Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

Attention, San Francisco: Uber Is Chauffeuring the Tamale Lady Tonight to Deliver Free Tamales On Demand

While AllThingsD generally abstains from writing about Uber’s myriad food delivery stunts, here’s a fun one that may concern our readers who happen to be out enjoying the mild San Francisco weather tonight.

In hyper-hyperlocal news, ride-hailing service Uber is underwriting free on-demand tamales from San Francisco’s famous Tamale Lady, Virginia Ramos, this evening.

Ramos will be chauffeured around town in an UberSUV, delivering tamales and hugs to anyone who can get through to make the request from the Mission and the Lower Haight neighborhoods.

A San Francisco institution and a friendly and recognizable face to many who enjoy the city’s nightlife, Ramos was blocked in June from selling her tamales to hipsters and hippies and everyone else in San Francisco because she had been cooking them in an unlicensed kitchen.

Prior to that, she had been pushing her cart from bar to bar for some 20 years, selling homemade late-night snacks for $4, inspiring bumper stickers and nearly 350 Yelp reviews.

Now Ramos is trying to open a brick-and-mortar tamale shop, and has launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise $50,000.

The tamales start at 8 pm PT tonight and go till they run out. Uber warns, “There’s only one Virginia, so if you see a grayed-out icon and can’t get tamales right away, please keep trying.”

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

There’s a lot of attention and PR around Marissa, but their product lineup just kind of blows.

— Om Malik on Bloomberg TV, talking about Yahoo, the September issue of Vogue Magazine, and our overdependence on Google