Earlier this month, Panda Restaurant Group Inc. launched its first Panda + Tea restaurant, featuring mash-up menu items like the burrito-like “bing” and a tea bar.
The first Panda + Tea restaurant, in the Los Angeles suburbs of Hacienda Heights, Calif., serves the traditional Panda Express entrée lineup, as well as a new format where guests can build their meal on a base of salad, or have it rolled into China’s version of a tortilla, sometimes called a bing.
In addition to the new menu items, the restaurant offers milk- and fruit-tea beverages, lemonades and smoothies.
The concept was born out of the Rosemead, Calif.-based company’s Innovation Kitchen in Pasadena, where new ideas are tested for the more than 1,900-unit Panda Express.
Two other existing locations — in the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Westwood and Monterey Park — also have the new menu format and will be renamed Panda + Tea during the second quarter, executives said.
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