Interviewers: David Croke and Brad Haugen
Location: Gonzales Food Market, 311 St. Lawrence St., Gonzales, Texas 78629
This interview was originally produced through a collaborative effort of the American Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin, The Central Texas Barbecue Association, and The Southern Foodways Alliance.
It is shared with Foodways Texas as part of a collaboration with the Southern Foodways Alliance to document food stories in Texas.
Richard Lopez is the third-generation proprietor of the Gonzales Food Market in Gonzales, Texas, a storefront barbecue restaurant located on the town’s historic Texas Heroes Square.
Richard grew up in Gonzales, working in the market alongside numerous cousins and extended family members. When his father decided to retire, Richard, who spent twenty years working for the corporate grocery chain Albertson’s, was eager to continue a family tradition. In spite of the long hours, Richard wouldn’t have it any other way. Because of the family’s dedication to the business, Gonzales Food Market is famous for its sausage, which is still made fresh, by hand, in the back of the shop. It’s made following the fifty-year-old recipe that Richard’s grandfather obtained from on old friend, Fermin Cantu, when he decided to open a barbecue restaurant and grocery in 1958. Today, the market is operated by multiple generations of the Lopez family. As Richard says, “Without these people, the tradition and the success would never have happened.”
