Dive Brief:
- IHOP wants to boost interest in its evening and afternoon offerings with new, permanent core dishes, the chain wrote in an email to Restaurant Dive.
- The additions to its menu include several tacos, a burrito, a burger and two breakfast entrees that have savory and relatively rich ingredients.
- The pancake brand has been looking for ways to boost its traffic in slow dayparts for a long time, notably turning to virtual brands to boost delivery orders outside the breakfast window.
Dive Insight:
In addition to its permanent menu additions, the chain is adding several new seasonal flavors. Those items include Caramel Apple Butter Hot Chocolate, a milkshake, lemonade and blue raspberry lemonade.
Before it launched two sports-themed virtual brands earlier this year, IHOP’s effort to diversify its dayparts was stymied by the collapse of Nextbite, which had developed three of the chain’s virtual offerings.
IHOP’s president Jay Johns, speaking on a recent earnings call, said the chain has been successful at driving sales in unconventional times. But that may not be due to its menu.
“The one place we have seen a tick-up is actually overnight. That's been our best-performing comp increase over the last few quarters,” Johns said.
However, Johns cautioned, much of that growth has been fueled by an effort to get more restaurants open later into the night.
In April 2023, IHOP launched its largest-ever menu renovation, which was initially successful at lifting sales in its breakfast and brunch dayparts. The continued menu innovation could replicate the sales success seen from that initial overhaul.
But novelty hasn’t been enough to sustain IHOP’s comparable sales, which fell 1.7% in Q1 and 1.4% in Q2.
