New Places of San Marcos

OPENED: March 18, 2016
SERVES: Special foods, Craft beer
FEATURES: 15 barrel brewhouse, produces 500 gallons a batch and up to 5,000 barrels a year
UPCOMING: Spring 2017 grand opening with beer garden and patio lounge

Learn More about AquaBrew!
Interview with Carlos Russo, owner of Aquabrew

Could you tell me about your business?
We’re in the hospitality business primarily, and the product business as far as the brewery, we make beer here. Our mission is to—we try to deliver a unique, rewarding experience for our customers that hopefully stimulates their senses with live music, great food, and amazing products like our beer.

What do you sell here?
We sell artisan style food. We make a lot of food from scratch. And so we’re really all about that, we love making things from scratch, we make our own beer. We have a 15 barrel brewhouse, and all American brewhouse, which is capable of producing about 500 gallons a batch. We have the capacity to produce something like 5,000 barrels a year. If we ever did that, it would probably create an additional 4 or 5 jobs. We currently have about 55 staff, of which, 15 are full-time and then a lot of part-time folks.

You guys opened in March (2016)?
March 18th was the beginning of our soft opening, which we’re still in now. We’re planning our grand opening in the February or March (2017) timeframe, after we open the rest of Aquabrew, like our beer garden outside and the rooftop patio.

So it will be about a year since you’ve had your doors open, how has it been over the past year?
It’s been a lot of things, it’s been an emotional rollercoaster, lots of highs and lows, struggles and successes, awards and rewards, but overall it’s been great. The best part of it all, really, has been the people, of course the customers, but more importantly to me as the owner, my team—the staff.

Why did you guys decide to open in San Marcos?
I’m an adventurous kind of guy, I’m a risk taker, and so that was part of it, but a big part of it was that I felt like San Marcos would have more and deserved more when it came to hospitality. Clean bathrooms, a staff with a great attitude, just a better package for a dining experience.

Are you from San Marcos?
Not originally, but I might as well at this point, I’ve been here a long time.

How has your experience been so far being a new business in San Marcos?
It’s been rewarding, and it’s very fulfilling having this extended family. The staff is a great thing, and there’s frustrations, obviously, all the time, but overall it’s been rewarding. The family’s growing now that we’re about to launch the beer garden and the rooftop, which will require additional staff to man those spaces, so the family will grow. It’s good. It’s fun, making products is fun. Experimenting with beer is enjoyable. You get to go out and try to make a recipe you haven’t made before, it’s kind of like the kitchen, it’s really similar. We’re definitely in the business of fun. Fun is one of the ingredients for our hospitality package, so take fun away from it, you still have hospitality, but it’s just not the same.

What do you hope a customer takes away from the Aquabrew experience?
A lot of things. One of the things that we look to promote is community, which is why we designed this place the way it is. There’s communal tables, which are intended to bring community members closer together, so for example, there might be a couple sitting at a table that can accommodate 12 people and then a couple of their friends happen to walk in after they did, ordinarily in a typical restaurants, those friends would sit at a totally different table, but here, they have the opportunity to sit next to their friends even though they didn’t have a scheduled lunch. So that’s part of it, but the other part is when we get really busy, strangers sit next to strangers, and can often times walk out as friends. So that too is pretty cool.

When will the beer garden open?
Construction will by done by the end of January, and so maybe in February or March, sometime in there we’ll do a grand opening, we’re not quite sure when yet.

What would be the best way to follow you guys?
Facebook is one way. We have a website, we use instagram and Twitter. I don’t do it myself directly, but we try to keep up with social media and we have an email communication list that we send out messages to our customers every couple of weeks to try to inform them, hey this is what’s coming, here’s what’s next.

Do you guys have live music?
Yeah we do live music. We did it every night when we started, but it wasn’t that popular. People have kind of viewed us as a restaurant and not a live music spot. But I think that’s about to change, when we launch the beer garden, one of the components is going to be a stage. So we’re going to be bringing in bigger name musicians out of Austin and other places, compared to what we’ve had in the past.

Come get your brew:
150 S LBJ Dr., San Marcos, TX 78666