IHOP's National Pancake Day Double Stacks Food and Philanthropy

Free pancakes will draw students and locals to the IHOP in Harvard Square Tuesday to celebrate the chain’s 11th annual National Pancake Day.

The event draws hundreds of attendees from the local area, according to Milan Basnet, general manager of the Harvard Square location.

“National Pancake Day is the biggest day, I would say, in IHOP history,” Basnet said. “Last year, we sold around 1,300 free pancakes and the line was more than 300 people.”

IHOP prepares to give out free pancakes to customers to commemorate National Pancake Day on Tuesday. By Jessica M. Wang

Many of the customers that come to the event are college and high school students, according to Basnet.

Ik Hoon Jung ’19, for one, is "definitely going to go" to IHOP for National Pancake Day,

“It sounds really cool,” Jung said. “I don’t even like pancakes all that much, but free pancakes?”

In exchange for a free short stack of buttermilk pancakes, IHOP asks its customers to consider donating to the Boston Children’s Hospital Trust, the philanthropic arm of Boston Children’s Hospital.

Basnet pitched the pancake extravaganza as an opportunity for young people to give back.

“It’s an approach to a better society,” he said. “I think it’s all of our responsibility to help a little bit.”

Jung said he was excited that funds from Harvard Square’s IHOP would go to local children through Boston Children’s Hospital Trust.

“I think it’s really awesome they’re doing this, for both the customers and for the community,” he said. “Anything helps right? I think taking the initiative to help the [Boston] Children’s Hospital is really good.”

The charity expressed enthusiasm about their continued partnership with the restaurant chain.

“They’ve been great supporters of Boston Children’s Hospital as our local Children’s Miracle hospital,” Charles Savicki, a representative of hospital fundraising organization Children’s Miracle Network, said of the collaboration with IHOP.

According to Savicki, donations will go to support children in the greater Boston area, which the hospital serves.

“Children from all the communities where IHOP has its locations in New England are served by Boston Children’s [Hospital],” he said. “Those patients are coming from towns all across Massachusetts, all across New England, all across the entire country, and the entire world.”