Tucson Tamale Company is beefing up production with a new facility in South Tucson | Subscriber

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An extruder machine, right, will feed the filling into the tamales at Tucson’s second tamale factory, 102 W. 29th St., in South Tucson. Tucson Tamale will produce approximately 25 million tamales annually, 20 million more than the 5 million it makes from its first factory, said Sherry Martin, co-founder of Tucson Tamale.

Rebecca Sasnett, Arizona Daily Star

25 million – that’s how many tamales the Tucson Tamale Company can produce annually in its new facility.

The USDA’s 14,000 square foot South Tucson facility will enable the Tucson Tamale Company to increase production fivefold when it goes live next week.

The new facility is a joint venture with Diamond Ventures, which bought the old Malone Meat & Poultry Co. facility at 102 W. 29th St. last January for $ 955,000. Diamond Ventures agreed to build the space, and Tucson Tamale fitted it with an automated production system, said owner Todd Martin.

Martin said he and his wife / business partner Sherry have agreed to lease the building from Diamond Ventures for 15 years.

Tucson Tamale owners Todd and Sherry Martin will begin manufacturing tamales at their new facility in South Tucson next week.

Courtesy Tucson Tamale Co.

The new facility will help the 13-year-old Tucson company meet its nationwide retail distribution needs.

Tucson Tamale, which began its original East Broadway location in 2008, sells its tamales in 4,000 stores nationwide and has a bustling national e-commerce operation that will ship more than 3,500 orders as of December. Martin said that each order includes an average of 2½ dozen tamales.

Tucson Tamale also expects to sell 25,000 to 30,000 tamales at each of its Tucson restaurants – 7159 E. Tanque Verde Road and 7286 N. Oracle Road – during the Christmas season through New Years Eve. Construction along East Broadway caused the Martins to close the Broadway location in 2018.

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