20 million tamales: Tucson company plans big expansion

If you’ve ever made tamales, just imagine what making a million of them is like.

How about 20 million a year?

Tucson Tamale Co. could do just that eventually, with a current expansion project expected to double its production of the tasty little corn confections to 3.5 million to 4 million next year — and up to 20 million in the future.

And despite the laborious process of cooking, filling, rolling and steaming, the tamales will still be handmade with nongenetically modified corn, oil and other natural ingredients, co-owner Todd Martin said.

The 7-year-old company recently leased an 7,875-square-foot industrial building off West Grant Road near Interstate 10, in order to ramp up production to help move its products into wider regional, and perhaps nationwide, distribution.

The company sells its tamales at three local restaurants and online, as well as through local retail grocers and Arizona locations of regional and national chains, including Whole Foods Market, Sprouts Farmers Market and AJ’s Fine Foods.

Martin says the company’s main production area, in the back of its original store at East Broadway and Tucson Boulevard, is simply too small to meet demand.

“Even there, we really outgrew it about a year ago and have had to make do,” said Martin, who owns the company with his wife, Sherry Martin. “What’s really driving it is our wholesale business.”

Todd Martin said it’s been a challenge to keep up with wholesale demand from retail outlets such as Sprouts, which like other retailers sells Tucson Tamale Co. tamales in frozen form.

The company has had to lease extra freezer space just to store its inventory.

Martin thinks the demand is there for Tucson Tamale to expand wholesale distribution to other states, with Sprouts, Whole Foods or other regional and multistate chains.

Jay Young, store team leader at the Whole Foods Market on East River Road at Craycroft, said he can’t speak to the chain’s future plans, but he has little doubt the demand is there for Tucson Tamale to move into bigger markets.

“People love Tucson Tamale — they have such a high-quality product, they sell like hotcakes,” he said.

The company does a good job keeping up with store demand — though the store’s freezer occasionally gets decimated by ravenous lovers of tamales, Young said.

“Sometimes people come into the store and buy handfuls at a time.”

Martin said the retailers have been receptive to expanded distribution, but there’s no way those talks could move forward without a big boost in production.

“Our goal is to expand beyond the Tucson and Phoenix markets,” Martin said. “We’re in about 150 stores, and that’s been a challenge, just keeping up with that.”

The company plans to ramp up production quickly at the new plant, formerly occupied by Bakehouse Bread Co. before it moved to a bigger space.

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Martin said equipment will be installed over the next couple of weeks at the industrial building at 2550 N. Dragoon St., and production is expected to start there in November, in time for holiday sales.

The company will vastly increase the size of its processing equipment — for example, moving up from a 40-pound capacity ingredient mixer to a 200-pound mixer — but all tamales will still be hand-filled and hand-rolled in corn husks, he said.

The only nod to automation will be a new conveyor belt to carry tamales from one work station to the next.

The company plans to hire about 30 to 40 employees over the next year to handle demand, and plans to pay better than minimum wage, starting at $10 to $12 per hour, depending on experience, he said. The company now employs about 60 people.

The new facility will be designed to allow Tucson Tamale to scale up carefully, as demand dictates, Martin said.

“It could be, though it’s not needed now, a 24-hour operation,” he said.

Like the tamales the company now produces for packaged retail sales, products from the new plant will all be steam-cooked and flash-frozen in a blast freezer.

Though you can buy fresh tamales at the Tucson Tamale restaurants, the frozen tamales keep well with little effect on flavor, Sherry Martin said.

“If you think about all the tamales that people take frozen to go in our three stores and sold in retail outlets, the majority of our tamales are actually sold frozen,” she said.

If Tucson Tamale is able to break into other regional markets or go nationwide, it would be another nod to a town that has recently gained some recognition as an emerging foodie destination.

In March, the company and the Old Pueblo got a boost from Food Network TV chef Alton Brown, who named Tucson Tamale one of his “best bites of the day” on Twitter during on a national tour.

Eric Lauterbach-Colby, grocery and wellness manager for the Food Conspiracy Co-op, said Tucson Tamale’s products are gaining a growing following at the North Fourth Avenue store, adding that the non-GMO ingredients the company uses is a big selling point for many health-conscious shoppers.

“We’ve had a long relationship with them — I think we are one of the first stores that carried them,” he said. “Now they have more options than we can carry.”

Lauterbach-Colby said the new production plant is good news for retailers as well as the makers of the tamales.

“It’s amazing, and we’re really excited for them,” he said. “It’s a great thing for Tucson.”

Todd Martin said he’d be gratified if his company’s tamales help put Tucson on the foodie map, noting that he and his wife made a deliberate decision to use the city in the company’s name when forming the company in 2008.

“We really feel we’re ambassadors for Tucson,” he said.