Jax Bros Sandwich Shop continues family legacy
The Recio family has been providing burgers to the San Marcos population for years now with their downtown location, Jax Burgers, Fries and Shakes. A Best of Hays winner multiple years in a row, the family business has solidified itself in the college and local community. Their newest venture Jax Bros Sandwich Shop is located in a historical yet growing area of San Marcos, offering the East Guadalupe neighborhood easy access to fresh sandwiches with a family focus.
John Recio is the owner and founder of Jax Burgers, which now has six locations across Texas as well as a bar and restaurant, Cosmic Cowboy Lounge in Spring, Texas. He is a second-generation restaurateur, who works hand in hand with his sons Jake and Max. The brothers inspired the business name Jax, a mixture of their names, sixteen years ago. After years of success and growing Jax Burgers, the family wanted to flex their creative muscles in a different area of the restaurant world.
“Really it’s just the crea- tivity of making food and making people happy that made us want to open a sandwich shop,” Recio said.
The sandwich restaurant is located at 500 S. Guadalupe St., near iconic institutions like Cheatham Street Warehouse and Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos. The restaurant shares a building with Galaxy Bicycles.
“I saw this building, and I thought, ‘Wow, it reminds me of an East Coast Italian type sandwich shop in New York or somewhere in Chicago,’” Recio said.
The inspiration from the building and the location was a driving force of venturing into the sandwich world. He appreciated the accessible sidewalk and urban character of the area which invited people to walk over from their jobs or downtown.
“It’s just a very unique building. When I look at something like this, in a town like this, in an area like this it reminds me of where I grew up,” Recio said. Hailing from Heights Houston, the comfort and familiarity inspired him to open up shop in this historic neighborhood.
“I had a lot of artistic thoughts about it and I even have like, a five year, ten year down the road [plan of] what it’s going to look like and what this is going to become,” Recio said. “It’s just going to always grow and always become part of the community, and whatever the community needs will grow into that as well.”
Creativity was the driving force in venturing into the world of sandwiches.
“The reason we picked sandwiches is because we’ve already accomplished what we wanted to in the burger world,” Recio said. “Our creative juices were going because we saw in the food industry that burgers and pretty much beef and barbecue kind of rule everything. My need to create a really great sandwich just kind of came to the forefront.”
The focus is to keep the restaurant as community centered as possible, providing consistency and affordability.
“We don’t necessarily look at projected sales or how we’re doing economically,” Recio said. “We look at how we’re doing within the community and the perception and how they look at our food and know that we serve great quality food.”
The focus on community extends past their customers, with the shop partnering with New World bakery located in Kyle.
“We actually started with a different bread here, but I kept seeing the New World bakery truck drive up and down the street and I knew it had to be popular and I knew it had to be good, because it reminded me of some trucks back home,” Recio said. “So I found the bakery, which is right Kyle, a few miles down the road and the rest is history.”
The sandwich shop prides itself on local bread baked fresh daily, Boar’s Head meats, and a unique approach to how customers experience their food.
“You taste with your eyes first,” Recio said. “You want to let them know what they’re getting, but you want to give it to them in a way that they didn’t expect.”
This is seen in the way they serve their cheesecake, instead of a slice, they serve cheesecake sundaes.
“But it’s very fun for me to create so every once in a while I have a creative urge to do something different,” Recio said.
The family business understands that the heart of their business is their customers.
“You really want to take care of your customers, you want to take care of your employees, and then the rest just kind of works out,” Recio said. “Everything that goes into those sandwiches is a part of us.” Jax Bros Sandwiches is located at 500 S Guadalupe St and is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
