Kreuz Market (pronounced “Krites”) prides itself on concentrating on the quality of its barbecue and sausage.
Good meat with just a few basic seasonings cooked with the right wood correctly is all you need.
We feel that sauce is for the covering up the flavor of the meat which we want to accent, so we have no sauce.
Keith Schmidt, Owner, Kreuz Market
The Beginning
Charles Kreuz Sr. started Kreuz Market in 1900 as a meat market and grocery store in Lockhart, Texas.
Refrigeration was not very good at turn of the century and no one wanted to throw away good quality meat.
So Kreuz began to barbecue and smoke meats and sausage out of the fresh cuts that had not sold.
To prevent wasting meat by letting it spoil, Charles Kreuz Sr. would cook the better cuts on barbecue pits and use the lesser cuts to make sausage.
The original Kreuz Market sign. Photo: texasbbqposse.blogspot.com:
Customers would buy their barbecue and sausage (which was wrapped in butcher paper), then buy some items from the grocery store to go along with it, and eat it off the butcher paper. Kreuz customers ate with their hands and a pocket knife with NO SAUCE.
By 1924, the barbecue business had grown. The Kreuz Brothers sold one third of the company to relative Hugo Prove. The new partners built a new building that had considerable room for dining indoors.
Kreuz Market owner Keith Schmidt carries on the family traditions established back in 1900.
Charles’ sons and Prove ran Kreuz Market until 1948, when Edgar Schmidt, who had worked there since 1936, bought the market.
In the 1960′s, Edgar closed the grocery store and kept some of the more popular “side items” for the barbecue restaurant, such as crackers, bread, pickles, onions, cheese, and other familiar items. These are still on the Kreuz Market menu today.
In 1984, Edgar sold the business to his sons, Rick and Don Schmidt. They ran the increasingly popular restaurant until Don’s retirement in 1997.
In 1999, Rick Schmidt was forced to move the popular barbecue business from its original home of 99 years to a newer and bigger facility a quarter mile north of the old location.
Along with the new building came some new items on the Kreuz menu, most notably: pork spare ribs, beans, German potato salad, sauerkraut, and a new jalapeno cheese sausage.
Rick retired in 2011 after his son Keith bought out the business. Keith Schmidt is continuing the Kreuz Market tradition for generations to come.
Kreuz Market is located in Lockhart, Texas, the center of the “Barbecue Belt”.
But don’t look for any barbecue sauce or forks as they are still missing in action from Kreuz Market to this day.
We still rely on our cooking methods and choice cuts of meat to achieve the flavor that so many have come to expect from Kreuz Market.
