Pepper Lunch franchise
Pepper Lunch: $609,200–$1,471,500 total investment, $50,000 franchise fee, 7% total ongoing fee. Read out of the filings.
Compiled from public filings and operator sites Reviewed 2026-08-15
7%
Total ongoing fee
$609,200–$1,471,500
Total investment
6
Units, 2024
1994
Founded
1998
Franchising since
CA
Rolling Hills Estates
—
Typical size, sq ft
Yes
Item 19
Six units are disclosed in the US filing. The brand's own site claims over 500 locations across fifteen countries.
Fees
| Initial franchise fee | $50,000 |
|---|---|
| Royalty | 5% |
| Brand fund | 2% |
| Local advertising | Not required |
| Total ongoing | 7% of gross sales |
| Grand opening | $7,500–$15,000 |
| Transfer fee | 50% of the then-current franchise fee |
| Renewal fee | As required by the franchisor at renewal |
Opening one
| Total investment | $609,200–$1,471,500 |
|---|---|
| Training | 16 hours classroom, 192 on the job |
| Territory | Set from demographics and population density |
| Initial term | 10 years |
| Renewal | One ten-year option |
The system
| Format | Japanese teppan fast casual |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Rolling Hills Estates, CA |
| Founded | 1994 |
| Franchising since | 1998 |
| Units | 6, of which 6 franchised and 0 company-owned |
| Item 19 | Yes. A financial performance representation is made. |
Figures from May 2024 comparative study of published FDDs · dataset year 2024.
Global identity, US disclosure
Pepper Lunch is a Japanese do-it-yourself teppan fast-casual system founded in 1994 and franchising since 1998. The US franchisor in the May 2024 comparative study is based in Rolling Hills Estates, California. That source records six US outlets, all franchised.
The operator’s North American site describes a wider international history and lists later service areas across several states and territories. Those claims answer where the brand operates now; they do not rewrite the study’s dated US Item 20 count. International restaurants also cannot be added to a domestic franchise-system row merely to make it look larger.
The format itself is distinct from every sandwich brand in the set. Customers finish meat, rice and vegetables on a heated iron plate at the table. That service design affects equipment, dining-room use and the customer learning curve, which makes Pepper Lunch an adjacent experiential fast-casual benchmark rather than a menu peer.
A high investment range with a modest stack
The source records a 5% royalty and 2% brand fund, producing a 7% comparable stack. There is no required local-advertising percentage in the dataset. Item 7 runs from $609,200 to $1,471,500, the highest upper estimate in this set. A low ongoing percentage therefore does not imply low entry capital.
The study records an Item 19, 16 classroom training hours and 192 on the job. The ten-year term has one ten-year option. Territory is set using demographics and population density rather than a fixed radius in the dataset.
The current public FDD copy shows why dates should stay attached to the numbers: later disclosures describe later US outlet snapshots. This profile retains the May 2024 study values until the shared dataset is deliberately advanced as one coherent source year rather than mixing newer count data into an older fee row.