- IHOP announced on Monday that it had officially changed its name back to the International House of Pancakes after a brief stint as IHOb, the International House of Burgers.
- The chain changed its name to IHOb in June to promote its new line of burgers.
- To celebrate the return of IHOP and the chain’s 60th birthday, IHOP is selling short stacks of pancakes for $0.60 cents on July 17.
IHOP is officially back to its original identity as the International House of Pancakes.
On Monday, the chain announced on social media that its time as IHOb, the International House of Burgers, had come to an end.
“We’re giving away 60¢ short stacks on July 17 from 7a-7p for IHOP’s 60th birthday. That’s right, IHOP! We’d never turn our back on pancakes (except for that time we faked it to promote our new burgers),” the chain posted on Facebook.
In June, IHOP changed its name to IHOb to promote its new line of burgers. The pancake chain began revamping its burgers more than a year ago, IHOP President Darren Rebelez told Business Insider, as it has tried to boost sales outside breakfast.
"We had to make a bold move to get people to be willing to talk about us for something other than breakfast food," Rebelez said in early June.
The name change lit up social media. IHOP's "word of mouth" score skyrocketed following the name change, according to YouGov BrandIndex data. Before the IHOb campaign, 19% of US adults said they had talked about the chain in the past two weeks. Afterward, that figure increased to 30%, the highest score since late 2012.
The IHOb name change was never meant to be permanent. And IHOP never took pancakes off the menu.
"The pancakes haven't gone anywhere ... They're still there. They're on the cover of the menu," Rebelez said.
"Just because we have pancakes doesn't mean we can't do anything but pancakes. That's what we're after: giving more people more reasons to come to IHOP more often."
