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Developing Contemporary Diners that bring you Comfort.

Peppy Grill Group has a proven record and the ability to combine the artistic vision and practical problem solving necessary to transform depleted and obsolete Real Estate and Restaurants, creating relevant, contemporary, modern, and cutting edge properties.

The first Peppy Grill opened in Indianapolis in the late 1940s at the corner of Washington Street and Senate, site of the current Government Center. By 1955, there were six locations around town, and by 1960, there were 10.

Gene Sluder was the original mastermind of those earliest Peppy diners. Though his father was listed as owner, young Gene opened and managed the restaurants during its 1950s heydays, starting before his 20th birthday.

Originally, Fountain Square was home to two Peppy locations, with a third just down Shelby Street in Garfield Park. The first in the neighborhood opened at 1024 Morris St., behind the dental clinic that’s still in business. It operated for more than a decade before Sluder sold it to an employee who promptly renamed it Hazel’s Grill after herself.

The second Fountain Square location was at 1004 Virginia Ave., and it is the only one of Sluder’s original restaurants still in operation. (The current 10th Street Peppy Grill was not an original and has no affiliation with Sluder.)

When he died in 1979, Sluder was 48. Over the course of 30 years, he’d owned and operated more than 20 restaurants and established the city’s first—and most enduring—fast food chain. Husband and wife team Gerald and Mary Wyman bought Virginia Avenue Peppy Grill shortly afterward, and Mary Wyman continued to operate the restaurant until her retirement at age 74 in 2013. She died two years later.Peppy Grill is currently owned by PeppyGrill LLC and has plans to open up 10 more locations around Indiana in the near future and take Peppys Grill to its glorious days.