THEIR SALVATION IS DELICIOUS
5 city women sell pasteles to make ends meet in pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic robbed them of their jobs. A traditional Puerto Rican holiday staple put them back in business.
Five enterprising women have turned a holiday labor of love — the time-honored and time intensive preparation of tasty holiday pasteles — into booming operations around the city.
Puerto Rico-born Brenda Opedal, explained that pasteles — which are like tamales but with a different maize dough, known as masa, made with plantain and root vegetables native to Puerto Rico — are a treat to eat, but tough work.
“Making pasteles is a long process,” said the 54-year-old Queens resident, who worked as a baby-sitter until the pandemic hit the city in March.
“It usually takes about two days to make them. One day I spend making the base or ‘masa’ of the pasteles and the meat, either pork or chicken. The following day is spent wrapping them, which is a complicated process.”
Opedal said she’s made pasteles every year as gifts for friends and family at Christmas, but they’ve now become her primary source of income under her “Brenda Bites” brand.
“After the pandemic, I could not find a more stable job, so I began to sell my pasteles,” she said.
“At first, I was worried that the COVID concern would stop people from ordering homemade food. However, the amount of orders I have been receiving has exceeded my expectations and has really kept me busy over the past few weeks,” she added.
Alyssa Gonzales, 29, of
Brooklyn, and Maria Lopez, 42, of Queens — both of whom worked in the food and hospitality industry until they lost their jobs during the pandemic — agree.
“COVID pushed a lot of us hospitality people into very creative ways to try keeping some kind of income coming in. That’s what’s driven me this year,” Gonzales said.
And Lopez said she jumped at Gonzales’ plan to turn a holiday tradition into something bigger.
“Maria is a longtime family friend,” Lopez explained. “So when she told me about how she makes pasteles every year for friends and family I wanted to help her because I wanted to learn. I love the tradition and I love pasteles. I would joke that If I could chose, my last meal on Earth would be pasteles. They are a treat because we don’t have them around all the time.”
In October, Fiesta Pasteles was born, just in time for Thanksgiving. The pair work out of Lopez’s kitchen.
“We first only made just a few dozen to get our name out there and tell people about us,” Gonzales said. “We didn’t think there
would be such a demand... now we make about 60 pounds when we make them ... that’s about 90 pasteles.”
Fiesta Pasteles — which is on Facebook and Instagram — sell the treats individually and by the dozen.
“I never thought I’d make a business out of this,” Gonzales marveled.
“We are already talking about how and what we will do next year, so this is definitely not just something that’s going to be around only for this season.”
Liliana Luna, 27, a school bus driver from the Bronx who lost her job in March, was also inspired to turn her love of the holiday treat into a business, starting Pasteles en Hojas NYC with her mother Esmeralda, 69.
The pair also spread the word of the business on social media.
“You know, it was my mom who pushed me to start working on these full time after I lost my job,” she said.
“We had more time and the pandemic pushed us to get creative with how we could create an income. Plus, my mother loves cooking and making these pasteles, so it was like the perfect pairing between us.”
The Luna women, whose pasteles already had a great reputation among family and close friends, weren’t expecting a dish close to their hearts and ancestry would become the family’s main source of income.
“This idea has been working,” the younger Luna said. “In the midst of a pandemic this has flourished. Despite losing my main job, this has served as a source of income. It’s a lot of work — but it’s helped keep me and my family afloat. With God’s blessing, we are now hoping to continue doing this. We now have a dream to have a small business, rent a small space, and set up a pasteles shop.”
The Lunas’ customers are in the Bronx and Manhattan, and they keep the Lunas busy.
“I will drive and ask people to meet me outside of my car at the front of their apartment building or home and to be wearing a mask. I’ll open my car-door window and hand over their order,” the younger Luna said.
“This week I have to make five dozen sets of pasteles for early holiday orders. ... Next week on
Christmas I have to drop off around 120 pasteles ... and that’s just Christmas Day,” she added.
The mother-daughter team say they feel like professionals with their own logo and name “Pasteles en Hoja NYC.”
“I never really considered making a career out of food but with the pandemic I guess it was born,” Liliana Luna said. “The pandemic made our business in a way — maybe we were always meant to do this, but the situation of the pandemic prompted it to happen faster because we needed to find a new source of income.”