There’s a new burger joint in downtown San Jose, with prices cheap enough to keep even the most hungry university student fed.
Campus Burgers is one block from San Jose State University and will undoubtedly be a magnet for students look for a fast, affordable lunch or dinner. And the demand is there: the restaurant served more than 1,000 free hamburgers to a long line of future customers on its opening day last month.
Owner Jim Angelopoulos has the restaurant business in his blood. One of his proudest moments was working his first 24-hour shift as a 10-year-old at his parents’ truck stop diner in San Martin, the Square Meal Cafe.
“We lived in the Rose (Garden) District of San Jose,” he told San José Spotlight, “and I used to take the Greyhound bus after school every day. All I remember is peeling sacks and sacks of potatoes, hundred-pound sacks of potatoes, one at a time.”
Angelopoulos’ parents, Bill and Barbara, came from Greece in 1968 when Jim was six. They opened their cafe in 1972, and Jim worked there until he left to attend San Jose State University.