And so it ended, not with a burger, but with a whimper.
The International House of Pancakes is once more all about the flapjacks. The restaurant chain famed for its breakfast menu upset and entertained fans in June when it changed its name to International House of Burgers (IHOb) to promote a new hamburger menu. The publicity stunt/experiment wrapped up on Monday.
IHOP posted on its @IHOb Twitter account, which completely took over for @IHOP during the name change, that it’s now returned to its original moniker: “We really appreciate the burgerin’ loyalty, but we’re back to @IHOP again.”
The restaurant group also updated its website to remove the temporary IHOb logo and replace it with the usual IHOP version.
IHOP is now using the name flip to push a 60th anniversary pancake sale. It gave a nod to the sometimes contentious (but mostly amusing) name change furor in a tweet reading, “We’d never turn our back on pancakes (except for that time we faked it to promote our new burgers).”
IHOP weathered a lot of Twitter taunts from rival chains Wendy’s, Waffle House and Denny’s. Wendy’s chimed in on the anticlimactic return to pancakes by responding to a fan declaring, “PLEASE WEIGH IN ON IHOP LYING TO ALL OF US!!! IHob was a joke!” Wendy’s simply wrote back, “Of course it was.”
While IHOb may become a case study in internet marketing classes, the name likely won’t disappear entirely. An IHOP spokeswoman told CNET in June the chain will use “touches of IHOb” throughout the summer as it continues to push its burger offerings.
