Tamales warrior lands lucrative Chase Center deal.
It's latest win for Berkeley woman, who also is in talks with Whole Foods
It’s only the beginning of the Warriors’ season at the team’s new San Francisco arena, but one woman already feels like a champion. Alicia Villanueva just landed a contract to sell her tamales at Chase Center, nearly two decades after she immigrated from Mexico and started selling her goods door to door in Berkeley.
Villanueva used to make tamales at night, after cleaning houses or taking care of the disabled during the day. For almost a decade, she made about 100 tamales a day and sold them to neighbors and local job sites.
“I would knock on doors and introduce myself” after picking up one son from preschool and carrying her younger son on her back, she said. “Some of them became huge customers.”
Now, with the help of San Francisco-based kitchen incubator La Cocina — her partner in the contract with Chase Center — and loans from the Opportunity Fund, Villanueva has a 6,000-square-foot Hayward factory that makes about 40,000 tamales a month. Last week, Chase Center asked her to deliver 5,000 tamales to the new arena, a number that could change as the basketball season progresses.
Villanueva is in talks to sell her frozen tamales to Whole Foods, and her cooked tamales will be at the hot bar in some stores during the holiday season, she said. Her tamales are also sold at Berkeley Bowl and UC Berkeley. Plus she caters all over the Bay Area and has struck deals with companies that serve her tamales in the cafeterias of Google, Facebook and Twitter.
“I just can’t believe it,” Villanueva, 58, said as she showed off her industrial freezers, steamers and other kitchen equipment. “I’m living a beautiful dream.”
She remembers a time when buying just one of piece of equipment was a hardship, and she’s grateful that La Cocina helped lead her to the Opportunity Fund, a nonprofit that lends to entrepreneurs who might be turned down by banks.
“We have a moral obligation to say yes to people like Alicia,” said Luz Urrutia, CEO of San Jose-based Opportunity Fund, last week at Chase Center. “She embodies the American dream, the entrepreneurial spirit.” When people like Villanueva get loans, it creates jobs and helps local vendors, creating a “ripple effect in our communities,” Urrutia added.
Alicia’s Tamales Los Mayas buys its meat, vegetables and other supplies from nearby suppliers. The company now employs 24 people.
Imelda Noriega, a former restaurant worker, has been with ATLM for two years and is now in charge of quality control, inspecting shipments and making sure the food is at the correct temperatures. Lucy Gomez has been there three years — for as long as the facility has been open — and Villanueva considers her the operation’s sous chef. Gomez said she is muy feliz (very happy) about the company’s growth.
Villanueva hopes to do for her employees what making tamales has done for her: en
sure their children get a good education. Her son Pedro Jr., who graduated from San Francisco State with a degree in environmental studies, now helps ensure the family business is green.
Nearly two decades after starting to make tamales in her Berkeley home,
Villanueva has come a long way. She has had to make changes. As much as she wants to spend most of her time in the kitchen, she can only devote the first few hours of the day there before she turns to the goals she has written on a whiteboard in her office.
She wants her tamales sold at Safeway and served in area schools. She wants to provide medical insurance for her employees within the next year. Longer term, she want to go organic, have vegan offerings, become zero waste and start a free community garden.
But first, Villanueva and Chase Center are feeling their way around each other, especially as the arena prepares for the first regular-season Warriors home game Thursday night. The Warriors have boosted the number of food and drink offerings at the new arena: They have 39 food and beverage stands at Chase Center compared with 14 at Oracle Arena in Oakland, according to a spokesman. They have also doubled the number of full-service bars from 6 to 12.
The phone could ring at any time and Villanueva might need to fill another huge order. She’ll be ready.