IHOP

IHOP Children's Menu
IHOP Children's Menu

Introduction and History

Ihop is a restaurant that was first opened in California in 1958. The restaurant is very much family orientated. Their main menu item is pancakes (given the name IHOP stands for International House of Pancakes) but they also serve a wide variety of breakfast, lunch, and dinner items. The restaurant is a traditional sit-down style but also offers take out options. They pride themselves in being very friendly, given that their logo has a smiling face in it (under the o and p) This ihop, located at 2 Trader Wa, Salem, MA, is in a very high traffic area. It's located on Route 107, a main road with a lot of other businesses and a few other eateries, but none of them are the classic sit down style, they're all fast food. 

  • 1958: Founders Al and Jerry Laplin opened the first Internation house of pancakes in Toluca Lake, California
  • 1973: A marketing program introduces the aacronymn
  • 1992: the 500th IHOP opens in Myrtle Beach
  • 1998: Average sales per IHOP reach $1 million
  • 1998: Franchise wide sales reach $1 Billion
  • 2001: the 100th IHOP opens in Layton Utah
  • 2003: The slogan is officially changed to the now award winning "Come Hungry. Leave Happy."
  • 2008: IHOP turns 50 with over 1,400 locations.
  • 2010: IHop opens in Salem, MA
  • 2015: Ihop continues to grow with 70 locations outside of the US
IHOP Children's Menu

Analysis

  • This is a children's menu. The menu is composed only of a single piece pf paper, about 8.5' by 14," vs the adult menu which is a traditional folding menu. 
  • The front of the menu is essentially the "menu" part. On this menu, there are only 8 options for meals. 
  • 3 of the meal options use trademark foods, meaning they're not handmade in the restaurant, they're a brand food. This is reflective of how much American cuisine uses processed foods, even in restaurants. The trademarked foods are Mott's Applesauce and Kraft Mac n Cheese. 
  • 6 out of the 9 options (2/3) are "breakfast" items. And there is only 1 dessert option. The non-breakfast items are Mac N Cheese and a grilled cheese sandwich with applesauce. The dessert item is an ice cream sundae. 
  • Only one of the menu items has any sort of real "choice", which is the "rooty jr." kids can choose a main breakfast item and a topping that is also served with scrambled eggs and bacon. 
  • There is an age limit on this menu, 12 and under, however after calling and asking the restaurant, I was told adults can order from the kids menu, which can be good for adults who want to eat but don't necessarily want a big portion, though I'm not sure how big the children's portions are. 
  • Since this is the "International house of PANCAKESS" it's no surprise that roughly half the items on this menu are pancake related. However, there is no description of what the items actually are, possibly because there are pictures. But down in the bottom right corner is a disclaimer saying "see full menu for prices and descritipitions." Though the menu does give some fun titles to the food like "Rooty Jr" which implies they're really trying to push a fun friendly attitude in their establushment.
  • The pictures on the menu isntead of descriptions can say a couple of things. It can be interpreted that this is to make the menu more accessible to not only younger childen/childeren who can't read yet, but also children with disabilities such as autism or dyslexia.  This can also give a glimpse to the parents of what the kids are eating so they can advise the child whetehr they think they'll liek it or not or to see if there's anything the child might be allergic to. All this is a sign of IHop really promoting their family-friendlyenviornment and trying taking care of their clientel. 
  • The rest of the front of the mnu is covered in Garfield imahges and jokes, and 2 adverrtisments, one for an IHOP app, another for a new Garfield book. down at the bottom of the menu are the trademarks for Kraft and Motts, and a message saying to see the adult menu for prices, descriptions, and nutritional info. And on the left hand side is an advertisement from "choosemyplate.gov" promoting healthier meals. Alol these advertisment s are very reflective of our modern american society. We are very much a society of advertisements and capitalism, which is easily reflected here. 
  • I went to "Choosemyplate.gov" and went digging around to see if there was maybe an analysis of the Ihop menu items, but this was not the case. I think the idea of putting the website on the menu is to instead give parents a link so they see what kids should be eating for their daily vitamins/nutrients as well as tips for them to lead healthy lifestyles. 
  • The back of the menu is all games, puzzles, and a coloring page.There is a weord scramble game, a menu item guessing game, a maze, a game to make up "silly syrup flavors" a rhyming game, 9 tic tac toe boards, and a game where one sees how many words they can make out of the phrase "funny face pancake." The coloring page is a picture of garfield on top of the earth. All but the maze game and word scaramble all have instructons to play with the other people at the table. This promotes IHOP's family style restaurant by having the games be played wiht people at your table (assumingly family mebers) It's also a note of interest that the menu only comes with a blue and green crayon which are good for coloring the earth, but not so much Garflied, who is orange. 

Works Cited

IHOP