IHOP's latest stunt: A pancake-pizza hybrid
For its latest marketing stunt, IHOP Restaurants is rolling out a unique hybrid of two of America’s favorite comfort foods.
The restaurant will offer the “Pancizza,” a pizza-shaped pancake, in select cities to coincide with “National Pizza Day” on Saturday. The limited-time menu item will be available for pick-up or delivery at select restaurants in New York, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles from Feb. 8 through Feb. 10. IHOP will also open a pop-up location at New York City mainstay Bleecker Street Pizza, offering Pancizza from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Feb. 9.
The seven-inch Pancizza will be available in three flavors – buttermilk, cupcake and bacon and cheddar. The Bleecker Street Pizza pop-up will also serve exclusive flavors. The promotion comes months after IHOP announced a delivery partnership with DoorDash at more than 1,000 restaurant locations.
“IHOP has a lot of milestones to celebrate with our delivery program and our largest delivery partner, DoorDash, so what better way to do that than to join in on the National Pizza Day fun with our very own pancake-pizza creation: Pancizza,” IHOP Chief Marketing Officer Brad Haley said. “After all, pizza was one of the first and still the biggest ‘circle in a box’ take-out and delivery items in America so, naturally, we thought that we could do our very own IHOP, pancakeified version.”
IHOP’s “Pancizza” promotion is the latest in a series of campaigns meant to generate buzz about the brand. The company drew a mixed reaction last summer when it briefly changed its name to IHOb to promote a line of premium burgers. It also released a pumpkin pancake-flavored beer last fall.
IHOP President Darren Rebelez told FOX Business last November that the “IHOb” stunt was a success, boosting burger sales even as it produced “a few haters.”
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“We knew we were going to get that kind of pushback. The only thing we didn't know was how big this was going to become. It just exploded and it was really great. Mission accomplished for us,” he said.