HispanicBusiness

Cardenas Markets knows about super sizing.

On Sunday, market employees served a 1,500-foot burrito to 6,000 hungry festival-goers.

The burrito, the length of five football fields, gave new meaning to the word "grande."

The construction and serving of the huge burrito was the centerpiece of the sixth annual Festival Cardenas at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana.

Attendance was estimated at 110,000, making it the largest Hispanic festival in the Inland Empire, according to Marco Robles, spokesman for Cardenas Markets.

Under cloudy skies, a helicopter hovered overhead, taking aerial photographs of the crowd.

Live music, headlined by the group Intocable, food vendors, and a kids' zone

filled the Speedway parking lot throughout the day.

The lengthy burrito was constructed in two rows on a long line of plastic-covered tables.

Fifteen hundred pounds of meat; 850 pounds of beans; 850 pounds of rice; 100 pounds of onions; 50 pounds of cilantro; and 25 pounds of salsa were wrapped in 4,560 flour tortillas before being wrapped in paper.

The burrito had five flavors along its length: carne asada, carnitas, al pastor, chili verde and chicken.

"It was completed in less than one hour," Robles said, "which beats last year's record. In 2011, our first burrito was 1,000 feet long and took one hour to make."

Speed is important because organizers wanted to break their own record, and by health permit standards, the food could not be exposed for more than one hour, according to Robles.

Scott Valdez, a Cardenas employee in charge of preparation, said 150 people worked on the assembly line, and it was "fun to roll it up."

Rep. Joe Baca, D-San Bernardino, cut the first slice and gave a "thumbs up" before the burrito was sliced onto paper plates and passed out to the waiting crowd.

Second District county Supervisor Janice Rutherford was on hand with her 3-year-old son Noah.

"It's wonderful to see people excited and enthusiastic for Cardenas Markets and their products," Rutherford said.

Everything about the festival was supersized: the 100-foot-long Rosca del Reyes, the largest Christmas bread in the Inland Empire, and a decorated Thanksgiving cake as big as a model train layout, which served 3,000.

Cardenas Markets is a family-owned business headquartered in Ontario with 29 stores in San Bernardino County, Imperial County, Riverside County, Los Angeles County and Las Vegas, Robles said.