Manuela Guti\u00e9rrez T\u00e9llez<\/a>, the matriarch of Tellez Tamales, which she co-founded in 1975 alongside her husband of 60 years, Luis\u00a0T\u00e9llez. Though every day comes with unknowns, Manuela\u2019s words still linger among her loved ones in a beautiful and inspiring way.\u00a0<\/p>\nArticle continues below this ad<\/p>\n
“I was cooking, and she was like, ‘Mijo, make sure that you do everything with all your heart, and it’s gonna come out that way.’ And she didn’t mean just with cooking … but she meant in life. And ever since then, every time I cook, I do it with all my heart,” Manuela’s son Gabriel T\u00e9llez, who helps run the business, told MySA during an interview at the tamale factory on Bandera Road.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The emotions of her daughters, Brenda T\u00e9llez and Sandra Uribe, along with Gabriel and Luis, were palpable yet pure. But the stories each of them shared while sitting across one of the tables inside the shop on an overcast Monday morning were moving to the core and grounding all at once.<\/p>\n
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An old photo of Luis T\u00e9llez and his late wife, Manuela Guti\u00e9rrez T\u00e9llez, the co-founders of Tellez Tamales.<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Brenda T\u00e9llez<\/p>\n
“[Manuela] said, ‘Treat everyone like family, not just the customer,'” Brenda said. “They’re coming into your home, you know? You treat them like family. And that’s the way she was. Mommy never knew a stranger.”<\/p>\n
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But when your mom was known for tenacity and her ability to make the most out of every situation, searching for silver linings and giving every single day her all, there\u2019s much to follow after. And though the T\u00e9llez siblings we spoke with admitted they know now that their parents were struggling to keep things chugging along throughout their childhood and teenage years, Brenda said, “I never felt that I was without.”<\/p>\n
Gabriel chimed in, “What you needed was your family. … And we always had each other, and they made sure that we always had each other, and also they tried extra hard to not let us know that they were struggling.”<\/p>\n
For Luis, a native of Laredo, Texas, who worked multiple jobs, including cutting meat at H-E-B and cleaning incinerators to help support their growing family, opening Tellez Tamales was less about a passion for the craft and more about necessity. Of course, things have changed since they opened the first shop on General\u00a0McMullen Drive.<\/p>\n
Not only did the business shift from selling solely\u00a0barbacoa to introducing tamales into the mix, but it’s expanded, now with the factory on Bandera where all the delicious handmade\u00a0tamale, menudo and barbacoa magic is crafted (we were there at 4 a.m. when the menudo was cooking, and my oh my \u2014 did it smell mesmerizing).<\/p>\n
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![\"Tamaleras]()
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Tamaleras making tamales by hand at Tellez Tamales & Barbacoa on Bandera Road in San Antonio.<\/p>\n
Taylor Kamnetz\/MySA![\"Gabriel]()
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Gabriel T\u00e9llez told MySA that because the tamales are handmade, each tamale is “a work of art by that person.”<\/p>\n
Taylor Kamnetz\/MySA<\/p>\n
Tellez Tamales carries on amid the challenges of the hospitality industry<\/p>\n
However, running a tamale business with multiple locations presents its own challenges, some of which are all too familiar to those in the hospitality industry. Rising product costs and the sudden disappearance of a spice supplier have added to the stress the family is already feeling after losing its matriarch, forcing the folks at Tellez Tamales to seek out a new supplier.<\/p>\n
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That, along with some uncertainty around whether their corn husk provider, which gets the products from Mexico, will be able to acquire them in the future, has muddied the waters a bit. But, still, the family carries on with\u00a0Manuela’s words, telling them to give their all every day, no matter the circumstances, and to do it with all their heart.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now that the business has been around for 50 years, Luis and the staff are serving generations of families, and it’s a sight to see. “We have customers that have been our customers since [1975],” Luis said. “We used to serve their parents, and their parents would come in with their children. Now, their children are adults, and they come in with their children.”<\/p>\n
“It’s a beautiful thing,” Gabriel added. “Because, like Brenda said, mom always said, ‘Treat them like family.’ And we had. We’re very lucky. We have excellent customers. Like dad said, all the generations that have come. Part of it is the food, and part of it is they felt like family.”<\/p>\n
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An old photo of Brenda T\u00e9llez and her father, Luis T\u00e9llez, who is seen holding a platter of tamales.<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Brenda T\u00e9llez![\"A]()
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A tray full of freshly filled tamales at Tellez Tamales in San Antonio.<\/p>\n
Taylor Kamnetz\/MySA<\/p>\n
As for carrying on the legacy of its matriarch and that of his wife, Luis admitted, “Things have gotten hard before, and they’re getting hard again. And God only knows what’s going to happen. But we’re going to continue making tamales, selling\u00a0barbacoa as long as we possibly can.”<\/p>\n
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Though it’s difficult to move forward after\u00a0a deeply personal loss, the T\u00e9llez family is doing their best, day in and day out, to keep customers happy and ensure the quality of their tamales and other food options is the same people have come to know and love. It’s no easy feat to acquire a customer base who drives in from Mexico for your handmade tamales (which tamaleras make on-site between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. five days a week, a schedule that intensifies after Thanksgiving through New Year’s).\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I think mommy would be very proud that we’re not giving up, because that’s not what mom would do. Mom would find a different way,” Brenda explained. “I think she sees us, that we are still working hard to keep the business going. We don’t want it to fail. That’s not an option.”<\/p>\n
Find it: 1802\u00a0Bandera Road, San Antonio, TX 78228 | 1737 S. General McMullen Drive, San Antonio, TX 78237<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From left to right: Gabriel T\u00e9llez, Sandra Uribe, Luis T\u00e9llez and Brenda T\u00e9llez are seen inside Tellez Tamales…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1112,820,82,84,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-42877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-mysafood","9":"tag-mysastaff","10":"tag-san-antonio","11":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","12":"tag-san-antonio-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}