International House of Pancakes

“International House of Pancakes,” or IHOP, was founded in 1958 by Al and Jerry Lapin. The first restaurant opened on July 7, 1958, in Toluca Lake area of Los Angeles, California.

IHOP borrowed many ideas from Howard Johnson’s Restaurant and Horne’s Restaurant, in terms of place-product-packaging (Jakle, 1996). For an initial investment of $15,000, franchises could buy into a restaurant system symbolized by one of the most readily identifiable building prototypes ever devised for America’s roadsides, a large A-frame structure with turquoise painted roof.

It is a super-sized a-frame structure with a brick chimney, diamond pane windows and the colorized version of a wood shake roof of a typical tract home. The spectacular orange-white-turquoise color scheme is borrowed from Howard Johnson’s. The a-frame buildings were used until 1979 when the last one in that style was built (www.ihop.com).