Editor’s note: Made in Tarrant is an occasional Q&A series on small businesses started in Tarrant County. Submit your business here.
About 30 steps past Marquez Bakery’s front kitchen, a door opened onto a factory floor. The air was hot. The space was wide. Machinery muffled conversations.
Above the metallic roar, Mexican cumbia music blasted from a speaker, its accordion-accented percussion beat cutting through the noise. Some workers prepared and rested dough. Another station fed proofed portions into a whirring machine that flattened each piece.
Everything had a rhythm.
Over more than three decades of preheating ovens and working dough, Marquez Bakery on East Division Street has become an all-in-one bakery, restaurant and tortilla factory. The family-run business operates almost around the clock — the kind of work built on trust and people who stay long enough to become family.
A manager who started with the family at 14 years old hasn’t left in 43 years. A production manager and logistics coordinator started on the tortilla line in the early ’90s. Sally Venegas and her sister Norma Nuñez have watched workers have children, then become part of their grandchildren’s lives.
“Sally and I are not Marquez Bakery. We are all Marquez Bakery, because we couldn’t do this without them,” Nuñez said.
The Fort Worth Report spoke with Venegas and Nuñez about their business and their connections to Arlington. The interview has been edited for clarity and space.
Dang Le: How would you describe Marquez Bakery for people who have never been?
Norma Nuñez: Marquez Bakery is a restaurant, bakery and tortilla factory all rolled into one. Our dad was a baker by trade, so that’s how it started. Tortillas came next. When we opened in Arlington in 1990, it was hard to find authentic Mexican bakeries and food. You had to go to Dallas or Fort Worth.
People told us, “Y’all should sell this. Y’all should sell that.” That’s how we started selling tamales, menudo and eventually restaurant food. None of us had restaurant experience.
Sally Venegas: We stumbled into it.
Nuñez: Zero.
Venegas: We learned quickly because we had to. But we also had employees who knew the kitchen, the line, the prep work. They taught us a lot.
Production team member Blanca Herrera loads balls of tortilla dough onto a tray June 26 at Marquez Bakery. At the bakery, tortilla sales rise when the weather warms, while bread sells better in colder months. (Christine Vo | Fort Worth Report)
Le: I’d love to hear the origin story.
Venegas: My parents immigrated from Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico. My dad first worked as a baker in San Antonio, then at a neighborhood grocery store and meat market in San Angelo that had a bakery but no baker. A few years later, he bought it. They separated it from the grocery store, and it became its own business around 1971.
Years later, after our parents got divorced, my sister was going to college in Arlington. My dad would visit and saw a need. There wasn’t a place between Dallas and Fort Worth for pastries, tortillas and things people missed from home.
Nuñez: He would drop me off at school, then watch the flow of traffic — people going downtown, to General Motors, to the university. We started in a 1,200-square-foot building on Abrams Street in 1990. Then we built this building from the ground up and moved here in 1996.
Le: Did you expect to eventually run the place?
Nuñez: No. When I left San Angelo, I thought I would never work in the bakery again [laughs]. But when your family has a business, that’s where you grow up and work after school.
He died unexpectedly in 2000 at 54. By then, we had worked here long enough to know what we were doing. He was sort of semiretired.
Production team member Liliana Martinez and supervisor Brenda Sales place balls of tortilla dough to be flattened and baked June 26 at Marquez Bakery. Some customers have visited long enough that employees know their orders before they reach the counter. (Christine Vo | Fort Worth Report)
Le: What were the discussions about keeping the business going?
Venegas: There wasn’t time to think about it. It was: We’re either doing this or we’re not. And not doing it was not an option.
Le: What does the day-to-day operation look like?
Venegas: There’s always somebody here, no matter what time you come.
Tortilla production starts at 3 a.m. During the week, the kitchen comes in around 4 a.m. The doors open at 6 a.m., and we close at 4 p.m. Distributors start picking up at 4 a.m.
Our cake decorator arrives at around 2 p.m., and our baker between 7 and 9 p.m. He’s gone by 6 a.m. Then cashiers get here around 5:30 a.m.
Le: That requires a lot of trust.
