The pancake chain formerly known as IHOP finally revealed what their new name, IHOb, is all about — and not everyone’s pleased. Popular guesses as to what the “b” stood for included bacon, bananas, breakfast, and yes — even Beyoncé. But on June 11th, IHOP revealed that the IHOb rebranding was all about burgers. Yes, burgers. Know who has something to say about it? Wendy’s, who’s been selling delicious burgers since 1969.
Popular restaurant chains have been ribbing on each other online for quite some time. Even though they’re all somewhat rivals, their responses to each other (or at least, to each other’s social media managers) are usually pretty entertaining. It’s not just restaurants — even food products join in. When IHOP initially announced that they’d be dropping their P in favor of a lowercase b, frozen pizza company DiGiorno seemed to support the rebranding. And Chiquita banana was almost certain that the b would stand for bananas, which would have been a fun change.
But now that we know the focus is on burgers? It makes sense that the pros would want to weight in. When a fan tweeted at Wendy’s about the change, stating that “so @Wendys u just gonna let @IHOb sell burgers on your block? thought you were the og?” their response was pretty shocking.
Not really afraid of the burgers from a place that decided pancakes were too hard.
— Wendy’s (@Wendys) June 11, 2018
And, that’s not it. Wendy’s obviously thinks the change-up is a little ridiculous and childish.
Remember when you were like 7 and thought changing your name to Thunder BearSword would be super cool?
— Wendy’s (@Wendys) June 11, 2018
Like that, but our cheeseburgers are still better.
Wendy’s does make a pretty good burger — that’s a fact.
For those of you who are still shocked by the big change, The New York Times talked to a few people who work with IHOP. They revealed that it’s only a temporary way to promote their new line of burgers. Brad Haley, IHOP’s chief marketing officer, stated that only one restaurant on Sunset Boulevard has been changed to represent the chain’s name makeover.
No matter what, IHOP (or, IHOb) still makes a mean short stack — and hopefully that’ll never change.
