Original Pancake House expanding to Las Colinas and Fort Worth just as pumpkin pancakes return for fall

Apple pancake

Coffee maple banana crepe

Mediterranean omelet

Dutch Baby pancake

A tall stack of buttermilk pancakes

DFW franchise owners Mark Bailey and Jonathan Seyoum

Original Pancake House is on a growth spurt, branching out to Las Colinas next month (510 LBJ Freeway, in the former Carrino’s space) followed by Hulen Mall in Fort Worth and a OPH in San Antonio or El Paso next year, DFW franchisor Mark Bailey told the Hatch at a hosted brunch at the 27-year-old Original Pancake House on Midway Road in Dallas last weekend.

“I’ve always been a big fan of Original Pancake House,” Bailey said. “I was the contractor and architect on this store, then I became a customer and then decided to buy it from the original owners” fifteen years ago.

“We make pretty much everything from scratch every morning,” Bailey told me as I dug into OPH’s buttered caramel apple pancake and a coffee-maple-banana crepe topped with pecans.  “The pancake batter takes 5 days to make” since their yeasty, sourdough base takes four days to rise, Bailey said. “And our whipped cream doesn’t come out of a can. We only serve fresh squeezed orange juice and fresh squeezed grapefruit juice. Our coffee is a custom blend roasted just for us.”

When the pumpkin pancakes return to Dallas-area OPH’s on September 23, they’ll join a breakfast lineup that Bailey says utilizes more than 9,000 eggs per store each week.

“Our core customer is everybody from every walk of life,” Bailey told me. “In 2008, when most restaurants were taking a dive, our sales went up 3%.” No wonder each of the Dallas area OPH’s generates roughly $38,000 in sales each week, a figure OPH’s chef told me didn’t surprise her a bit. “We stay very busy,” she admitted.