Via iStockphoto / @shalayaaa_ TikTok
Two women shared how a IHOP employee refused to give them to-go syrups after forgetting them earlier that day.
The International House of Pancakes—better known as IHOP—is renowned for, well, its pancakes. The chain has gone all out on its signature dish, offering 13 different flavors of pancakes, available in varying stacks. Of course, no IHOP pancake is complete without the brand’s signature syrup. So when two Virginia customers had to eat their pancakes plain and dry, they understandably weren’t too pleased about it.
TikTok creator Shalayla (@ shalayaaa_) made a shocking claim in the text overlay of her now-viral video. She claimed that a worker refused to give syrup to her and her companion to accompany their pancakes. She wrote, “Us eating dry pancakes since our IHOP swears up and down they don’t ‘do syrup.’”
Interestingly, the duo seem to be enjoying (or not) their to-go pancakes in a Panera location.
“If i choke… yk who to call,” she adds in the caption.
In the comments section, she adds some clarity on what went down.
“Okay storytime: earlier, we went in to eat, but had to cut it short so we could go to work. We took our pancakes to go, but forgot to get syrup. After our shifts were over, we went back and asked for syrup and that’s the response we got,” she shared.
So, Who’s In The Wrong?
Shalaya’s video amassed over 840,000 views, and viewers fiercely debated about who was in the wrong.
“Girl I agree with you tbh like [d–] you can’t just pass over a few syrup containers ??? I am a paying customer. I paid for this food and you’d expect syrup to come with pancakes anyway,” one viewer commented.
“To-go containers of pancakes should still get syrup should they not? Just bc they’re to-go doesn’t mean you’re going home/somewhere [without] syrup? lmao that’s crazy,” another said.
“You don’t get to go back several hours later to ask for free stuff,” a third remarked.
“So yeah i dont get to come back and ask for free syrup just because I bought pancakes there sometime in the past,” another agreed.
Why Would IHOP Deny To Go Syrup?
But an alleged former IHOP employee spoke from experience as to why the worker would refuse to hand out syrup. “As someone who worked at ihop, we just lie about a lot of things, i’m so sorry. It could be that they ran out of togo syrup, cups to put the syrup togo, or ran out of syrup (it’s happened so many times). But it could literally be the togos were [sticky] and they didn’t want to touch it,” they explained.
These suggestions are certainly likely.
According to Sharp Restaurant Holdings Inc., the company sells 700 million pancakes and serves 1.5 million gallons of syrup a year. Factoring in foot traffic, online orders, to-go syrup requests, and inventory, the location could have sold out of to-go syrup containers for the day.
On the other hand, IHOP is a franchise company and has been since 1960. To this day, 99% of their locations are independently operated by different business owners. This means every store determines its own policies, which can have an impact on something as simple as giving a customer syrup hours after they picked up their to-go order.
BroBible reached out to Shalayla via TikTok comment and direct message. BroBible also reached out to IHOP via press email.