Breakfast in Moore got a little more interesting Monday morning with the opening of a new Eggs Up Grill in the Tyger River Plaza shopping center at 5844 Reidville Road. The restaurant, which serves breakfast and lunch, is the first of the chain to open in Spartanburg County.
Joseph Pellegrino, owner-operator of the Moore location, was excited about the community’s enthusiasm for the new location, noting that the restaurant had a steady stream of customers since opening that morning.
“We had a friends and family on Saturday, and I was very surprised by how many people came just from the community,” Pellegrino, who co-owns the Moore, Boiling Springs, and Greer locations of the restaurant with his brother Adam Pellegrino and Todd Whitehead, said. “And then today has been as steady and as exciting as it can be. I’m very, very pleasantly surprised at how steady the restaurant been this morning — very happy, very pleased.”
The restaurant is open from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. seven days a week and offers a variety of Southern-style breakfast items from the popular Classic, a plate with two eggs, grits or home fries and sausage or bacon to a grilled blueberry muffin or their signature corned beef and hash. The restaurant also offers a number of lunchtime items, like their chicken salad wraps.
New customers, Deante Hunter and her mother Earline Champion, said they’d enjoyed their meals, the steak and eggs and corned beef and eggs.
“My eggs were sunny side up. They were really good. The meat was tender,” Hunter said. “Overall, five stars I would say, I would recommend other people come here.”
Pellegrino said the Moore location would stay popular because of the restaurant’s unique service to the community.
“In the Moore community, we don’t have anything like this. We have a lot of fast food, but we don’t have a lot of fast casual dining,” Pellegrino said. “Anything new’s going to bring a draw, but also the fast casual side of it — the way you come in, sit down, have great quality food, great family atmosphere and then get out in a reasonable amount of time — I think that’s going to draw people in.”
However, Moore isn’t the only town that can look forward to a new Eggs Up Grill, according to Ricky Richardson, CEO of Eggs Up Grill, who came to the new location’s opening. Richardson said the group plans to open a new location in Converse Corners at 551 E. Main Street, in the former Talbots, next April.
The new location will be a combination restaurant, training center, and test kitchen, said Richardson, so visitors to the East Main location will be able to try out all the latest flavors. Richardson said guests could expect seasonal flavors, holiday flavors, as well as new menu items or variations on current ones.
“One of the things that’s been really popular with our guests are seasonal flavors,” Richardson said. “We did, like many other people did, a pumpkin spice promotion across October and November. We just started last week (with) apple cinnamon pancakes.”
The new restaurant will also sport a new look, Richardson said, with a different color scheme and decor than the classic version seen in the Moore location, which is decorated in red-and-yellow with retro, farmhouse-inspired art.
“You’ll have the same general layout — we’ll still have the kitchen counter that guests can sit in and eat from. We’ll have the same tables. We’ll have a few more booths than what you’d experience in (Moore), the color scheme will be a little bit different,” Richardson said. “The kitchen will be more open than what you see here, so the guests can see the activity and the energy that’s going on in the back of the house.”
And the Eggs Up Grill Spartanburg expansion won’t stop there. Richardson said the company plans to continue to add new restaurants in the area.
“We’re continuing to look around the Spartanburg area. This franchisee — the Pellegrinos and Todd Whitehead — they are under construction with what will be their third restaurant in Boiling Springs, and then we have other franchisees that are looking in the Spartanburg area, as well as the Greenville area,” Richardson said. “So, we’re going to continue to grow in the Upstate.”
