Drive down West Main Street in Gun Barrel City and you already know the building. For a while it sat there with a dark menu board and an empty drive-through lane, the kind of vacant fast-food shell that becomes a landmark by default. "Turn left past the old Whataburger" is the kind of direction locals give without thinking twice.
That direction still works, but the building behind it changed on August 3, when Soulman's Bar-B-Que quietly opened at 938 West Main Street. The quiet part ends this month. The Cedar Creek Lake Area Chamber of Commerce has two dates on the calendar to make the welcome official.
What Actually Moved In
Soulman's is not a startup testing the waters. The Dallas-based barbecue chain has been smoking brisket since 1974, and the Gun Barrel City location marks its 22nd restaurant, according to reporting from KLTV. The company filed state licensing records back in March, and the remodel of the former Whataburger building ran from March 30 through July 3, a $300,000 buildout before the doors ever opened to the public.
The menu leans into the chain's signature lineup: sliced and chopped brisket, ribs, sausage, pulled pork, turkey, chicken, and the banana pudding the brand has built a following on across North and East Texas. It is a full-service barbecue plate operation dropped into a building that used to hand food through a drive-through window, which is its own small transformation.
Two Dates Worth Circling
The Chamber is treating this as a proper community welcome, not just a soft opening. Here is what is scheduled:
- Tuesday, September 15, 1:00 p.m. – Official ribbon cutting, coordinated by the Cedar Creek Lake Area Chamber of Commerce, with local business leaders and elected officials on hand.
- Saturday, September 26, 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. – Grand opening celebration with food specials, giveaways, family activities, and Soulman's signature Rib Eating Contest, where local competitors take each other on for bragging rights.
If you've been meaning to try the place, the 26th is the day to show up hungry.
The Building's Timeline
Laid out chronologically, the last six months at 938 West Main Street look like this:
| Milestone | Date |
|---|---|
| Soulman's files for the location | March 2026 |
| $300,000 remodel begins | March 30, 2026 |
| Remodel completed | July 3, 2026 |
| Restaurant opens | August 3, 2026 |
| Ribbon cutting | September 15, 2026 |
| Grand opening celebration | September 26, 2026 |
Five months from empty drive-through to full-service barbecue counter is a quick turnaround for a building that had been sitting dark.
Why the Chamber Cares About a Rib Eating Contest
It might seem like a lot of ceremony for one restaurant, but the ribbon cutting is standard operating procedure for the Cedar Creek Lake Area Chamber of Commerce, an organization that has been doing this since it was established in 2001. The Chamber now counts more than 400 members under a nine-member board, split across four chapters that cover Gun Barrel City, Tool/Seven Points/Kemp, Mabank, and Malakoff/Eustace/Trinidad. Monthly luncheons happen every second Thursday, and ribbon cuttings roll through the calendar all year for new members, new owners, and businesses coming out of construction.
Soulman's isn't the only ribbon the Chamber has cut this year. Earlier in the summer, the same calendar included cuttings for AMF Construction, Affirmative Business Solutions, and a business called Elements by 456. Most residents never see that calendar unless they go looking for it, which means the Chamber's event page is often the earliest place to learn what's changing on Main Street, well before a new sign goes up or a grand opening banner appears.
The Building Is the Real Story
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only clock the barbecue: Gun Barrel City's growth right now isn't showing up as raw land turning into new construction along the lake's busiest commercial corridor. It's showing up as existing buildings changing hands. The Whataburger box could have sat vacant indefinitely, or come down entirely for something built from the ground up. Instead, a chain with more than five decades of history bet $300,000 on the exact same footprint and address.
That's consistent with how the corridor gets described by the people who track it professionally. The Gun Barrel City Economic Development Corporation calls the city the retail hub for a trade area of more than 75,000 people, a phrase that only makes sense if you think about West Main Street as a corridor that's already built out rather than one with open lots waiting to be developed. When a trade area that size needs new retail, the fastest path is often backfilling a proven building instead of starting over, and that's exactly what happened here.
Where It Fits on the Lake's Table
Soulman's joins a dining scene that already has its regulars. Vernon's Lakeside sits across the bridge from the Gun Barrel City Airpark, the kind of spot where people who fly in for the day end up for a burger. Cedar Creek Brewery pours in Seven Points. Closer to home, Billito's Italian Restaurant and 3 Flags Meat Market have both built loyal followings around Gun Barrel City, with 3 Flags in particular growing its customer base since partnering with the Gun Barrel City Economic Development Corporation.
What Soulman's adds isn't a new cuisine so much as a new event. The Rib Eating Contest is part of how the chain rolls out every location, a repeatable piece of showmanship rather than something dreamed up just for Gun Barrel City. For a corridor that already has plenty of good barbecue, the contest is the part that turns a restaurant opening into something worth putting on the calendar.
Watch the Corridor, Not Just the Restaurant
If you live here, the practical takeaway is simple: put September 15 and September 26 on the calendar, and if you want a head start on whatever fills the next empty building on Main Street, the Chamber's event page is where that story usually breaks first. The lake's commercial strip runs on this rhythm of vacancy and reopening more than most residents realize, and the buildings themselves end up telling you more about how the area is changing than any single grand opening does.
We track these changes because they're part of what makes Cedar Creek Lake worth paying attention to, whether you're grabbing brisket on a Saturday or just trying to keep up with what's new on your own street. If you're curious about what else is shifting around the lake, from new businesses to the market itself, Debbie French Real Estate Group covers it in our "Living the Lifestyle at Cedar Creek Lake" newsletter. Start Living the Lake Lifestyle and request your free home valuation whenever you're ready to talk.
