Pancakes are love. Pancakes are life. And if you’ve been pondering exactly how you can win free IHOP for a year, good news: The IHOP International Passport Challenge is here to make that dream come true. Praise be to the mighty pantheon of breakfast deities!
The International Passport Challenge was created to celebrate IHOP’s 60th anniversary. The very first restaurant opened as the International House of Pancakes in Toluca Lake, Calif. — a suburb of Los Angeles — in 1958; franchising came along in 1960, and in 1973, the acronym “IHOP” was put into use. And now, in honor of its 60 years in operation, the chain has given us the opportunity to win whole bunch of free pancakes. To enter, all you have to do is… eat some pancakes between now and June 10, 2018.
Those who wish to undertake the International Passport Challenge in order to enter for the chance to win free breakfast for a year will have to fill up a "pancake passport" in the IHOP mobile app with three new pancake types that have been introduced to the menu in honor of the chain’s 60th birthday. Dubbed the “International Pancake” menu, the trio consists of Mexican Tres Leches Pancakes, Belgian Dark Chocolate Mousse Pancakes, and English Sticky Toffee Pancakes. The Mexican Tres Leches option consists of four buttermilk pancakes layered with vanilla sauce, then topped with more vanilla sauce and a drizzle of dulce de leche; the Belgian Dark Chocolate Mousse Pancakes are chocolate through and through, with four chocolate pancakes getting filled with chocolate chips, layered with Belgian dark chocolate mousse, and then topped with more mousse and more chocolate chips; and the English Sticky Toffee option fills four buttermilk pancakes with English toffee, layers them with salted toffee mousse, and tops them with salted caramel sauce and more toffee.
And, as it turns out, there are actually two kinds of prizes that will be awarded throughout the contest. The grand prize, of course, is the whole “free breakfast for a year” thing; that one is delivered in the form of 78 gift cards to IHOP worth $50 each for an approximate retail value of $3,900. IHOP’s fancy pancakes (the ones beyond a standard full or short stack — I’m talking about the ones with names like “Cupcake Pancakes” and “Double Blueberry Pancakes” here) are about $8 a pop, so the grand prize is enough to buy around 487 orders of pancakes. That’s literally more than one pancake order per day for 365 days, so, I mean, hey, if you win, you’ll be able to treat your favorite people to breakfast every so often, too!
The second prize is a bit less spectacular than $3,900 worth of breakfast; however, there are multiple chances to win it, so at least there’s that: Once a week between now and the middle of June, one entrant will be randomly chosen to win a $25 IHOP gift card. There are 13 of these suckers up for grabs — and it’s still enough to buy three orders of $8 pancakes, to boot. That, as they say, is not nothin’.
The winners of the 13 weekly drawings will be announced according to the schedule laid out here; the grand prize winner, meanwhile, will be announced sometime on or around June 14, 2018. If you win, you’ll be notified by email, mail, and/or telephone — but know that there’s only one entry allowed per person, so don’t try to game the system.
The full rules to the sweepstakes can be found here. For the curious, here’s how to throw your proverbial hat in the syrup-soaked ring:
1Download The IHOP App
You know how to do this, right? Just go to your phone’s app store, search for “IHOP,” and then download and install the official IHOP app.
2Create An Account On The App
You can’t enter a contest if you don’t tell the folks running it what name your entry will be under. You can sign up through Facebook, Google, or just regular ol’ email.
3Create An International Pancake Passport
Once you’ve created your account, you should be taken to the main IHOP app home screen. Scroll down just a tiny bit, and you should see a listing for the International Passport Challenge. Tap it, then tap “Create Passport” on the next screen.
4Complete The Challenges In Your International Pancake Passport
Flipping through the passport’s “pages” will reveal the challenges you have to complete in order to enter the contest: Order, photograph, and demolish each of the three International Pancakes.
5Submit Your Passport
See that “Submit Your Passport” button at the bottom of the passport home screen? Once you’ve completed all three challenges, tap that — and voila! You have successfully entered the International Passport Challenge sweepstakes.
6Alternatively, Enter By Snail Mail
If you are anti-smartphone, there is a way you can enter the contest via regular mail without using the IHOP app: Write your full name, address, city, state, zip code, date of birthday, daytime phone number, and email address (although apparently the email address is optional) on a plain, three-inch by five-inch piece of paper and mail it to the following address: IHOP CO MRM//McCANN, 105 Carnegie Center, Princeton, NJ 08540.
If you want to be eligible for the weekly drawings, your entry has to be postmarked by the dates in the “Mail-in Entries Postmarked By” column of the chart found here. For the grand prize drawing, it needs to be postmarked by June 11, 2018.
7Watch And Wait
If you win a weekly drawing, you’ll be notified on or around the Thursday of that week; for the grand prize, though, you’ll have to wait until around June 14 to find out if your entry was the winning one.
Check out the full rules here. Good luck. May your days be full of all the breakfast treats your heart desires.
