Blue Boy Sandwich Shop buyers Stefanie and Patrick Capriola with their daughters, Nora, 5, and Nina, 9½.
Blue Boy’s menu includes breakfast, party-size subs, salads and 34 versions of hot and 14 of cold sandwiches and subs.
NFL license plates hang on the dining room wall.
Patrick Capriola prepares food in the kitchen.
The Blue Boy Sandwich Shop dining room.
Patrick Capriola poses with one of the restaurant's awards on the wall.
The Blue Boy Sandwich Shop dining room.
A worker prepares food in the kitchen.
The menu, which features a Monster Burger (made with 2 lbs. of Angus beef). It is shown as being able to feed a family of four.
Blue Boy Sandwich Shop is located at 6514 Norwood Ave.
Blue Boy Sandwich Shop is located at 6514 Norwood Ave.
Blue Boy Sandwich Shop is located at 6514 Norwood Ave.
Chris Teschke is assisting the Capriolas with the transition.
New owners Patrick and Stefanie Capriola are gaining restaurant experience on the job at one of the city’s most enduring, if not necessarily widely known, restaurants.
The St. Johns County couple, with backgrounds in financial technology and education, bought the 47-year-old Blue Boy Sandwich Shop in the Norwood area Sept. 30.
That’s 47 years under the sellers. It actually dates back to the 1960s.
The restaurant didn’t close during the sale.
One day it was owned by Klaus and Brigitte Teschke and the next day by the Capriolas.
“We will keep everything that is good about Blue Boy and the nostalgia and make it better,” said Stefanie Capriola.
That includes what Blue Boy is known for – large sandwiches on round or sub “loaves” baked fresh daily.
Its slogan has been “One sandwich, one meal.”
“Nothing has ever changed and he is not going to change it,” said the Teschkes' son, Chris, of Patrick Capriola.
“That’s what draws people in.”
Stefanie Capriola confirmed it.
“We are not looking to change anything that makes Blue Boy what it is,” she said.
Patrick Capriola is running the restaurant and Chris Teschke is helping with the transition.
Blue Boy’s menu includes breakfast, party-size subs, salads and 34 versions of hot and 14 of cold sandwiches and subs.
The $15.90 Super Club and $20.40 Monster Burger (made with 2 lbs. of Angus beef) are shown as being able to feed a family of four.
The best-seller is the “#8 Steak” sub with steak, fried onions, provolone and optional hot peppers for $9.
There might be an addition.
“We’ve been listening to what our employees and customers want,” Stefanie Capriola said. The possible addition: “Shrimp and grits and shrimp po’boys.”
Blue Boy operates at 6514 Norwood Ave., near Gateway Town Center, and is open 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday-Friday. She said it seats 64 customers.
The Capriolas are considering extending the daily hours and opening on weekends.
The elder Teschkes – 79-year-old Klaus and 75-year-old Brigitte – no longer were involved in the daily business. Chris Teschke, 42, ran the restaurant.
Klaus was president, Brigitte was vice president and Chris was treasurer of the corporation.
The staff of six includes some there more than 30 years.
Chris, now Patrick, make it a team of seven.
Stefanie Capriola, 36, will continue her full-time job in financial technology and Patrick, 40, will operate the restaurant full time.
“We don’t have any restaurant experience, but my husband was looking to make a pivot from his area, education,” she said.
“We knew we wanted to buy a local business. We found Blue Boy,” she said.
They found it through the BizBuySell.com site, “and that was it.”
“Patrick is very analytical in nature, so he was running the numbers,” she said.
She said he reached out to several of the listed businesses and with Blue Boy, “the numbers worked.”
“You realize this is worth it, this is something we need to pursue,” she said.
Patrick Capriola formerly was an area teacher, administrator, and education adviser in Florida and overseas.
He runs a parenting website along with a search engine optimization website to help online businesses grow and rank in Google.
“We were just ready to up our game and be business owners,” Stefanie Capriola said.
She said they also have an internet business and own and manage investment residential properties.
“We wanted to diversify that portfolio and have brick-and-mortar,” she said.
“We figured we would go out a limb.”
The Capriolas have two daughters, Nina, 9½, and Nora, 5.
The couple bought the business and the site. Duval County Clerk of Court records show they paid $250,000 for the property.
It goes back almost a century.
Chris Teschke said what is now the dining room, a sink area and the back were built in 1922.
His parents, German immigrants, bought and moved the house that was on what now is the parking lot.
Chris Teschke said they bought it in 1973 from Rubye Watkins, who had purchased it from an Italian immigrant who went by the name “Blue Boy.”
“Blue Boy” started a restaurant there about 1962, Teschke said.
At the start, the Teschkes lived in back of the restaurant, “like they do in Europe,” said Chris, who along with an older brother helped out.
“I’ve been wrapping sandwiches since I was little kid.”
The Teschkes later bought and moved into a house and expanded the restaurant.
In 1983, the Teschkes added the main kitchen, front-counter entrance and bathrooms. It now is 2,638 square feet.
“My parents were able to, with help from the great Mayor Jake Godbold, get a loan to make the place bigger,” he said.
The late Godbold was a North Jacksonville resident who regularly patronized businesses in the area.
The Teschkes also operated but later closed restaurants in Arlington and Downtown.
Teschke said he intends to return to the marine industry after the Capriolas are ready.
“He knows how to run things,” Teschke said of Patrick Capriola. “He will get the ball rolling and I think he can take it to big places.”
