Wait... IHOP Has Lobbyists?
The breakfast slingers at IHOP have been giving away free pancakes on National Pancake Day (aka Shrove Tuesday) for years. It's part of a longstanding promotional effort done in tandem with the Children's Miracle Network — in 2007, IHOP raised more than $625,000 for the charity.
However, there was a problem this year... Shrove Tuesday/National Pancake day falls on Super Tuesday in 2008 (and to our NJ/DE/NY readers... vote!). So IHOP did the natural thing... and enlisted the efforts of a real life lobbying firm to ask state governors to change the dates of their primaries. But they reached a good compromise:
With 15 states planning key primary elections on Feb. 5, 2008, IHOP wrote the state governors and asked them to change the date of the elections.Despite the lobbying efforts, the Feb. 5 votes are going ahead as planned. In what is being billed as a compromise, IHOP says it will celebrate "National Pancake Day" on Feb. 12. Several state governors, meanwhile, have pledged to proclaim Feb. 12 to be "National Pancake Day."
There is no word on whether IHOP has asked the Vatican to shift the timing of Lent.
Heh.
IHOP resolves 2008 Pancake Day 'flap' [National Post]
IHOP Roosevelt Ave [MenuPages]
IHOP [Official Site]
[Image via Charles Phoenix]
