Alicia Villanueva

Owner, Alicia's Tamales Los Mayas

Food Service | Hayward

Alicia has been stuffing tamales since childhood, watching her mother and grandmother in the kitchen in Mazatlán, Sinaloa. When she arrived in the United States in 2001, she saw something in the mix of cultures she encountered. An opportunity to connect her story to others through food. She started small, making up to 500 tamales a week and selling them door to door. In 2010, she walked into La Cocina, a nonprofit incubator kitchen in San Francisco's Mission District, with a business plan and a dream. That August, she sold nearly 1,500 tamales in a single day at the SF Street Food Festival.

More than a decade later, Tamales Los Mayas operates out of a 6,000-square-foot facility, employs 22 people and produces more than 24,000 tamales a month. Alicia built that business not just as a food company, but as a job opportunity for people like her. For workers who want to build a life for their families.

"The current political climate and immigration raids have been especially difficult for ATLM and stand in direct opposition to everything we represent. Our team is 100 percent Latinx, and as a result, many of our employees are living with heightened fear and uncertainty. Some are afraid to commute, others worry about their families while trying to focus on their work."

Today, that workforce is under a different kind of pressure. No one has been lost, no revenue has been cut, but the fear is real and measurable. Employees are afraid to commute. Others struggle to focus because they're worried about their families. Morale has eroded. The company Alicia built on the belief that hard work and community should be celebrated is now managing the daily cost of fear as an operating condition.

"ATLM exists because of immigrant resilience. Protecting our team means protecting the heart of our business and the values that brought us here in the first place."