A borrower's story
Forty dozen tamales on a Friday
Esperanza Quiroz sold tamales from a cooler outside a laundromat on New Bern Avenue for six years. Then a church ordered forty dozen for Christmas, and her kitchen ran out of freezer.
Marisol Arreola · Loan officer
Esperanza first came to a Tuesday coffee in 2023 with her daughter to translate and a shoebox of receipts. She wanted $1,800 for a chest freezer and a second steamer pot.
She had no credit score. She had six years of regulars, a church order book and a habit of writing every sale on the back of an envelope. That was enough.
The freezer changed the math
With somewhere to store them, she could make three hundred tamales on a Thursday instead of fifty a day. Her Friday took two hours instead of eight.
Before, I sold what I could carry. Now I sell what people order.
She repaid the loan in fourteen months. Her second loan, $6,500, bought a used catering trailer last spring. She now sells at three markets and caters two quinceañeras a month.
Her daughter, the translator, is now in a lending circle saving for nursing school.
