here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\nAbout 30 steps past Marquez Bakery\u2019s front kitchen, a door opened onto a factory floor. The air was hot. The space was wide. Machinery muffled conversations.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Everything had a rhythm.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 the kind of work built on trust and people who stay long enough to become family.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A manager who started with the family at 14 years old hasn\u2019t left in 43 years. A production manager and logistics coordinator started on the tortilla line in the early \u201990s. Sally Venegas and her sister Norma Nu\u00f1ez have watched workers have children, then become part of their grandchildren\u2019s lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSally and I are not Marquez Bakery. We are all Marquez Bakery, because we couldn\u2019t do this without them,\u201d Nu\u00f1ez said.<\/p>\n
The Fort Worth Report spoke with Venegas and Nu\u00f1ez about their business and their connections to Arlington. The interview has been edited for clarity and space.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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