Burger Schmurger is heading north. Founder Dave Culwell and co-owner Phil Schanbaum are opening a second location at Preston Road and Forest Lane, near Preston Hollow, with spring 2027 as the target. The exact address and opening date haven’t been announced yet.
This will be the first time the smashburger shop has set up outside East Dallas. The original at 718 N. Buckner Blvd., Suite 100 opened in the spring of 2025 in the former BarNone space near White Rock Lake, and it has drawn a line most nights since.
Culwell noticed who was standing in it. “When we kept seeing the same faces drive in from the Preston Hollow area week after week, we knew we owed it to them to get a little closer,” he said.
The move makes sense when you look at how fast the Buckner kitchen has been working. Earlier this fall the restaurant was closing in on half a million smashed patties, about 17 months after opening, averaging close to a thousand a day.
That’s a long way from where this started. Culwell began Burger Schmurger as a backyard pop-up in Lake Highlands during the pandemic, then spent a few years hauling a flattop to breweries, neighborhood events and SMU tailgates before settling into a residency at High Fives off Henderson Avenue. His Maverick took Best Bite at Chefs for Farmers along the way, which is when a lot of people first started tracking down wherever he was cooking that week. CraveDFW caught up with the burger just before the Buckner opening.
The Preston and Forest shop will be bigger than the original but built to feel the same, down to the vintage details and the easygoing room. Coeval Studio, the design firm behind the Buckner build-out, is handling this one too.
The new kitchen also gives the business something it hasn’t had. It will become the home base for Burger Schmurger’s catering, which covers schools, offices and private events across Dallas.
Schanbaum, whose This & That Hospitality Group partnered with Culwell on the Buckner restaurant, said the plan has always been about neighborhoods. “Burger Schmurger was built to feed the neighborhood,” he said, adding that Preston and Forest “felt like the natural place to build our next community home.”
The owners describe this location as the first step in a larger plan to reach more parts of Dallas, though no other sites have been named.
Expect the same lineup. The Schmurger is still the anchor, a double-patty, double-cheese smash with griddled yellow onions, house-made dill pickles and the house sauce. The Maverick and the Pasadena sit right behind it, and a rotating Burger of the Month gives regulars a reason to keep coming back. November’s is The Low & Slow.
The community side is coming along as well. Burger Schmurger is running a holiday food drive for the North Texas Food Bank this season at Buckner, and the team says that partnership will carry over to Preston Hollow when the new shop opens.
Until then, the original remains at 718 N. Buckner Blvd., Suite 100. The owners say the Preston and Forest address and an opening date will be announced closer to spring.
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