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Flipping Over Flapjacks
Sons Find Success with Mom's Pancake Recipe
June 13, 2000
DESERET NEWS
By Jean Williams, Deseret News Food Editor
Jon and Joel Clark's long awaited entrepreneurial dream is well on its way to selling like…well…hotcakes. Hey, it is hotcakes. Kodiak Cakes, that is. After a six-year struggle, the Clark brothers' whole grain pancakes mix has finally found distribution in all major supermarket chains in the Salt Lake area. But the roots of their recipe were planted long before today.
"Our grandfather used to make a particularly fine pancake for my mom's family, and then she would make them for us," said 34 year old Jon, a non-clinical operations consultant at the University of Utah Medical Center. "Our mom really believed in the goodness of whole grains and would grind her own wheat," he said. "Her pancake mix was one where you beat up the egg whites and folded them into batter. Then she'd add baking powder and vinegar." The five Clark children loved the light and fluffy flapjacks. But then, they only had two breakfast choices each morning-whole-wheat cereal or whole-wheat pancakes. They gladly chose the latter.
Jon and brother Tom wrestled ("We were huge!"), and their mother was always cooking for the brawny boys-believing in the healthful attributes of whole grains. Mrs. Clark had always toyed with the idea of selling her pancake recipe to make some extra cash, since money was scarce when the boys were growing up. Then one summer, when Joel was 8 years old, his mother typed up the recipe, pasted it onto brown paper bags full of pancake ingredients, and he took them around the neighborhood to sell. They sold out, and the neighbors came back for more. But with summer's end, the business more or less died out.
Six years ago, when Jon was an MBA candidate at the U., he noticed that there was no pancake mix on the market that was good for both children and adults and also tasted good. Joel was on an LDS mission in Australia at the time, Jon
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