Our story began with a hard working, honest, and loving couple, our parents. Frank Luna Sr., born May 14, 1937,  met Antonia Lopez, born June 13, 1933 and they married June 26, 1962 in the Catholic Church and became a family. They raised our family of 6 children as a devoted church going family. “The Luna’s”, as we are known at church, would give back to the church and the southside community in any way possible. Dad and Momma would counsel newly engaged and married couples, we’d serve in the church choir, but they mostly served the church by cooking and serving food for church retreats and events. When our oldest sister Lillian began planning her wedding, scheduled for July 10,1982, we were underwhelmed by the lack of choices of affordable catering companies available in our area. Similar to many other families we said to each other “Let’s cook and serve the food ourselves!” Brisket, sausage, rice, beans, and potato salad for 600 plates. A rare but occasional guest count nowadays (Pre Covid-19 of course).This endeavor proved to be very successful. Our family and guests were amazed with the taste, flavor and quality of the food. But most importantly the bride, our sister Lilly, was ecstatic. We all went back to our normal lives and the excitement settled. Dad (Mr. Luna) a former Army veteran went back to working for the US Postal Service, and Momma (Mrs. Luna) continued being a devoted mother and homemaker for our busy family. Shortly after the wedding, friends and acquaintances began to approach them wanting to hire them to cater their events and gatherings. After giving the idea a lot of thought, our family decided to give catering a try. We started out with a propane burner, a large stock pot for beans, and our own home’s little kitchen. We had help in the beginning from some of our church friends and families, but our biggest blessing was our local Pastor Rev. James D. Steffes, S.C.J extending an invitation to mama and dad that made a huge impact on the future of the business. Fr Jim invited mama and dad to use the church hall kitchen to prepare for our caterings. Before we knew, we began being inspected by a health inspector, and always achieving excellent passing scores which continues to this day. After years of hard work, and with numerous helpers such as Mr. Jesse Oviedo, city councilman Frank Wing, and Mayor Henry Cisneros, construction began in 1986 on our commercially zoned 15-foot brick smoker and commercial style kitchen 860 sq ft building adjacent to our family home!!! An exciting moment for the whole family!!! With us children getting older, Momma was now able to tend to the kitchen daily, prepping for caterings and implementing the value of hard work into our daily lives. With dad still working full time, the workload of the expanding catering business fell onto Momma’s shoulders and at times was a lot to handle for one person. Momma needed help! Seeing this, Momma’s middle daughter, our sister Mary Ann, decided one day to resign from her very promising position at a local grocery store company to help Momma in the kitchen while growing what now became, a family business. Mary Ann’s announcement of her resignation to the family was shocking and unexpected, but Mary Ann knew that her momma needed help, so she made the family catering business her career. Mary Ann increased caterings, and expanded the business by selling breakfast tacos, hamburgers, and other go type foods to local businesses and secret dine in customers. In early 1999 most of us pitched in and bought a property which we continue to own on 3128 Pleasanton Rd. We were all excited… but not as excited as Mary Ann. Her aspirations for the expanding family business never stopped. Her dream of opening up a restaurant on that property continues to inspire us to renovate the current building and turn her vision into a reality. Mary Ann was able to share her love of BBQing to our oldest brother Frankie. Frankie has grown her love of BBQing and what she taught him, as well as dad’s seasoning rubs, knowledge, and experience and has become the pit master of our catering and mobile kitchen. Frankie is always working to perfect his craft of having the best barbeque. Our youngest sibling Ermelinda was taught by Mary Ann everything she knew in the kitchen, but most importantly the ingredients of quality and love. With that Ermelinda cherishes what Mary Ann taught her and has learned everything she can from Momma’s cooking skills and experience as well and is now our chef whom makes a lot of our food that we serve for caterings and in our mobile kitchen. Anthony, the youngest of the boys, runs the serving lines for the caterings, and Lillian and Johnny are depended on numerous times to help on weekends with multiple caterings and functions. The biggest event that brought the family together though… making tamales!! Thousands of them for the holidays. The catering used to pre-sale hundreds of dozens at a time just for the holidays! Till this day they are the best tamales you’ll ever have!! After years of service juggling as a US Postman and a catering business owner, Dad retired from his USPS position in 2002 and was eager to help in the kitchen full time. This was a joyous milestone for our family. However, the Lord works in mysterious ways and constantly tests our faith. Soon after dad retired and shorty after her 2nd child was born, Mary Ann was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and October 30, 2003 the Lord called Mary Ann to heaven at the age of 39. Losing our sister is by far the hardest life event anyone would have to endure. Mary Ann had run the business for years and running it without her was never supposed to happen, but closing our family business was not an option, Mary Ann would never want that. So, Ermelinda continued in her big sisters’ footprints running the catering business honoring our sister every step of the way. The summer of 2009 we took on daily lunch service for 2 suppliers at the Toyota Manufacturing plant and have served for 11 years until recently, when all food services were suspended, because of Covid-19. We have also picked up regular catering events for USAA, Mercedes Benz of San Antonio, and numerous churches and halls throughout Bexar County and the surrounding area. We are proud to be located on the city’s south side! We are even more proud to be a small family business owned and operated by strong Latina women. We give back to the community in every way we can such as donating to local schools and local churches. We continue to make improvements to our business and repeatedly make perfect scores from San Antonio’s Metro Health department. Our services have expanded tremendously since the early 80’s and we pride ourselves on quality and customer service. Proving that hard work and dedication pays off we were recently able open up our mobile kitchen! Luna’s BBQ & More is now offering our delicious food to all of San Antonio Fridays, Saturday’s & Sundays out of our clean and mobile food trailer. So now as our customers you don’t have to wait until an event to enjoy our food. But our successes are not ours alone. They are because of you, our family, our friends, our loved ones, and every single one of our customers. By supporting us you have given us the opportunity to better our business and continue in new ways to serve our community and provide you with excellent quality food that we hope brings you joy with every bite. We love our customers and we always look forward to serving each and every one of you. We are truly blessed!! And to those that we have lost along the way, you will forever be in our hearts.

 

To our sister in heaven, Mary Ann, we know that you are watching over us and guiding us every step of the way. Your heart and soul is forever a part of us and this, our family business. We love you and you are missed always!!

 

And no matter what, we will always remember that any and all successes could not have been possible without our founders Frank Sr. and Antonia Luna. 

 

Thank you Papa and Momma 

  for all that you’ve given us. 

        You are loved!