Special Report: Tamales

Special Report

Tamales

Suppliers are tasked with enlightening retailers to the fact tamales are in high demand across the US. Tamales suppliers are responding to expectations of spicy flavor profiles, respecting traditional meals and bringing hectic families to a halt with fragrant and flavor forward entrees. Suppliers are bringing to retail shelves authentic Latin dishes and are even drawing in some of the harder-to-please consumers who are nostalgic for their abuela’s homemade cooking. These dishes require multiple steps to prepare and families either lack the time or are intimidated by what’s involved in preparing such an all-encompassing recipe. However, suppliers are ensuring consumers can regularly indulge in these dishes at home without requiring time or culinary skills and without spoiling memories of their families’ secret recipes.

Consumers are demanding spicy and hot dishes on top of robust flavors, said Tucson Tamale Founder Todd Martin. “Hot and spicy things are always a hit but more so than ever people are looking for hot and spicy on top of great flavors,” Martin said. “People cooking at home for a year and a half made them more adventurous.”

In terms of adapting and ensuring they can continue to meet shoppers’ needs, “We are a self-manufacturer and we had always planned on adding capacity,” he continued. “We opened a second manufacturing facility here in Tucson so that increased our capacity by five-fold. And now, this year we are trying to keep the supply chain moving. We are doing really well from a manufacturing perspective but the supply chain, it’s still happening but everything is delayed. Fortunately we monitor our inventory levels and pretty much everything is in stock everywhere. Everyone is trying to stay ahead of the game, increasing inventory levels, etc.”

“There are a lot more consumers across the country buying the product across all seasons as opposed to maybe just in the 4th quarter. And it’s not just people in Texas and in California and in places that know tamales but there seems to be broader demand,” said Louis McEneny, President of Texas Tamale Company. “It’s consistent growth from year over year and I’ve seen it over the last 10 years. It’s just a broader acceptance of the product and maybe in the last year, I’ve seen retailers reaching out more saying we want to improve our tamale category.”

“Tamales and specifically with the Texas Tamale Company, we’re very well positioned in the market,” said McEneny. “Tamales seem to be a little bit closer on consumer acceptance. We've been looking at empanadas and some other items and consumers just don’t seem ready to go after that. For some reason, with tamales, people seem more willing, and I don’t know if that’s from Hispanic Americans or just general acceptance of Mexican food or Tex Mex food across the country. When you start getting into Central American or even South American, food there’s a little bit more confusion because even Mexican Americans don’t know what empanadas are because they don’t eat those.”

“When you start diving into tamales and you start talking to people who have a relationship with them, it’s almost like going to an American and saying, ‘Hey, I know you like Thanksgiving dinner, but how about you let somebody else cook it and all of your traditions are different than what I’m going to give you,’ and then see what happens,” McEneny said. “People get defensive. There are a lot of different ways to make tamales and there are a lot of things to put in them. That's difficult and that’s something that we don’t shy away from. It’s hard to have Thanksgiving dinner every week and you don’t really want to cook Thanksgiving dinner every week either. You don’t want to cook tamales every week, it’s a pain. So it’s not like you can’t have it whenever you want it, but it doesn’t mean you can’t have the ones that you love and sometimes you can’t compare things. That's something we’ve been able to get past. There’s such a mindset from people that know the product, people who are adopters or current eaters of tamales, to get over the idea of ‘my grandmother’s tamales are the best.’ Nobody is saying they aren’t, but it doesn’t mean you can’t go to the grocery store and buy these once a week for dinner or for a snack, and people are starting to see that where it’s not just something you make at home. The difference between a homemade waffle and an Eggo waffle is dramatic, but people still buy Eggo waffles and they still eat homemade waffles, and so it’s been interesting to see that transition.”

Educating retailers and consumers who don’t live in the Southwestern states requires addressing misconceptions that people have long-held and have prevented category exploration. “What’s really interesting is when we talk to some buyers, they are either not very familiar with tamales or Mexican food and their first response—and this is a subset of buyers, not all buyers— that they say they don’t have Hispanic customers so nobody will buy the tamales,” Martin said. “We just show them the data that Mexican food is actually the No. 1 food in America, that more than 75 percent of all Americans say they like and enjoy Mexican foods. It’s showing them that Mexican food isn’t just for Hispanics—it’s for everybody. Just like Italian. Once we’ve shown them that, then comes the a-ha moment, now they get it. That’s one of the biggest misconceptions. The second one for us is people who have had tamales said, ‘Oh I had a tamale once, and I didn’t like it.’ Then they try ours and they say, ‘I love this!’ Our flavor profiles are elevated from what you typically think of when you get a tamale. And so it’s really reeducating them not just on what tamales can and should be, but what ours are.” "We’re working with the stores and trying to find opportunities," McEneny said. "Stores are very actively trying to develop out their multicultural platform within the frozen section of not just Tex Mex and Hispanic but Asian and Italian—anything as people have been pushed away from restaurants. Then the question is how fast do restaurants come back and do people still have the same demand to go to restaurants to say, 'How do I find that caliber of food at home and that convenience and affordability?' Millennials are looking for authentic flavors and something different than what they’ve eaten as kids."