Workers at the Mission Foods tortilla plant in Pueblo showed up for their shifts on August 14 and were told, in person, by corporate executives that manufacturing was ending immediately. Production stopped on the spot, and employees were instructed to pack their belongings and leave without any advance notice. Ninety people lost their jobs at the facility, which had been turning out tortillas at 2110 Santa Fe Drive for nearly seven decades.
The abrupt shutdown was first detailed by the Denver Gazette, which reported that Mission Foods, a subsidiary of Mexico-based Gruma, submitted a formal notice to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment confirming the layoffs. As KRDO reported, corporate executives arrived in person to deliver the news while production was still underway, halting operations on the spot rather than winding them down.
Despite the sudden stoppage, the paperwork tells a more gradual story. Mission Foods' WARN letter, filed with the state, states that the closure is expected to be permanent, and the same filing set October 13, 2026, as the start of formal layoffs, with the process complete by October 27, according to the Denver Gazette. Federal WARN Act rules generally require employers with 100 or more full-time workers to give 60 calendar days of advance written notice before layoffs affecting 50 or more employees, per the U.S. Department of Labor, which is why affected employees will keep receiving pay and benefits through the facility's official closure date even though the ovens went dark in mid-August.
A Plant With Roots Back to 1957
The Pueblo facility's story stretches back to a small restaurant opened by Candelario and Cedelia Estrada in 1957, whose homemade tortillas became known locally before growing into Candy's Tortilla Factory. Mission Foods purchased that operation in 1994, according to the Denver Gazette, and continued running the plant under its own name for more than three decades. Plant workers had been represented by United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 since the 1980s, per the same reporting.
Kim Cordova, president of UFCW Local 7, did not mince words about how the closure came together. She called it the natural result of years of chronic underinvestment in the Pueblo facility, and said Mission Foods put profit ahead of its people, according to the Denver Gazette. Cordova said the closure affects both Local 7 members and the broader Pueblo community, and added that the company should have done better by its workers.
Bumping Rights and a Union Contract Cut Short
Union employees affected by the closure hold bumping rights that let eligible members displace more junior employees at Mission Foods distribution facilities in both Pueblo and Aurora, according to Food Processing. The Pueblo distribution center sits roughly three driving miles from the shuttered plant, per the Denver Gazette, though the WARN filing specifies that nonunion employees do not have that same bumping option. UFCW Local 7 is coordinating with the Southern Colorado Labor Council and local government allies to line up transition and dislocated-worker support resources for the 90 affected employees, KRDO reports.
The timing stings for union members: the closure lands during the first year of a collective bargaining agreement UFCW Local 7 negotiated to run from 2025 through 2028, per the union's own contract records. It also comes after the union had secured mid-contract pay raises for Pueblo production and sanitation staff in past years, including a $2-per-hour wage increase implemented in October 2021, according to reporting from Pueblo Independent News.
Armando Garza, Mission Foods' regional director of manufacturing, struck a different tone in a statement to the Denver Gazette, saying the company is grateful to its employees and is supporting them during their career transition. Gruma is one of the largest corn flour tortilla makers in the world, and the company reported operating income of $890 million in 2025, according to its annual report cited by the Denver Gazette.
Consolidation Trend and Local Fallout
The Pueblo shutdown fits a broader pattern in Gruma's U.S. operations. The company has increasingly concentrated manufacturing in large-scale, automated facilities such as its 510,000-square-foot plant in Plainfield, Indiana, and now operates 22 manufacturing plants nationwide, according to a report from Just Food. Statewide, Colorado has recorded 39 WARN filings affecting 4,884 workers so far this year, per the Denver Gazette's review of state data.
The job losses land in a county already struggling on the employment front. Pueblo County's unemployment rate stood at 5.1% in May 2026, and the broader Pueblo metro area came in at 5.6% in June, both well above Colorado's statewide rate of 3.9% that same month, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. State workforce officials have tried to offset losses like this one with new training pipelines, including a recent grant to establish an aviation maintenance technician program at Pueblo Community College, projected to create 45 full-time jobs paying an average salary near $79,000, per the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. For the 90 workers walking away from the tortilla line this month, that kind of retraining may be the clearest path forward, even as their union pushes for accountability over how the closure was handled.
