Getting the pancake batter into the whipped cream canister actually was the easy part. The real challenge was when Batter Blaster creator Sean O’Connor started telling other people about his plan to revolutionize breakfast, one aerosol can at a time. Even the companies that let O’Connor and his spray-can pancake batter in the door sent him away almost as quickly.
“The biggest challenge of the whole thing was going to raise money,” O’Connor says, splurting out a Mickey Mouse-shaped flapjack during a pancake-making demonstration in his office near Potrero Hill. “Try telling someone, ‘I have this idea. We’re going to put pancakes in a can,’ and not have them laugh you out of the room.”
If you shop at one of the higher-end Bay Area grocery stores, the chances are good you’ve seen O’Connor’s pancakes in a can. And beginning this week, it’s being carried by Costco. Backed by “friends and family” financing, O’Connor found a food packer who could mass-produce the batter, bought some equipment and is hoping his stab at making an easy process even easier becomes the next Lunchables.
O’Connor, 36, came up with the idea during his years, from 2000 to 2004, as co-owner of Thee Parkside Cafe in San Francisco. After creating flavored cream by mixing Grand Marnier, vanilla and other fluids into whipped-cream chargers, O’Connor wondered if he could do the same thing with funnel cake or waffle batter. But the idea didn’t get tested until a few years ago, when he started dating the woman he’d later marry, Mistine.
“She loves waffles,” O’Connor said. “And when we started dating, it was like ‘Oh yeah, baby, I’ll make you waffles.’ That’s what got me back into mixing the batter.”
Photo by Liz Hafalia.
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