Owners Higinio (right) and Ascención Amado opened the Pinehurst cafe for GrandE Tamales in December.[/caption]Born and raised in different parts of Mexico, Higinio and Ascencion Amado moved to California at 16 years old and 10 years old, respectively. After meeting at a salsa dance club and marrying in 2000, the Amados found a new home by moving to Texas in 2008. The couple said they never imagined they would open a business specializing in handcrafted tamales.
"For me, tamales are what is opening the way for me to do everything else that I like to do," Higinio said. "The things that I'm doing right now are my memories from childhood. When I was 16, I would call my mom and ask her [for her] recipes because I didn't like what I was eating [in California]. I started very young learning to cook."
Six years ago Ascencion was pregnant with the couple's third child and began craving authentic Mexican tamales. After tasting several tamales at local eateries, she said she struggled to find any to her liking. With nearly 20 years of experience working in restaurants, hotels and bars, Higinio said he began learning how to make tamales for the first time by mimicking his mother's technique and laid the groundwork for creating GrandE Tamales.
In 2009, the Amados began selling their handmade tamales at 10 farmers markets each week in the Greater Houston area. Higinio said GrandE Tamales quickly began to build a strong namesake in the community, with customers waiting in lines to purchase the products. As business continued to grow, the Amados refurbished an old house and began operating a 900-square-foot kitchen at the site in 2011.
"Imagine for years the two of us making [tamales], packaging them, promoting them, selling them—we had no money," Ascencion said. "We're going to stick with quality and traditional, and we're going to present that to the customer. The more we [grew] the more we learned that is what the customer is looking for, and it is what they want."
In December, the Amados upgraded their business operations to 24 employees and opened a 3,200-square-foot factory, shipping area and cafe in Pinehurst. The Amados sell fresh and frozen handmade tamales and salsas in a variety of flavors and offer an open seating area with free Wi-Fi and coffee for guests.
"It's a place where everyone in the family or companies would feel comfortable coming in and being able to have good food in a good atmosphere," Ascencion said.
In addition to the storefront, the Amados sell tamales in three H-E-B stores in The Woodlands and rotate their products at other H-E-B locations in the Cy-Fair, Sugar Land and Katy areas. GrandE Tamales produces three shipments each day containing about 4,200–5,400 total tamales for the H-E-B locations, Ascencion said.
In 2011, an H-E-B executive approached the couple at a farmers market in Magnolia and expressed interest in stocking the handmade tamales in the company's stores, Higinio said. The Amados attribute much of the establishment's early economic success to the Small Business Development Center at Lone Star College–Tomball.
GrandE Tamales plans to obtain a liquor license in May or June to sell specialty drinks, including margaritas, sangrias and beer cocktails known as chabelitas. The Amados are also in the process of applying for a U.S. Department of Agriculture certification to sell wholesale products with H-E-B on a larger scale in the future, Higinio said.
"I'm thinking it's [going to be] a franchise [concept], but I'm going to be cooking everything here [at the Pinehurst location]," Higinio said. "We're going to [open] the storefront in The Woodlands. The quality has to be the same all the time."
