Jim Hasslocher of Jim’s Restaurants dead at 93

G. Jim Hasslocher, who went from peddling watermelon slices and hamburgers at Brackenridge Park to becoming the “Jim” in the Jim’s Restaurants chain, died Wednesday.

He was 93.

“It was just very sudden,” said his son, Jimmy Hasslocher, CEO and president of Frontier Enterprises, Inc., which operates the 19 locations of Jim’s Restaurants in San Antonio and Austin, the Magic Time Machine restaurants in San Antonio and Dallas, La Fonda Alamo Heights, and soon will be opening Frontier Burger, Jim Hasslocher’s long-planned reintroduction of the burger that got it all started.

“Nobody was any luckier than me,” Jimmy Hasslocher said of his father. “I had the best dad in the world, mentor, friend.”

Just days ago, Jim Hasslocher was at the Frontier Burger site on Northeast Loop 410, measuring things, his son said.

“This was something he was really, really working on, was looking forward to,” Jimmy Hasslocher said. “He could read a set of blueprints better than anybody.”

From 1968 until 2004, Frontier Enterprises operated the highest-altitude restaurant in San Antonio, the one atop the 750-foot Tower of the Americas at HemisFair Plaza.

Frontier Enterprises over the decades also started other restaurant ventures that later closed, including the innovative The Wayward Lady, a floating restaurant in Corpus Christi.

Hasslocher operated Frontier Enterprises for more than six decades with his wife, Veva, as his co-chairman. Veva died May 6, 2009, at the age of 85.

G. “Jim” Hasslocher was born Aug. 25, 1922, in Shreveport, La., with the name Germano Hasslocher. He later switched to the nickname “Jim.”

Hasslocher attended Allen Military Academy in Bryan and served four years during World War II in a U.S. Army engineering unit. Because his mother had relocated to San Antonio, Hasslocher moved here and attended St. Mary’s University, taking business courses he later credited with giving him essential instruction that proved vital in his career.

The oft-told story of the origins of Jim’s Restaurants and Frontier has become one of San Antonio’s business legends.

In 1946, Hasslocher manned his uncle’s bicycle rental stand at a Brackenridge Park entrance. He started selling watermelon slices to park visitors and later offered hamburgers.

He opened his first Frontier Drive-In near the present-day Witte Museum in 1947. That also was the year he married Veva, who he met when she and a girlfriend rented bicycles from him the year earlier.

The drive-in, with counter seating, specialized in hamburgers, fries, onion rings, chicken, steaks, malts and shakes. The first Jim’s Coffee Shop opened in 1963. As the chain grew, the name was changed to Jim’s Restaurants.

Hasslocher traveled widely to get ideas from other chains, recalled his daughter, Caryn Hasslocher, now owner of Fresh Horizons Creative Catering.

“What I remember in those early years, he worked so much we didn’t see him much,” his daughter, Caryn Hasslocher, said. “He dedicated himself to grow and succeed in his business,” she said.

“He was working on Loop 410 before there was a Loop 410,” she added. “In that regard, he influenced road work in San Antonio.”

The first Jim’s Coffee Shop opened in 1963. As the chain grew, the name was changed to Jim’s Restaurants. Hasslocher traveled widely to get ideas from other chains, recalled his daughter, Caryn Hasslocher, now owner of Fresh Horizons Creative Catering.

“What I remember in those early years, he worked so much we didn’t see him much,” daughter Caryn Hasslocher said. “He dedicated himself to grow and succeed in his business.”

It was very much a family business. Along with Veva, all five of their children at some point worked for the company.

It wasn’t long before Jim’s became the “place to go for politicos,” County Judge Nelson Wolff said.

“Meet me at Jim’s became a famous saying,” Wolff, a longtime friend of the family, remembered.

Wolff said the Jim’s story is largely about the family’s strong work ethic.

“His wife was very active and I think that was a key to their success,” he said. “And then, there’s one thing you can’t replicate and that’s the work ethic. ... They were always in the stores.”

Lucille Hooker, owner and partner of Jacala Mexican Restaurant, recalled growing up with her family’s young restaurant so close to Jim’s. Both started out as mom-and-pop operations, and each couple ended up feeding the others’ kids.

“They were both new at the time, and so they would go back and forth and trade tacos for hamburgers all the time,” she said. “That hamburger, it just had a different taste to it. ... I still crave them.”

The year of San Antonio’s world’s fair, HemisFair ‘68, Hasslocher won the right to operate the Tower of the Americas’ restaurant. The revolving restaurant operated under the name Tower Foods, a unit of Frontier Enterprises. Hasslocher also operated several ground-level restaurants during the fair, Caryn Hasslocher said.

The first Magic Time Machine opened in 1973 along Loop 410 near Broadway. Combining several concepts Hasslocher had seen elsewhere in the country, the Magic Time Machine restaurants feature cartoon-costumed, singing and joking waiters and waitresses serving Veva’s own home kitchen recipes. Frontier Enterprises’ headquarters building is at 8520 Crownhill Road, near the first Magic Time Machine.

The Frontier Enterprises headquarters building also is near a former park with a pavilion, where Hasslocher took Veva on their first date in 1946, a site now occupied by the Barn Door Restaurant.

In 1984, Hasslocher introduced The Wayward Lady, a $6 million restaurant inside a newly built paddle wheeler docked off Corpus Christi’s Shoreline Drive. The restaurant staff used walkie-talkies to communicate with other workers on different floors and helped pioneer the practice of sending orders electronically to monitors seen by the food preparers.

The Wayward Lady stayed in business for several years before hurricane threats led to evacuation warnings from the harbor master. The boat later was relocated to Biloxi, Miss., where it became a casino.

“He made so many innovations,” Caryn Hasslocher said. “I call him a serial entrepreneur. I’ve been in awe of his great accomplishments.”

The city in 2004 put the Tower of the Americas restaurant space up for bid. Houston-based Landry’s Restaurants Inc. won a 15-year contract from City Council, ending Tower Foods’ 35-year run.

Frontier Enterprises began updating some of its Jim’s Restaurants in 2008, converting them into Jim’s Café and Coffee Bars, featuring specialty coffees, upscale menu items, modern décor, flat-screen televisions, glass-displayed pastries and wireless Internet service.

In his later years, Hasslocher liked to spend time at a coastal home between Rockport and Port Aransas and working on deer and cattle projects on a ranch between La Pryor and Eagle Pass.

“He was a quiet and private man,” Caryn Hasslocher said, “but he was never someone who sat around waiting for something to do. He was always busy.”

Across the years, the Jim and Veva Hasslocher won numerous industry awards. In 1974, they traveled to Chicago to accept the “Food Service Operator of the Year” award from the International Food Service Manufacturers Association, the highest award for restaurateurs.

Jim Hasslocher won the San Antonio Restaurant Association’s Restaurateur of the Year award twice, once in the 1960s before records were kept and again in 1997, which coincided with the 50th anniversary of being in business and Jim and Veva’s wedding.

Hasslocher served as president of the San Antonio Restaurant Association in 1956, president of the Texas Restaurant Association in 1960 and president of the National Restaurant Association in 1986.

During that time, he worked to get the Texas Legislature to approve “Liquor by the Drink,” which allowed restaurants to get mixed drink licenses.

Karen Harem, who retired in 2014 after 34 years as a San Antonio Express-News food writer and editor, recalled how one of her first Express-News restaurant visits was to a Jim’s.

“Thirty-five years ago, we talked about his restaurants and his impact on the city,” she said. “Jimmy Hasslocher was an astute businessman who seemed to intuitively know the kinds of foods and restaurants that San Antonians wanted.”