IHOP Pancake Giveaway to Benefit Local Hospital -- Depending Upon Your Definition of 'Local'

If you like eating pancakes and helping kids -- and don't particularly care where those kids are -- IHOP has a deal for you

In one of the more stunningly bad product tie-ins in recent memory, the good people over at the International House of Pancakes have declared next Tuesday to be National Pancake Day. Next Tuesday, is, of course, Mardi Gras, a day best known for out-and-out boozing, carousing, and public indecency in exchange for a nickel's worth of Made in Taiwan plastic beads. What's more, "Mardi Gras" literally translates from French as "Fat Tuesday." Come, celebrate our corpulence with IHOP!

While clogging our arteries and shortening our life expectancies,  IHOP is thinking of the kids. You can get a  short stack of pancakes for free -- with the caveat being you are humbly requested to pay the asking price in a donation to "local children's hospitals."

When SF Weekly wrote to IHOP's press handlers to inquire what San Francisco hospitals would be the beneficiary of this largess, the answer we received was a tad surprising: None of them.

Claire Delacruz of Wills Communications wrote us that all benefits from the two San Francisco IHOPs would go to benefit the Children's Miracle Network -- "The closest hospital in the organization's network is Children's Hospital & Research Center in Oakland."

Now, nothing against Oakland Children's Hospital -- we're sure they're more than deserving and encourage everyone to give 'till it hurts -- but aren't there any San Francisco hospitals that could use that money? Delacruz, however, claims that this is what our San Francisco IHOPs wanted: "The IHOPs in San Francisco, like many other IHOPs, chose to benefit the Children's Miracle Network."

Well, that's news to IHOP's San Francisco area manager for the city's two restaurants. Angel Arellano told us that the paperwork telling him where the charity money is going comes pre-written from the Los Angeles corporate headquarters. "If Children's Hospital was not there in Oakland, maybe we would have a choice," he says. "That money is meant to stay within the community."

Arellano hopes to raise $750 per restaurant, at least -- but don't forget to budget in the $4 you'll need for bridge toll.

Photo   |   Voxterra