Brace yourselves because there’s something new coming over at Pepper Lunch!
If you’re in the mood for a sizzling hot plate filled with rice and steak, your go to place would probably be Pepper Lunch. The fast casual Japanese restaurant has been serving us with amazing food for nearly 30 years! In that span of time, they’ve served us with classic menu items like their famous Beef Pepper Rice. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with their current offerings, it doesn’t hurt to switch things up in a while. But Pepper Lunch has grander ambitions in store. They decided to switch up their whole menu.
Pepper Lunch just revamped its menu to enhance both quality and service while also simplifying their operations. The main focus of this revamp is improving taste, using better ingredients, and having sustainable practices. You know it’s going to be a great revamp when the entire Pepper Lunch leadership team along with their Quality Control/Quality Assurance team spent a whopping 10 months just to review each and every ingredient that goes into their menu items. With nearly a year of developments heading into this endeavor, here are the key changes that we can look forward to.
More Beef in Top-Selling Dish
It’s no secret that the most popular item on Pepper Lunch’s menu is the Beef Pepper Rice. Pepper Lunch’s flagship dish contains thinly sliced beef, corn kernels, onions, and spring onions, with a sweet and salty sauce. With the new revamp, this iconic meal will now have 11% more beef at no extra costs to customers or franchisees. 11% may not seem like a lot on paper but you’ll definitely notice it once you order their Beef Pepper Rice.
Certified Angus Beef
When you’re a restaurant whose most popular dishes contain beef, you better make sure that you only use the highest quality ingredients. As part of this revamp, Pepper Lunch is upgrading from Choice Grade Angus Beef to Certified Angus Beef. Certified Angus Beef means that the beef passed the evaluation requirements known as the 10 specifications for quality. To sum it up, Certified Angus Beef means that Pepper Lunch will begin to use better quality beef.
Sustainable Sourcing
With multiple locations worldwide, it’s definitely important for Pepper Lunch to have sustainable sourcing. So Pepper Lunch is adding sustainably sourced new ingredients.
- Chicken: Now sourced sustainably with a new recipe for consistent taste.
- Shrimp: Offers larger, tastier pre-cooked shrimp.
- Salmon: Hand-cut, responsibly sourced salmon filets with a significant cost reduction for franchise partners, providing a superior experience for guests.
Authentic Miso Soup
Miso Soup is a classic Japanese side dish which makes it an essential part of Pepper Lunch’s menu. To make it even better, they’re switching to a new provide that will give customers a richer, more authentic Japanese quality miso soup experience.
The changes don’t end there. Pepper Lunch is also implementing an overhaul of their menu to further streamline store operations. In line with this, the menu now features:
- Optimized Steak Selection – While we appreciate a diverse menu, having too much options can be a bit messy. So, Pepper lunch narrowed down the choices to only offer the best cuts, quality, and prices when it comes to their steak.
- Enhanced Hamburg Steak Safety and Flavor – Pepper Lunch’s Hamburg Steak is one of the more popular items on their menu. So, for safety and flavor consistency, the Hamburg Steak will now be pre-cooked.
- Vegetable Refresh – Bean sprouts are now replaced with a mix of shredded cabbage and brussels sprouts to enhance flavor and to ensure safety of their dishes.
- Removal of Less-Popular Items – Eel and scallops have been removed to simplify operations and align with guest preferences.
- New Sides and Combo Options – Guests can now choose new sides like Fried Ebi or any in-house vegetable. The revamped combo menu allows customers to mix two proteins of their choice for a personalized dish.
Pepper Lunch always aims to strengthen its promise of unique and high-quality dining experience with these new updates. With the amount of time and effort that went into this, we can be comfortable knowing that Pepper Lunch will continue to deliver us with only the best that they can offer.
Interested in trying out all the new things Pepper Lunch has in store? Then head on over now to the nearest Pepper Lunch location!
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From Japan to Global Fame
With over 500 locations in 15 different countries, it’s safe to say that Pepper Lunch has done pretty well for themselves. Their success is definitely well-deserved. But most people probably didn’t think they had a humble origin story. Pepper Lunch began all the way back in 1994 by a respected Japanese chef, Kuniaki Arai.
Driven by passion, he had a desire to provide an exceptional dining experience with minimal wait times. This led him to the innovative use of specialized iron plates that allowed customers to cook their meals at the table, creating a unique selling point that set the restaurant apart in the competitive fast-casual market.
Arai’s vision combined the quality of fine dining with the convenience of a quick-service restaurant. Fast forward to today, it’s safe to say that all of Arai’s efforts paid off. Pepper Lunch is rapidly expanding around the globe gaining international popularity.
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From The Club
Personally, I didn’t think that Pepper Lunch needed to change anything on their menu. I mean if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Turns out, that mindset is what could prevent a brand from getting success. In the fast-paced world of the food industry, you have to constantly make tweaks, updates, and changes to stay relevant. Which is why I now think that Pepper Lunch’s revamp is a genius move. After all, they did spend 10 months working on it. Based on what we’re seeing, it looks like these changes will prove to be successful. Only thing left is to actually experience it for ourselves.