Get To Know The CEO

With his contagious laughter and "kid-at-heart" personality, he's more than just fun to be around. He can be an all out riot! He's easy going, but far from lazy. He's sharp and determined, displays strong character and kindness in all that he does and pursues. He's the owner. He's the tortilla recipe master. He's Tim Mulder.

Tim Mulder is a professional pilot, lover of the outdoors, and a health enthusiast. Before he was old enough to drive a pickup truck, he was driving a large wheat harvester in the dusty wheat fields of the San Joaquin Valley. Early on in his married life, Tim became captivated by a study of the ancient scriptures and the health secrets found in them. Combining this study and the science of health he began living and sharing what he discovered.

Convinced that if people would live more closely to the way God made the foods found in nature, he dreamed of one day creating a food company that lived and practiced in their manufacturing methods the health principles that he found to be true and that he practiced in his own life. With the abundant refining of grains and cereals in the American diet, he was sure that manufacturers needed to reduce the use of preservatives and the refining of wheat.

"For years I felt a need and urge to manufacture food the way you would if health were your primary value instead of shelf-life or simply profit," Tim explains. With this in mind, he dreamed of creating his own food manufacturing company. So, with the encouragement of his wife Brenda, daughter Kara, and son Bryan, Tim began tinkering in the family's kitchen, perfecting and scaling the whole wheat tortilla recipe that he had been making in his own home for over 25 years. A simple, yet nutritious recipe became "Created Whole". Tim's dream of becoming an industry leader in freshly manufactured food products began moving towards reality. The journey is only beginning, and Tim believes that someday, through Created Whole, he and his family will be able to touch many peoples' lives with the truths of health in countries all around the world.


Tim's life is more than just tortillas. He also enjoys working in his garden and tending to his orchard of fruit trees, and recently became a certified grower, which enables him to sell produce at farmer's markets. He loves to backpack, windsurf, play tennis, hang glide, and spend time with his wife Brenda. He's an amazing man, an amazing husband, and an amazing father. As the CEO of Created Whole, this company is in good hands!

There's A "Super Mom" Behind Every Super Tortilla

Brenda Mulder is known for her caring and loving spirit, laughter, and her amazing ability to multi-task. (Some have nicknamed her "Super Mom". I'm still trying to figure out how she does it all). She is not only one of the main cheerleaders in the business, but also the inspiration and go-to-gal when it comes to Created Whole and anything nutrition. Brenda's interest in health and nutrition, that started many years ago, has laid the foundation for Created Whole. Read on to get to know more about her!

Brenda Mulder is a Registered Dietitian with a passion for helping people achieve their lifestyle goals. With a background in health and wellness and a personal commitment to apply positive lifestyle principles in her own life, she encourages her clients to take care of their health and live well. Brenda's background includes work as a Clinical Dietitian in the Hospital setting and in Long Term Care, Health Education and Wellness, and Nutrition Consultation for individual clients.

Currently: The owner of Quality Life Design, where she specializes in consulting individuals on healthful living principles that will give them an improved quality of life. She also enjoys her new "mini vacations" with her recent job addition and adventure of being a flight attendant for SkyWest Airlines.

Hobbies: Loves to cook. Has cooked healthy foods for family for over the past 30 years. Enjoys being creative through art, sewing, and crafts. Likes the outdoors, hiking, camping, and loves to travel.

Loves to give, help others, and be a blessing to those around her. Brenda has a desire to make a difference in this world. She feels that one way she can give back is by encouraging people to follow healthy lifestyle principles that will be a blessing in their lives.

She tweets about nutrition and health @BrendaMulder

Didn't Realize Tweets Could Be That Sweet?

Social media has given marketers and businesses a whole new way to quickly and quite effectively reach an audience that, frankly, doesn't have the time or interest to be reached. When we started Created Whole, we put up the website, made a Facebook page, began this blog, and shortly after, began Tweeting on Twitter. The website definitely needs help, but it does what we need it to do for now, which is directing customers to a place where they can place orders and contact us. Facebook has been an instrumental way for people to find us if they search for Created Whole Tortillas in the Google search engine. The blog is a way for us to give you more of an inside look at what is going on, as well as being one more platform of introducing people to "the best tasting tortilla."

But, what I am raving about right now is Twitter. Twitter is such an interesting and unique social media platform. It's a way to tell the world what is happening right now. Twitter lets you know what your favorite celebrity, gourmet food truck, or friend is doing at that moment. It's a way to have quick conversations with complete strangers. I started a tweeting for Created Whole Tortillas (follow us @BestTortilla). Without fully understanding how twitter could be used as a marketing tool, I purchased a book to help. Right now, I pretty much think twitter is the best thing ever! It's not only effective, quick, and easy, but also fun. Because of twitter, we have been able to connect with people on a much shorter timetable and in more of direct way. Instead of phone calls and leaving messages, or writing letters and never receiving a response, we've had success with an 140 character tweet. Recently, twitter has helped us get noticed. In our society where people can't live without their blackberrys and they don't have time to read billboards, let alone blogs, twitter is a very effective way to communicate.

So, start tweeting by going to twitter!!!

Follow us at @BestTortilla

Why don't you sample with Salsa?

We have had some customers ask or wonder why we do not sample our Create Whole Tortillas with some great tasting filling like salsa, humus, scrambled eggs or tofu.

Well... During our testing we found that even a horribly bad tasting tortilla is acceptable if you cover the flavor with a good enough filling. Sure our tortillas are fantastic with scrambled tofu, salsa or humus, but when we go head to head with nothing but the tortilla taste as the standard of comparison it is a more accurate test of quality.

There is one other issue about sampling. What filling will we use? Some might not like the sample because of the ingredients we have chosen. By sampling just the tortilla we have a better chance of gaining the customers confidence of our quality product.

Created Whole Tortillas... the original "eat it straight" tortilla.

Full-Time Tim

Tortillas eventually, or more like, initially enter most social conversations. It's so hard not to talk about Created Whole for us, because this company is something that we are so passionate about.

Tortillas travel everywhere with us. A couple of weeks ago, the flight attendants of the family (Brenda and Kara), were grabbing lunch at Baja Fresh at LAX, and the young woman in line just happened to ask, "Do you ladies know if they have whole wheat tortillas?" Smiling, Kara says, "No they don't, but I do," while rapidly explaining about the tortilla business, and frantically trying to find a business card. Not having any business cards and only two tortillas left, she handed over the tortillas with the website written on a napkin. This business has comical moments to say the least.

Tim received a phone call last week from a woman who says she's praying for us to get into Trader Joe's and praying that we will be successful. She loves the tortillas. Stories like this have been happening for us everyday. From the random people we encounter, to our regular customers at farmer's market, we need these affirmations.

This past week, Brenda was in Santa Barbara for work, and Tim was in Utah or somewhere, and Kara was enjoying the wonderful island of Oahu. Our lives are a little nutso. It's a challenge to build a business when there isn't someone dedicating all of their time to just tortillas. Three months ago, we set a goal that Tim would be our full-time employee by the end of the summer. We've needed him full-time for awhile, but he hasn't wanted to let go of the security of his job. So, it's the end of the summer.

Every time the three of us (Tim, Brenda, Kara) get together to talk about the future of tortillas, each one of us has a, "You'll-never-guess-what-just-happened-to-me-story." There some pretty exciting opportunities "in-the-works" right now that can't be shared at this time on such a public forum, but the one thing I can say, is that things look good. There's a lot to be done. So much so, that we had an intervention with Tim, and he's done working for anyone but Created Whole.

Congratulate Tim on his new position as full-time Director of Operations/Production!