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Published on November 30, 2007

The group is local franchisee for international restaurant chains KFC, Pizza Hut, Mister Donut, Baskin-Robbins and Auntie Anne's.

It yesterday opened the first Pepper Lunch restaurant in Thailand. The famous Japanese franchise has a fast and casual concept.

The new restaurant, on the sixth floor of Bangkok's CentralWorld shopping complex, covers 268 square metres and seats 132 diners. It required an investment of Bt10 million and is expected to break even within two and a half years.

Pepper Lunch is a modern-style restaurant that features a uniquely Japanese preparation and presentation of rice and steak. Served to customers' tables within a matter of minutes, an electromagnetic cooking pot heats up to 260 degrees C within 70 seconds, using a special hotplate licensed specifically for Pepper Lunch that can withstand more than 20 minutes of heat.

The method allows customers to have fun cooking their steak and rice with spices, other ingredients and a special sauce.

Thiradej Chirathivat, CEO of Central Restaurants Group, said Pepper Lunch was the sixth restaurant brand being franchised to Thailand by the group.

"We were operating 467 restaurant outlets under five flagship brands up to September this year. We expect to increase them to 478 outlets by the end of this year, a rise from 430 outlets run by the group at the end of last year," he said.

Central Restaurants Group expects to achieve Bt4.5 billion in sales this year, up from about Bt4 billion last year.

Thiradej said the group would invest about Bt450 million next year on new outlets, including the new Pepper Lunch brand. The expansion will focus on KFC, Mister Donut and Auntie Anne's outlets.

The group will open three to five Pepper Lunch outlets next year, increasing the number to 20 in the next five years.

Kunio Ichinose, president of Japan-based Pepper Food Service, said Pepper Lunch was launched in 1994 and now had more than 200 outlets throughout Japan.

"We expect to have up to 1,000 restaurants only in Japan in the next five years," he said.

The company has also franchised Pepper Lunch in many overseas markets, including South Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia. There are 30 Pepper Lunch restaurants outside Japan

Eiji Kamada, managing director of Suntory F&B International, the master franchise of Pepper Lunch restaurants in Asia, said the company expected to increase outlets outside Japan to about 300 in the next five years.

"We will open the first franchised outlet of Pepper Lunch in the Philippines in March next year. Other restaurants will be opened next year in many places, including Macau, Malaysia, Hawaii and Shanghai," said Kamada.

Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn

 The Nation