The Sweet Spot

With the rock-solid support of her family, Sari Megan Kern has flipped for the pancake business.

Makeup by Jenny Ung; Hair by efoxx HAIR

It’s a weekday morning, and your house is a flurry of activity. As you scramble to get the kids out the door for school, your youngest begs to have pancakes for breakfast. Your parental resistance kicks in, and you mentally list the reasons this is a bad idea: Too much hassle! Takes too long! Not healthy! A mountain of dishes!

Never fear: The family behind Zen Stax has your morning solution. Their gourmet pancake batter is packed with superfoods. It’s plant-based and nutritionally sound. It’s lower in sugar and higher in nutrients than dry pancake mixes.

And you’ll be amazed at how easy it is. Just pour-and-flip! No measuring, no recipe, no mixing bowls, no mess.

“Our mission is to make mornings hassle-free—especially on those busy school days,” shares owner Sari Megan Kern. “It’s about breaking up breakfast boredom.”

It all started when Sari was 20 weeks pregnant in 2022. She was running a consulting firm, and the idea for a food-related business wasn’t on her radar. However, she enjoyed making uniquely flavored pancakes for her family using ingredients like Meyer lemons and matcha green tea.

Her friends and family encouraged her to make the pancakes more widely available. Sari was reluctant—not only because she was pregnant, but also because her batter flavors had wet ingredients and she didn’t want to enter a saturated market of powdered mixes.

“Then I realized I could offer a pourable batter for busy families,” she shares, “and Zen Stax was born. The name embodies the balance of indulgence and nutrition, inspired by zen rocks in Hawai’i as well as stacks of pancakes.”

She launched a Shopify website, made her first online sales and quickly outgrew her home kitchen. Currently the batter is available through the Zen Stax website, at weekend farmers markets in Calabasas and Porter Ranch, and through home delivery.

You can even hire Sari and her team for catering services. Imagine a pancake bar with a variety of toppings for your kids’ sleepover parties, unique mom get-togethers, weddings, bar/bat mitzvahs, and school or corporate events. A Zen Stax brick-and-mortar restaurant is on Sari’s wish list, and she announces pop-ups on her Instagram page.

The wet batter is sold frozen, so no preservatives are needed. To cook, you just defrost and pour onto the griddle. Choose from an abundance of mouthwatering flavors: Guava Strawberry, Banana Chocolate Chip, Banana Buckwheat, Pineapple Coconut, Cookies & Cream and plenty more. Zen Stax offers options for organic, gluten-free and no-sugar-added, and boasts whole-food ingredients like raw cacao, organic bananas and dates, and fair-trade cane juice.

Besides being a breakfast superhero, Zen Stax is a favorite for school lunches and camping meals. It’s the ultimate win for picky eaters and a convenient time-saver that removes stress from meal planning—all while upping the nourishment game.

“Zen Stax, in a nutshell, is all about bringing joy to family meals,” says Sari, whose biggest fans are her husband, Justin Kern, and sons Kai, Bodhi and Jaxon. “Our brand is infused with the aloha spirit—a nod to the joy I feel with my family in Hawai’i. It’s more than pancakes—it’s a whole vibe!”