Had it not been for Hurricane Iniki in 1992, Sinaloa Hawaiian Tortillas might not be in nearly every grocery store and Mexican restaurant on Oahu and Kauai.

Most of the Macias family relocated to Hawaii from Fresno, Calif., after vacationing on Kauai in 1989.

“When they brought us to Poipu to vacation, they fell in love with the islands,” Cuauhtemoc “Cuat” Macias said of his parents. He is now CEO of airport-area-based Sinaloa Hawaiian Tortillas Inc., succeeding his now-retired father, Ysidro.

His mother, Veronica Macciess (she spells her last name differently), left her ongoing education toward becoming an acupuncturist and herbalist to help reach the new family goal: to open a Mexican restaurant in Hanapepe, Kauai.

“That’s where Sinaloa started, and I have a lot of pride and good memories of the restaurant,” Macias said. “We would not be where we are today without that restaurant.”

There were struggles, of course. Ysidro Macias was an attorney, and Cuat was to have followed in his father’s steps and gone to law school. Nobody had experience running a restaurant.

The Latino community and services geared to support it, such as Spanish-language radio and TV for the Mexican chefs brought in to cook, were nonexistent back then, so “we ate a lot of airfare expenses” as one chef after another would leave Kauai’s isolation, he said.

Sinaloa opened in January 1992 to a warm welcome from the small local population and the occasional visitor.

When Hurricane Iniki hit on Sept. 11, neighboring and adjacent businesses were destroyed or severely damaged in some way. The restaurant “had one cracked window,” he said.

As Hanapepe was among the first places to have power restored, Kauai residents and disaster relief workers would go to the restaurant to get hot food and a cold beer, he recalled. We “gave away for free what we could” in the early days after the storm, building up good will.

In 1994 Sinaloa became a favorite of an assistant manager at the Safeway store in Kapaa who would make the 45-minute drive to Hanapepe. She was from California and was accustomed to fresh tortillas. Over time she persuaded Sinaloa to make extra tortillas to sell at Safeway, because all the other tortillas were sold from the freezer case.

“We started with a couple packs in a rack we had built ourselves, and in six months things were going really well,” Macias said. The family was persuaded, first by their Kauai Safeway connection and then by the head Safeway office on Oahu, to set up production on Oahu so Safeway stores could carry their flour and corn tortillas statewide.

“That’s why to me it all started with the restaurant … and that angel from Safeway,” Macias said.

Macias’ father and brother Quetzalcoatl (named after a mythical Aztec feathered serpent) got the tortilla plant set up on Oahu in 1995 while Macias, his mother and other family members stayed on Kauai running the restaurant.

Since the restaurant closed in 1998 and the Oahu tortilla plant became the Maciases’ primary focus, business has grown, and revenue has been poured back into it.

Macias’ brother Xicotencatl (also an Aztec name), or “Chico,” runs production, and another brother, Tonatiuh (sun god, in Aztec lore), runs La Tiendita (literally “small store”), a small factory store the family opened on the Koapaka Street side of the Ualena Street facility.

Sinaloa Hawaiian Tortillas in white and yellow corn, flour, spinach and whole wheat come in various sizes and are offered at dozens of retailers from the big ones on all islands and military commissaries, to small, neighborhood grocery stores. Sinaloa products can be found in most Mexican restaurants and other restaurants that use tortillas in dishes, such as Zippy’s, Macias said. Sinaloa also provides whole wheat tortillas to the state Department of Education for schools statewide.

“We’re always doing what we can do to make a better product and keep prices as low as possible,” Macias said.

The company uses no lard in its production, choosing non-genetically modified palm oil and other non-GMO ingredients. Its corn tortillas are gluten-free and 98 percent fat-free.

Sinaloa is working to develop a gluten-free flour tortilla.

Reflecting on the family’s career change, the former lawyer Ysidro Macias once said, “I used to feed off people. Now I feed the people,” his son recalls.

“We’re a small family business. We’ve been here a long time, and we’re extremely lucky and very thankful for (consumers’) support.”

“Buy Local” runs on Aloha Fridays. Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com or on Twitter as @erikaengle.