Tamales, Love and Entrepreneurship

In her hometown of Tepatitlán de Morelos, the smell of food wafted out of each home as she walked through her city, but there is nothing quite like homecooked meals.

“You name it: sopitas, albondigas, they were making it,” reminisces Arcelia Reynoso. “You can smell everything while passing through all the houses but as soon as you open the door in your own house, you can smell the food and it’s very familiar and you feel so grateful.”

Arcelia’s grandmother, Gavina, taught her how to cook after experiencing partial blindness in both eyes so 9-year-old Arcelia learned her family’s recipes, which the secret ingredient always has been love and passion.

In 2012, her husband, Gerardo Reynoso, 46, lost his job. They have four children together so the pressure set in quickly, but Arcelia and Gerardo knew that they always had amazing cooking skills, so they took a leap of faith and started Te Quiero Mucho.

They both felt everything had started to fall into place; they immediately had friends and family wanting to support their hustle and Arcelia was up for any challenge handed to her and she said “yes” to making any type of food even if she hadn’t perfected a recipe yet.

One of Te Quiero Mucho’s biggest recognitions for their food is winning the International Tamales Festival two years in a row and coming in second place this last year they competed. Arcelia thinks of herself as not being very competitive because it has always just been cooking for the love of the food.

That same year, her grandmother passed away so she asked herself, “What should I do?” She had been prodded by so many loved ones to compete because her tamales are so special.

“I was doubting myself,” she said. “But one day I was just praying and talking to my mom and I said, ‘I’m not doing this because of competition, but to honor [my grandmothers] memory … to be thankful for who she was and for what she did for me.’”

Even though Te Quiero Mucho is Arcelia’s pride and joy, she has bigger dreams to accomplish one day.

Opening a restaurant to sell tamales and other delicacies is a dream, but helping out mothers and college students is also part of the plan too.

“Want to come and work for a few hours while your kids are at school, do it,” Arcelia exclaims. “If students want to come and work for me for four or five hours and also get educated, do both.”

This community mindset comes from always having a household full of kids. When her and Gerardo were living up in Northern California, their backyard was only a hop-of-a-fence away from their children’s school. So, every day, they made sure everyone in the house was fed.

Now that her children are grown and some of them are in college, she has another dream: opening a food truck to go to local colleges and feed students good, low-cost meals.

So many students come from all over the world and many begin missing meals that remind them of home, so Arcelia wants to remind students of home a little bit by making food that warms the soul.

The transition to entrepreneurship has been a long road for Arcelia and Gerardo, but their love for food and how it is so interconnected with Long Beach is what keeps them motivated to keep cooking.