In what city were tortilla chips first commercially mass-produced in the U.S.? Los Angeles.
Tortilla chips were first commercially mass-produced in the United States in Los Angeles in the late 1940s. The city’s large Mexican American community and established tortilla-making businesses provided an ideal setting for turning a traditional corn-based food into a widely sold snack.
The commercial story is closely associated with Rebecca Webb Carranza, who used rejected tortillas from an automated tortilla machine at her Los Angeles tortilla factory. She cut the irregular pieces into triangles, fried them, and sold them in bags. That practical reuse helped popularize the shape now associated with tortilla chips.
Los Angeles was not the birthplace of every fried corn-tortilla food. Mexican cuisines had long included related foods such as totopos and tostadas, and nachos emerged separately in Piedras Negras, Mexico, in 1943. The question refers specifically to commercial mass production in the United States, which is why Los Angeles—not Phoenix, Dallas, or San Diego—is the canonical answer.