The easy answer is that I worked at IHOP a summer during college, and I hated it, but it's a good company with clever ads and smart community involvement. They're the ones with that clever Cliff fellow who loves the Rooty Tooty Fresh & Fruity, and they're the ones who celebrate Pancake Day for the sake of charity each year, but they're still losing out to Denny's for one big reason, and I'll tell you what it is.Whether you're running for office or selling omelets at 3:30 on a Tuesday morning, you have to pander to your base. If your base eats nachos in the pre-dawn hours on a weekday, the smart restaurateur knows their biggest buyers are stoned, drunk, or some combination thereof.
When I worked at IHOP a million years ago, and it hasn't changed, the inebriated would come in and point to what they wanted from the menu photographs, but unlike Denny's, it wasn't a picture menu, so they ended up pointing to something that didn't even exist. Denny's makes their fortune by dumbing the menu all the way down, and leaving only the most expensive items in pictures.