only challenge that Vitek's met. During this time, many smaller family stores were driven out of business by larger chains that could offer a greater variety of goods at lower prices. The number of small grocers and butcher shops dramatically decreased in the second half of the twentieth century as towns expanded into suburbs and cars became more ubiquitous. Luckily, the decline of small family grocers in the United States roughly paralleled the rise of quick-service restaurants—a shift that the Vitek family was poised to take advantage of. Billy Joe and his wife, Susan, took over the business in 1972, officially changing the name from Vitek's Grocery to Vitek's BBQ. While the original restaurant contained only one picnic table and operated off of a takeout-only business model, it rapidly evolved into the quick-service restaurant that remains a local staple today.

Vitek's identity as a Waco icon was cemented when, in the early 1980s, Billy Joe and a Baylor student employee concocted the now-famous Gut Pack, which later went on to be recognized in such publications as The American Way, The New York Times, and Texas Monthly. Thanks to the advent of the Gut Pack and the restaurant's status as a cherished Waco eatery, Vitek's was named one of the "Best College Eats" by the Cooking Channel and has received praise from the likes of ESPN and the Travel Channel.

In 2006, Billy Joe and Susan retired, leaving the restaurant to their daughter, Julie Vitek Keith, a fourth-generation owner of the establishment. In 2007, Julie and her husband, Jason, expanded the dining area and added an outdoor biergarten well-suited to live entertainment. While the Waco of today presents a marked contrast to that of the restaurant's early days, Vitek’s is proof that innovation, customer service, and delicious barbecue have indeed remained constant.

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