For Cappy Lawton, five decades of restaurant success started at SAC

After graduating from Alamo Heights High School in 1965, Cappy Lawton was contemplating his next steps.

“I couldn’t decide if I wanted to go to Harvard, Stanford or Yale,” he said. “Then I realized you have to have good grades and money and I didn’t have either.”

So he enrolled at San Antonio College.

“I still say it’s one of the best educations I’ve ever gotten,” Lawton said. “Very, very committed teachers, great students, and it was just a really good environment. Going to SAC was a very good experience for me.”

SAC was the first step toward a career that led Lawton to open more than 30 restaurants over 50 years and become one of San Antonio’s most legendary restaurateurs.

Lawton’s journey into business success followed two years at SAC (“I went as long as they would have me”), a transfer to the University of Texas at Austin to study engineering, and some trial and error.

He started working for two aircraft companies, first as a draftsman, then progressing to designing interiors for private jets. It wasn’t for him, he decided.

“I didn’t like working in an office, behind a desk,” he said. “I’m more of a ‘move over and let me drive’ kind of person.”

He left the aircraft business and with a friend, opened a repair shop for Volkswagens and Porsches. He operated that about a year before deciding to move on.

“I didn’t like selling something that other people needed but didn’t want – a car repair,” he said.

After that, he decided his job would be to figure out what was next. He gave himself 90 days to figure out what to do with his life. He would spend half of each day in the library and the other half talking to older people and asking them questions about careers and life.

After contemplating various options, he took inspiration from his days at SAC. To Lawton, the only downside to SAC was there weren’t a lot of social outlets back then. He decided to open a little pub near campus, The Quarter House, in 1973.

The pub was a success. It allowed him to continue to develop restaurant concepts, including Cappy’s, an upscale-yet-casual restaurant in Alamo Heights that he opened in 1977 that continues to thrive today. 

The pub is also where he first met Suzy, a UT Austin graduate who would later become his wife and business partner. She left a real estate career to join Cappy in the restaurant business. The two have been married for 42 years.

“Suzy was the best partner anyone could ever have,” he said. “Brilliant and nice to boot.” 

Despite not initially considering himself a foodie, Lawton found that restaurants were a natural outlet for his varied talents and interests. His creativity and passion for design lent itself to everything from menu items to restaurant interiors.

“My mother was a great cook. We were poor, so she always made a whole lot out of not much,” he said. “I didn’t know I knew much about food until I got into it, then I realized I knew a fair amount.”

Through the years Lawton’s restaurant empire grew, expanding with eateries in Austin, Dallas, Houston and Corpus Christi. He created EZ’s Brick Oven and Grill, a chain with several locations in multiple cities, which he eventually sold. He developed Mama’s Café, a comfort-food diner, which he sold, then re-acquired and revamped 30 years later in 2021.

“When I was 35, I still didn’t know much about the restaurant business, but I had 15 of them and 1,000 employees,” he said.

The Lawtons took inspiration from travel, including Mexico and Ireland. Lawton’s love of Mexican culture and cuisine inspired him to write a cookbook, Enchiladas: Aztec to Tex-Mex, with his friend Chris Dunn, which was published in 2015.

Today his son Trevor, a talented chef, serves as CEO of the Lawton Family of Restaurants, which includes five beloved San Antonio restaurants: Cappy’s, an upscale yet casual restaurant in Alamo Heights; Cappycino’s, the more casual sister restaurant of Cappy’s; La Fonda on Main, focusing on interior Mexican dishes and Tex-Mex; Mama’s Café, serving elevated comfort foods; and Jingu House, located in San Antonio’s historic Japanese Tea Garden.

With Trevor at the helm, Cappy is free to pursue other interests. He enjoys helping with the landscaping and exterior design of the restaurants. He’s rebuilding an old warehouse downtown (“It wants to be something, but it hasn’t told me yet what it wants to be. It’s kind of a labor of love at the moment – and money,” he said). He continues to invest his time and energy into his community, whether it’s planting trees or giving his time as part of the SAC Centennial Executive Committee.

“I love San Antonio, I love the community we live in,” he said. “We’re not taking anything with us, so it’s fun if you do okay to give back.”

Being a part of the SAC Centennial gives Lawton an opportunity to reflect on memories of his time there, including the instructors that challenged and inspired him.

“I had a phenomenal chemistry teacher, a really, really good math teacher, a wonderful English teacher, and people that I’ll never forget,” he said. “They weren’t easy, but they were fun. I always felt I got an exceptional education for not a lot of money. More than I had, but it wasn’t a lot of money.”

Lawton got an apartment with a friend and fellow SAC student, Peter Weller. Weller aspired to a career as an actor, which he went on to achieve: in addition to roles on Broadway, played the title character in two RoboCop movies, then went on to earn a PhD in renaissance art history.

“Most of my other memories you couldn’t publish and I shouldn’t share them,” he joked.

He has no plans to retire.

“I hope I don’t ever retire. Someone says ‘you’re always busy’ and I say ‘yeah, I plan to die that way,’” he said.

-SAC-