My dad and his war with McDonald's

The story of my dad and his quest to procure McDonald's hotcake batter in bulk

The other night at dinner, Megan looked at the girls and said, “Did you know today would have been Grandpa Bruce’s birthday?”

Nora with a mouthful of lo mein that Lily made for us for dinner, promptly said, “Grandpa Bruce is dead.”

I chuckled, and Nora and repeated it, as if to confirm, “Grandpa Bruce is dead… right?”

My dad would have turned 81 today, and thinking back on the stunts he pulled with us kids is one of my favorite ways to remember him. Like his long-running feud with McDonald’s over his failed attempts to buy hotcake batter in bulk.

Divorced Dads Got It Easy

I’ve talked a few times here how my parents splitting up when I was 8 profoundly affected me. Now that I have children—and the fact that I’m the product of divorced parents—I’ve devised a “parenting level of difficulty” that boils down to something like this (from most difficult to least difficult):

• Single moms

• Married moms

• Married dads

• Divorced dads

Let’s face facts here, fellas: moms have it harder no matter what. But single moms definitely have it the hardest. They bear the burden of being the organizer of things, the rule instiller, the clothes buyer, the manners enforcer, the caretaker, etc., etc. My mom was all of this and our Little League baseball coach.

Married moms and dads come in at numbers two and three in terms of difficulty. In some families, there’s a wide gap between married moms and dads. In our family, I think we’re pretty close—though mom still has it tougher than me because dudes still suck in a lot of ways.

If single moms are the Serena Williams of the parent kingdom, then single dads are the tennis pro down the street who really enjoys having a few beers after practice and still thinks tennis peaked with John McEnroe. No parent has it easier (in most cases!) than single dads. They have but one job: to be the fun parent. Actually, that’s not their job—it’s just what they’ve chosen to do.

My dad certainly fell into this category. After my parents’ divorce, he was a little careless, a lot of fun, and definitely crazy. He taught my youngest brother and me that if you take a piece of PVC pipe, cap one end, and drop bottle rockets into it, you can make a pretty good shoulder-fired missile. We also learned that you don’t need swim trunks to go swimming. All you need is a pair of boxer shorts (something he fortunately only did at a fishing lake we frequented near his apartment).

Out of all the shenanigans my dad pulled with us growing up, his long-running feud with McDonald’s stands out the most.

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The Magic of Good Hotcakes

One universal truth about single dads is that they are cheap.

My dad had a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment, which meant that when my youngest brother and I spent the night, one of us slept on the couch and the other in a sleeping bag next to it. Don’t get me wrong—this wasn’t terrible. For 10- and 8-year-old boys, it felt pretty glamorous. (My 3-year-old would agree; she’s spent the last six weeks sleeping in her sleeping bag in various places around our house.)

We’d order pizza, watch my dad’s favorite dumb movies (Freebie and the Bean was a particular favorite), and play poker. It was great.

But for some reason, the best part of the weekend was our Sunday morning trip to McDonald’s for hotcakes and sausage.

Beautiful hotcakes. Just beautiful.

As an adult—and someone who makes some real goddamn good pancakes—I can objectively say that McDonald’s hotcakes are… meh. A little rubbery, a little thin. But when combined with the sausage and hash brown, they form a sort of fast-food delicacy—a delightful, mouth-watering bite. We loved it. My dad loved it. We were happy.

Except single dads love to cut corners. And on top of that, my dad was a professional chef. He cooked food for people for a living! And here we were, at McDonald’s, eating their delightful hotcakes.

After months of our Sunday ritual, my dad spent a few weeks attempting to make the hotcakes himself. But little kids are picky. Maybe we loved the Styrofoam box they came in. Maybe it was the warmed, industrial-grade corn syrup. I don’t know. But every attempt came up flat. We whined. We complained. We demanded the return of the McDonald’s hotcakes.

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“I’m Sorry Sir, We Can’t Sell You That”

One thing I loved about my dad is that he never really talked to us like we were kids. So when he hatched his plan to procure vast amounts of hotcake batter directly from McDonald’s, he told us exactly what he was going to do.

“I’m going to buy the hotcake mix directly from McDonald’s. Then I’ll make them for us at home.”

“Can you do that?” 10-year-old TJ inquired. I didn’t know shit from shinola (one of my dad’s favorite expressions), so Pops clearly knew something I didn’t.

“Of course you can!”

Off to our neighborhood McDonald’s we went.

I remember standing at the counter watching my dad talk to the 16- or 17- or 18-year-old high school kid taking our order.

“So… you want to buy the hotcake batter?”

“Yes, please.”

“Ummmm, I can sell you the hotcakes, but I don’t think we sell the batter?” the kid stumbled through his response. As someone who worked retail in high school, few things were as intimidating as telling someone’s dad “no.”

“I’d like to speak with your manager, please.”

Over came a manager, who repeated exactly what the cashier had said: McDonald’s does not sell their hotcake batter in bulk.

My dad was furious. My brother and I stood there watching his attempted hotcake coup fall apart like an overcooked hash brown. We ordered three sets of hotcakes and took them home. My brother and I were pleased. My dad was not. He was already brewing another angle.

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Two Sundays later, we packed into the front seat of my dad’s Impala (’70s-era bench seats, FTW) and headed off—not to our usual McDonald’s, but a different one.

“Where are we going, Dad?”

“To McDonald’s.”

“But this isn’t the way?”

“We’re going to a different one. I’m going to pretend I’m from a church and see if they’ll sell me the hotcake batter.”

“Can you do that?” Apparently, this was a common question I asked my dad.

“Of course you can!”

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“Who Doesn’t Sell Pancakes to a Church?!?”

My dad skipped the high school kid at the register and went straight for a manager.

“Hi, I’m Bruce with St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church. We’re having a pancake supper in a few weeks and I was hoping we could buy some of your hotcake batter.”

This sounds improbable, but it literally went down this way. My dad—the agnostic (or atheist, or whatever)—was fronting like he was from the church my mom took us to in order to score bulk pancake batter.

“I’m sorry, sir, we don’t sell the hotcake batter,” the manager replied apologetically.

“I don’t think you heard me. I’m with a church,” my dad said, incredulous. Who says no to a church?

“Yes sir, I heard you. We just don’t have a way to sell the batter in bulk. I don’t think I can help you.”

My dad was fuming. We left without ordering hotcakes. My brother and I were despondent. WHERE WERE OUR HOTCAKES?

I’m not sure where we went after that. Maybe that’s when we started going to IHOP or Waffle House or somewhere else. But even into adulthood, I’d bring this story up, and my dad would look at me and say, “WHO DOESN’T SELL HOTCAKES TO A CHURCH?!?”

I’d always respond, “Dad, you weren’t actually with a church.”

And his answer was always the same:

“It doesn’t matter. They didn’t know I wasn’t with a church!” 😊