IHOP’s President Says Temporary Name Change Caused ‘Emotional Rollercoaster’

IHOb is no more. In fact, it never really was. Less than a month after the legacy franchise announced it had changed its name to the mysterious new acronym, the pancake brand admitted the re-brand was fake. Twitter had a field day with entire saga, generating an even more passionate reaction than the brand may have been angling for.

In an interview with Nation’s Restaurant News, IHOP President Darren Rebelez said the response on social media was “a bit of an emotional rollercoaster,” and that no one “could have predicted the absolute magnitude of how big it became.”

Rebelez admits that even the franchise’s vendors were confused by the name change, some asking if they needed to update their billing.

“I guess we did a really good job of selling it because we had just about every sign company in the country calling us wanting to submit a bid on replacing the signs in our restaurant, and we had some vendors call and ask if they needed to change their billing,” he said.

Because the campaign rolled out at the end of the quarter, IHOP’s second-quarter earnings report doesn’t provide much insight into the campaign's effect, but Rebelez says burger sales, which the campaign was designed to promote, have been up “about four times what they used to be.”