Walmart News

North Texas-based Shawarma Press restaurant deploys expansion into Walmarts

Falafel from Shawarma Press.

Shawarma Press

Walmart has added a new in-house restaurant option, serving Mediterranean food including shawarma wraps and rice bowls.

Called Shawarma Press, it's a restaurant concept that has partnered with Walmart to open mini-restaurants inside select Walmart stores.

Shawarma Press Founder and CEO Sawsan Abublan opened the original restaurant at 400 E. Royal Ln. in Irving in 2017. Now with the Walmart deal, they're expanding at Walmart stores across Texas, including Arlington, Plano, Georgetown, and San Antonio, where they've just debuted.

Shawarma Press calls its food "a fresh twist on Mediterranean cuisine," and claims to be the first food establishment to introduce shawarma in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. That's quite a claim.

They're open seven days a week, including all holidays, through the late evening hours.

"We're thrilled that Walmart's curated food service will allow us to introduce more people to our authentic, healthy, Mediterranean cuisine," Abublan says in a statement. "Texans are known for their diverse palates, so we look forward to offering our fresh menu items to San Antonians and Walmart shoppers seeking delicious Mediterranean comfort food."

Shawarma Press' menu includes shawarma wraps, platters, and rice bowls including chicken, beef, and vegetarian and vegan options such as hummus and falafel, plus appetizers, salads, and pastries.

But their signature is their Shawarma: thin slices of chicken or beef stacked in cone-like shapes while slowly roasting in juices on a rotisserie. They offer traditional wraps as well as novel fusion offerings such as the spicy Tandoori Press and Tex-Mex Press Shawarmas.

"Our guests are delighted and sometimes surprised that our dishes are made from scratch, including our famous hummus, falafel, and sauces that are available for take-out or dine-in at Walmart," Abublan says. "We also use only high-quality ingredients, including chicken and premium beef raised with no hormones, steroids, or antibiotics, and humanely handled according to Halal guidelines."

Walmart seems to be upping its game on restaurant options. In October 2021, they added Surfin' Chicken, a new-to-the-U.S. concept from Croatia that serves fried chicken and French fries.

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Chef News

Fort Worth's Will Rogers Memorial Center welcomes bright new chef

FortWorthtx.gov

Will Rogers Memorial Center

There's a new chef in town: Waylon Cornelius, named executive chef of catering and concessions for Craft Culinary Concepts, the food and beverage provider at Will Rogers Memorial Center.

Will Rogers Memorial Center is the 120-acre entertainment complex anchoring Fort Worth’s Cultural District, owned and operated by the City of Fort Worth. Cornelius will oversee menus for trade shows and other events at the center which bring in more than 2 million visitors a year.

Craft Culinary Concepts is headquartered in Glendale, Arizona, and manages food and beverage programs for entertainment, sports and cultural facilities.

Chef Waylon Corneliusfortworthtx.gov

According to a release, Cornelius joined the team this summer and is already shifting the expectations of guests from a typical “BBQ and beans” menu to a bill of fare satisfying every kind of palate.

“We always have fajitas ready to go, but we also make a beautiful Beef Wellington or baked salmon with a pink salt crust,” Cornelius says in a statement.

For consumer trade shows, Craft and its partners Caribou and Taco Heads offer more choices for the thousands of guests who attend events at WRMC annually.

“Some of our equestrian guests are away from home and here for several days, and they need more than popcorn and hot dogs,” Cornelius says. “Our concessions offer biscuits and gravy, burritos made in-house, strawberry salad, fruit and yogurt cups.”

A native of Mansfield, Cornelius grew up helping in a farm-to-table kitchen. He was raised on a farm with his mother, grandmother, and grandfather -- a Vietnam veteran who enjoyed vegetable gardens and raising hogs and chickens. He studied computer science after high school and holds an associate's degree in Cultural Resource Management and Policy Analysis from Tarrant County College.

He's a 2003 graduate of AIMS Academy of Culinary Arts in Dallas where he was mentored by a number of great chefs. While training as assistant executive sous chef at the AAA four-diamond Grand Hyatt DFW, he worked with Executive Chef Sutti Sripolpa, chef Eric Dreyer (who went on to be Oprah Winfrey’s personal chef), and Chef Jean-Claude Plihon, under whom he honed his French cooking skills.

As executive sous chef at the opening of Perry’s Steakhouse and Grille in Southlake, Cornelius gained expertise with volume. While at HG Sply Co., he learned about gluten-free items and other food allergies.

HG Sply is also where he crossed paths with Chef James R. Schell III, Craft’s general manager at WRMC, who recruited Cornelius to the complex.

"James said he needed someone who can hit moving targets, push the culinary team to be more avant-garde and use locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, so here I am," Cornelius says. "Culinary is a small world."

“I want people to say, ‘When we were in Fort Worth, you won’t believe what we got at Will Rogers!’” Schell says. “Even the celebrities who perform [in the auditorium] are surprised. When Chicago played here recently and we served dinner backstage, they said they felt treated like the Rolling Stones.”

chefs