Stroll any Denver-area grocery store and you’ll find shelves full of flour or corn tortillas from Mission Foods in various sizes. Only they won’t be made locally anymore.
“Mission Foods should have done better by its workers,” says Kim Cordova, president of UFCW Local 7. “This closure was the natural result of years of chronic underinvestment in the Pueblo facility, and is a consequence of Mission Foods’ decisions to routinely put profit ahead of its people. Not only is this closure tragic for our Local 7 members, but also for the entire Pueblo community. Sadly, this is yet another case of billionaires choosing to line their pockets rather than nourish the communities they serve.”
Mission Foods is a subsidiary of Mexican corporation Gruma S.A., the world’s largest corn flour producer and tortilla maker, which bought the Pueblo plant in 1994. Previously, the plant was operated by a local Pueblo family that ran a popular Mexican restaurant in town and later transitioned to selling tortillas instead…