Uh oh.
News has come out of the US that a Buffalo Wild Wings franchise restaurant in Chicago has been fingered for marketing white chicken meat nuggets as boneless chicken wings.
It’s a suit that likely could have been filed against any of the chain’s 500-plus outlets in the US. There’s no specific reason for singling out a Chicago franchise for ripping off consumers, other than that’s the plaintiff’s home…where, in January, he purchased so-called boneless wings from a Buffalo Wild Wings outlet. And based on the name and description of the menu item, he expected deboned wings.
But that’s not what he got.
“Unbeknownst to the plaintiff and other consumers, the products are not wings at all, but instead, slices of chicken breast meat deep-fried like wings,” according to the lawsuit. “Indeed, the products are more akin, in composition, to a chicken nugget rather than a chicken wing.”
The suit continues to say that if the plaintiff and others knew the products were not actually chicken wings, they would have paid less for them (how do you do that?), or would not have purchased them at all.
And in US law, that constitutes suffering injury as a result of deceptive practices.
The plaintiff went on to say chicken nuggets should be cheaper than wings. I’m not sure why, if indeed nuggets are 100 per cent white meat. As well, he said people are unfairly paying wing prices for nugget-like products.
Now, three responses come to mind.
The first is “Get a life. It’s marketing, not medicine.”
The second is “Get those suits and their corporate profits!”
The third is “I get it.”
While frivolous lawsuits and food-related greed are lamentable, reasons exist why food companies can’t call products something they aren’t.
In this case, we can laugh off boneless chicken wings, perhaps.
But we can’t dismiss attempts to make us pay extra for something that should be cheaper. Sure, buyer beware, to some extent. But what about trust? Don’t we have a right to trust that whatever we’re being sold is what it claims it is? And if it’s something cheap being sold for a premium, shouldn’t we push back?
I think so.
And then there are food safety issues, particularly related to allergens. They’re what helped prompt the food-labelling movement more than 20 years ago. Products could contain ingredients that are dangerous or even deadly to some people. Label it plainly, call it what it is and say what’s in it, and then let the buyer beware. But don’t deceive people.
Here’s a compromise. Add an asterisk to boneless chicken wings that says *100 per cent chicken white meat.
Then the food sector can get on with addressing other problems and put this behind it.
But that’s not the case. Buffalo Wild Wings is trying to dismiss the affair publicly, on social media. It’s drawing analogies, saying there’s no ham in hamburger, either, or buffalo in buffalo wings.
Kind of funny, I guess. But that’s an ancient, mean-spirited argumentative approach that only makes two sides dig in more.
Be honest. Admit it’s a marketing tactic, add the caveat, and move on. Your so-called boneless wings appear not to be boneless wings. Stop pretending they are.
