An 80-year run that began in a San Antonio neighborhood diner has grown into a multi-city, multi-brand hospitality enterprise. The RK Group (RKG) marked its founding anniversary — November 11, 1946 — with a year-long series of community giveback initiatives and the unveiling of a new on-site museum honoring the company's late founder.
The Rosemary Museum
RKG launched its anniversary celebration with the opening of The Rosemary Museum at its San Antonio headquarters, a fully in-house production featuring custom fabrications, archival imagery, mementos, and an interactive digital avatar of founder Rosemary Kowalski (1924–2024). The exhibit bridges eight decades of company history with the technology-forward capabilities the third generation of the Kowalski family is now deploying across the business. Tours of the museum are available through therkgroup.com/rosemary-museum.
CEO and President Greg Kowalski, who has led RKG's development operations since 1993 and previously served as General Manager of Food and Beverage Operations at the Henry B. González Convention Center, captured the company's trajectory plainly: "I literally grew up in this business that started in a very modest neighborhood diner on the city's West Side. But even being at the forefront of our growth, I still marvel at the scope of what we have achieved that has taken us into more venues and settings across the country and across the world."
Scale and Operator Footprint
Today RKG employs more than 1,100 team members across locations in San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas, TX; Phoenix, AZ; Louisville, KY; Memphis, TN; and Seattle, WA. The company's integrated model gives clients access to event production, catering, contingency mobile programs, temporary structures, large-scale fabrication, and experiential design — all supported by company-owned inventory and in-house execution. That single-source structure is increasingly relevant for venue operators and event planners navigating fragmented vendor relationships and rising hospitality labor costs.
RKG has served as the exclusive catering and concessions provider at the Henry B. González Convention Center since 1971, a relationship it credits with pioneering restaurant-quality food service in a convention setting. The same elevated, locally rooted culinary approach has since been replicated at the Renasant Convention Center and Cannon Center for the Performing Arts in Memphis, and at the Kentucky Derby Museum in Louisville — demonstrating a scalable template for venue-based foodservice that blends national brand familiarity with community-specific products.
What Comes Next
With the third generation of the Kowalski family now in key administrative and strategic planning roles, supported by a long-tenured leadership team, RKG is positioning for further expansion. The company's private ownership structure and vertically integrated capabilities — rare at this scale in the contract hospitality sector — give it strategic flexibility that publicly traded competitors or private-equity-backed operators often lack. Kowalski framed the company's continued competitive edge around a deceptively simple standard: "It's not about us; it's about making sure we do whatever we can on every level to please every guest and visitor. From our perspective, that's what defines great hospitality."
For hospitality operators and venue managers evaluating long-term service partnerships, RKG's eight-decade continuity under family ownership represents a differentiating credential in a sector where consolidation and management turnover remain persistent challenges.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
