I read this story a few months ago about a fight breaking out over a breakfast buffet waffle that ended with 30 people getting kicked out of the hotel.
While I wasn’t able to verify the story, the point is that things can get messy around those self-serve hotel waffle makers. And I don’t just mean the dripping batter.
So I thought the Holiday Inn Express had an interesting solution to promote breakfast buffet peace: a patented machine that makes pancakes in a minute. I got to try one out and see the super secret inner workings. It’s pretty neat. You push a button and the batter inside the machine gets squished out and heated through, and in 60 seconds a pancake pops out on to your plate.
While the pancake machines (aka “Stack Stations”) are already in most Holiday Inn Express Hotels, they wanted more people to try them out. So they sent a blue truck out with a handful of pancake machines and something not available in hotels – a special laser etcher that puts your photo on a pancake.
So that is how I ended up, not with pancake on my face but with my face on a pancake.
If you would also like your face on a pancake, here’s the schedule:
- Tempe Marketplace (today’s the last day!) – Sept. 14, 1-6pm
- San Diego – Sept. 17-19
- Long Beach – Sept. 21-22
- Los Angeles – Sept. 24-27
- San Francisco – Oct. 2-3
- Oakland – Oct. 5-6
- Sacramento – Oct. 9-11
Also, rumor has it that if you signup for IHG rewards at the pancake truck, they give you 500 extra points and enter you in a drawing for more points and/or shwag. I get nothing from this, but I’m generally a fan of hotel rewards programs (I signed up for IHG’s awhile ago) and a bigger fan of free points, so I thought you’d want to know.
Finally, here are Tammy and Jordyn. They were so excited about their pancake selfie, I just had to get a photo of them with it.
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Not really a disclosure: While I occasionally work with IHG, I didn’t get any special compensation for this post. The selfie pancakes are free for everyone. I just thought it was fun and that you might want to give it a try.
