The Coffee Company An IHOP Founder Started Before Launching Into The Breakfast World

America's iconic pancake house with the trademark blue roof, IHOP, is a global brand with 1,800 outlets worldwide. It debuted in 1958 in the posh San Fernando Valley Toluca Lake neighborhood that sits between Burbank and Studio City. IHOP didn't adopt its acronym until the 1970s and was known instead as the International House of Pancakes, a title that made way more sense with the original menu.

IHOP's founders were two brothers, Al Lapin Jr. and Jerry Lapin. However, the International House of Pancakes wasn't the brothers' first foray into the restaurant industry. The pair actually revolutionized the way office employees took their coffee breaks with a fleet of coffee carts that offered coffee delivery to businesses around Los Angeles.

Al and Jerry Lapin's first business venture was Coffee Time, a caravan of coffee carts. The workplace coffee break was created with the idea that short stops to step away from work tasks and socialize with coworkers made for better workers. By the 1950s, the coffee break was deeply entrenched in office culture, but employers started to see 15-minute breaks when staff would leave the office as a drain on company resources.

Coffee Time jumped on the bandwagon of the trend popular at the time: Coffee catering, or bringing coffee directly to offices. For intrepid entrepreneurs, this was a great opportunity. In a 1956 article in "Time" magazine, the Lapins are cited as touting Coffee Time as a way for employers to save big bucks. "If 25 workers each take an extra 15 minutes a day to go out for coffee, argue the Lapins, they may cost their employer more than $100 a week v. Coffee Time's $21.20 weekly charge for serving coffee on the job," the article states.

The 26 and 28-year-old brothers launched their business in the mid-1950s, and even though they only operated their service for a short time, Coffee Time generated $25,000 — enough for them to invest in opening the first IHOP. Naturally, coffee is central to eating breakfast, and is IHOP's top-selling beverage – their proprietary blend is sold by the pound at grocers and retailers across the country.

The pancake house carved out a niche in the restaurant industry, becoming famous for making some of the best pancakes around, but its roots go back to America's breakfast drink — perhaps the inspiration for IHOP's famous never-empty coffee pot.