Nuñez: Exactly. We are definitely a family here. Like any family, we have highs and lows. But when something happens to somebody here, we’re all there together — good or bad.
We celebrate everyone’s birthdays monthly. We had one yesterday, and some customers sang with us. We’ve become part of the community, but the community has also become part of us.
Le: So what are your favorite items?
Venegas: The little cups of buñuelos! They’re crispy, cinnamony and sugary. For breakfast, I love the migas, extra crispy. For lunch, the kitchen teases me because I go through phases. Sometimes chorizo. Then guiso or barbacoa. They’ll say, “What trip are you on now?”
Nuñez: I’m the opposite. I eat more bread than food. The pink sprinkle cookies are my favorite. I try not to [laughs], but I could eat one every day. For food, enchiladas are one of my favorites.
Fresh tortillas are baked June 26 at Marquez Bakery in Arlington. The bakery wholesales flour tortillas to Walmart, local Fiesta stores, El Rio Grande supermarkets and restaurants. (Christine Vo | Fort Worth Report)
Le: What makes the bread and tortillas here good?
Nuñez: Our baker [both laugh]! A lot of places buy frozen products or mixes. The only mix we use is for cake, and even then, they change it up.
Venegas: Everything is made from scratch.
Nuñez: Our tortillas are different. National brands are designed to last for months on the shelf. Ours last about two weeks. They have very little preservatives, so they taste more homemade.
Venegas: And when you heat it up, it’ll bubble up and almost look like popcorn.
Nuñez: This may ruin it for you, but anytime you go to a Mexican restaurant, smell the tortilla.
Le: For 36 years, what brings people back?
Venegas: It feels like home.
Nuñez: Customers walk in — or sometimes employees see them parking — and they’re already working on the burritos because they know what that customer wants. Mayor Jim Ross comes in for machacado and egg. It’s not on the menu unless you’re Mayor Ross. That’s his big flex.
Venegas: When we see a fire truck pull up, we start getting El Pepe burritos ready because that’s what the firefighters eat.
Nuñez: The police officers come before or after events or games, and they order a lot of noncarb stuff — eggs with sausage, eggs with bacon.
Venegas: We have customers that we’d know the most intimate parts of their lives without knowing anyone else in their family. We know what they eat, where their kids live, how many grandkids they have. Sometimes it’s sad when we hear they’ve passed.
Production team member Cristina Ramirez stacks fresh tortillas to be packaged June 26 at Marquez Bakery. The bakery is within a mile of AT&T Stadium, Globe Life Field and Choctaw Stadium. (Christine Vo | Fort Worth Report)
Le: Is there something you’ve accomplished that you wish your father could have seen?
Venegas: I wish he could have seen us become adults — grown women, mothers and wives. I wish he could have experienced that with us. I think he’d be proud.
Nuñez: I think he’d be proud knowing the business has continued to flourish. Many businesses, big and small, haven’t made it. But we’re still here.
Le: What makes you most proud?
Venegas: That we’ve all done this together and continue to do it together every day.
Nuñez: In this economy and this climate, it’s been tough. But we have people who have been here for years and raised their families here. That tells me more than any sales number can.
I always tease them that this is like Hotel California: Once you’re here, you can never leave.
Venegas: We had one employee who was here about 10 years, left for about 15 and came back about five years ago. She came in to eat breakfast, and we happened to be hiring.
Nuñez: She said, “This is home. I should have never left.” We told her, “It’s OK. We’re still here.”
Quality control staff Maria Muñoz checks fresh tortillas June 26 at Marquez Bakery in Arlington. The bakery has resisted switching to frozen products, even when it would cut waste and improve consistency, co-owner Sally Venegas said. (Christine Vo | Fort Worth Report)
Dang Le is the higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at dang.le@fortworthreport.org.
The Fort Worth Report partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
The Report’s higher education coverage is supported in part by major higher education institutions in Tarrant County, including Tarleton State University, Tarrant County College, Texas A&M-Fort Worth, Texas Christian University, Texas Wesleyan University, the University of Texas at Arlington and UNT Health Fort Worth.
At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
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