Kansas City-area maker of beloved taco shells appears to have shut down. What happened?
When Anna Keck moved from Gladstone to Indianapolis 11 years ago, she found to her dismay that her favorite taco shells were nowhere to be found on Indiana grocery store shelves.
“I tried a bunch of other shells, but nothing compares to La Tiara,” Keck said. “You put ‘em in the oven on a baking sheet for five minutes at 200 degrees, and they come out paper-thin, warm, crisp. They really are the perfect shell.”
Keck was curious if anybody else shared her enthusiasm. So about eight years ago, after years of loading up on boxes of La Tiara during trips back to Kansas City, she started a Facebook group called We Want La Tiara Taco Shells Available Everywhere.
The group — “mostly just a joke,” Keck said — hovered around 50 members until a few months ago, when Keck noticed a huge uptick in new members and activity.
“All of a sudden, all these people were asking, ‘Where can I find La Tiara shells? My usual place doesn’t carry them anymore,’” Keck said. “And that’s when I started to realize, ‘Oh, wow, this company has maybe gone out of business.’”
She didn’t know it until recently, but La Tiara shells have long been manufactured in Keck’s former home of Gladstone, by a company called Gladstone Food Products. Its products are no longer available on grocery aisles, either in Kansas City or elsewhere in the country where they were previously sold.
The disappearance of the brand has revealed a fervent fan base of home cooks. Keck’s Facebook group, the name of which she has since changed to “Please Bring Back La Tiara Taco Shells,” now has upwards of 750 members from around the country, many of them searching for answers: Who owned this company? Why did they go out of business? Does anybody know the recipe? Does anybody have an extra stash of La Tiara taco shells?
Shell game
Scant information exists about Gladstone Food Products online. Its facility is located at 607 NE 69th St., but neither Gladstone Food Products nor La Tiara has a website. The boxes the shells come in say, “Since 1960,” and a newspaper archive search turns up an advertisement for the brand in a 1962 edition of the Kansas City Times.
Missouri business filings show that Joseph Catalano incorporated Gladstone Food Products in 1967. As of last year, the president of the company was Kim Catalano. The Star’s attempts to reach her were unsuccessful.
“Historically, Kim Catalano has been pretty challenging to get in touch with,” said Gladstone assistant city manager Austin Greer. “We don’t know definitively, but it does seem extremely likely that (Gladstone Food Products) has closed. We have also noticed that there has barely been any activity on their property over the last few months.”
Steve Mogg, owner of Hy Klas Foods, a grocery store with locations in Missouri towns including Plattsburg, Gower and Lathrop, said he had been purchasing La Tiara products through his distributor, Associated Wholesale Grocers. But they are no longer carrying the company’s products.
“Last week, AWG notified their customers that they have not been able to reach anyone at Gladstone Foods in weeks,” Mogg said. “With no contact and no product to sell, they made the decision to discontinue the items.” (Associated Wholesale Grocers did not respond to a request for information.)
In 2018, Gladstone Food Products sought, and received, permission from the city to expand its facility, adding a new building with a new loading dock and a new parking lot configuration. Not long afterward, Keck spotted a box of La Tiara tacos at her local Walmart in Indiana.
“That was probably about three years ago, and I’ve been able to get them at Walmart ever since — until recently,” she said.
Others on the Please Bring Back La Tiara Taco Shells Facebook page have attested to finding the shells at Walmarts in states including Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico.
But recent court filings suggest the company’s expansion may have been accompanied by financial hardship. North Kansas City-based Yates Electric Co. filed a lawsuit in February seeking $203,000 from Gladstone Food Products for unpaid electrical work done at the company’s facility.
And last week Quality Plumbing, Inc., also based in North Kansas City, filed a lawsuit against the company over $254,000 in unpaid bills. Neither Yates Electric nor Quality Plumbing responded to a request for comment.
Gina Foreman Stanley said she was in “disbelief” to learn that the company appeared to have folded. Her grandparents were Joseph and Anna Catalano, who founded Gladstone Food Products, and her father worked for the company for 40 years.
Stanley’s father declined to comment. But Stanley said her uncle, Joseph M. Catalano, took over the company from his parents, and that Joseph M.’s wife, Kim Catalano, inherited the company after Joseph M.’s death. Kim has been running the business alongside her son, Stanley said.
State business filings show Kim Catalano taking over as president of Gladstone Food Products in 2007. More recent filings list Jeffrey Elting as the company’s vice president.
Neither Gladstone Food Products nor Kim Catalano has yet filed for bankruptcy, according to federal court records.
What’s next?
In recent days, chatter on the La Tiara Facebook page has moved beyond the sharing of memories and jokes (“Willing to trade eggs for La Tiara”; “Unopened box of La Tiara expiring 5/25, opening bid $2,000”) into a more earnest discussion of whether this beloved local company could somehow be revived.
“This company needs to come back,” Keck said. “Somebody needs to get the recipe from the owners and reinvest.”
A Gladstone Food Products employee of nearly 19 years said he’d be open to going back to work. He declined to comment on the circumstances surrounding the closing beyond calling it a “surprise.”
“If someone did bring it back and could offer me a decent salary, I would be there to bring you all the tasty shells,” he wrote on the Facebook page.
Andy Miller, who owns the local Mexican food manufacturing company Spanish Gardens, said he’s been trying to do just that. With another local taco shell maker, Perez Food Products, also having gone out of business at the end of last year, Miller sees a hole in the market.
“I’ve left business cards on the door, multiple messages on their cellphone,” Miller said. “I can’t get anyone (at Gladstone Food Products) to return a call. Curious what they’re going to do with the equipment and the brand. I’d love to keep it going.”
For the foreseeable future, though, Taco Tuesdays will be a little less tasty for Keck and countless other superfans across the country.
“You kind of expect these comfort-food types of brands that you grew up with to be around forever,” Keck said. “It’s sad when they can’t survive. But having this Facebook page, it’s been nice to see people talking so much about La Tiara. It feels good to love a silly product and then find out a lot of other people do too.”
This story was originally published March 12, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
