A new restaurant will bring seafood with a Texas and Cajun kick to this Fort Worth suburb
A seafood restaurant melding Texas and Cajun flavors will open in Keller in coming months.
Texas seafood chain Te’jun has plans to expand with a new restaurant at 541 Keller Pkwy.
Te’jun’s director of marketing, Lydia Baldwin, said the restaurant hopes to break ground this summer and open late this year or early 2025— just in time for crawfish season.
The project is estimated to cost $2.5 million, according to state records. Construction permits for the 5,489 square-foot restaurant were filed with the city of Keller on May 21.
Baldwin said city officials have been supportive of the new development.
“A great new addition to Keller’s dining scene with hopes of opening their doors by the end of the year!” Mayor of Keller Armin Mizani wrote about Te’jun in a January Facebook post.
Dozens of restaurants have opened in Keller over the past five years, many of them local. Baldwin said Te’jun found the city attractive because of its location in the growing northern area of the Metroplex.
“Keller doesn’t have anything that quite fits this niche yet, so I feel like that’s kind of an exciting thing,” Baldwin said.
The Metroplex is likely as far north as the chain could expand at the moment, Baldwin said. Te’jun’s warehouse is in Fairfield, roughly 120 miles southeast of Keller. In addition to the warehouse, Te’jun has a food truck and restaurants in Red Oak and Robinson near Waco.
Te’jun opened in 1997 as a seasonal mobile restaurant. During crawfish season each spring, founders Joe and Tammy Reid (who are also Baldwin’s parents) served crawfish, shrimp, corn and potatoes from a trailer they built with friends.
The menu, along with the business, has expanded over the years. The first brick-and-mortar Te’jun restaurant opened in 2017 in Robinson.
Te’jun’s goal is to be more than just a place where people get dinner; each restaurant aims to have an atmosphere that fosters family experiences. Baldwin said Te’jun’s family and Christian-centered values support that mission and the restaurant’s efforts to build a positive environment for employees.
“We definitely value making people feel cared for,” Baldwin said.
