
By Jesse Wood
The Pepper’s family celebrated the 40th anniversary of Pepper’s Restaurant in style with long-time customers, new friends, live music, locally brewed craft beer and, of course, great food.
“It was great. We were pretty much standing room only in the bar. We had a good turnout there for the party, and I think we had a lot of people turn up to get a discounted sandwich for lunch,” General Manager John Pepper said. “So that was nice, and we are happy with it, satisfied, and glad a lot of people made it out to celebrate with us.”
In addition to select brews from local breweries at wholesale costs and retro t-shirt giveaways that featured one of the original Pepper’s Restaurant logos, the establishment also featured half-off of two of the old-school sandwiches – The Jean Lawson and The Pepper Sub.

Jack Pepper, a graduate of Appalachian State University, opened Pepper’s 40 years ago on May 11. He opened the restaurant four years after graduating from college.
“It was a good opportunity to come in and an inexpensive way to open a restaurant. It didn’t cost a lot of money to get open and I didn’t have a lot of money to open with. I felt like it was a good fit for Boone,” Pepper said when asked why this particular business.
When he opened four decades ago, Pepper said, “Of course” he didn’t think Pepper’s Restaurant would still be around today.
“No way. It’s been a pretty good run, and we are very lucky to have made it this long,” Pepper added.
On Monday night, a lot of the “old regulars” showed up to celebrate the anniversary. Pepper mentioned that some folks came up from South Carolina and even Pepper’s old boss at Seven Devils came out for the celebration.
“It was a big crowed,” Pepper said. “It was good to them all.”



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