For over three years, anyone entering a Grill’d restaurant on a Tuesday could have noticed the posters by the counter offering something straightforward and uplifting: purchase a burger, contribute to the planting of a tree. It sounded like the kind of insignificant, painless gesture that lessens the guilt of having a fast-food lunch. This promise is now the focus of a federal court case, and it turns out that the discrepancy between what customers thought and what actually occurred is much greater than most people would have predicted.
This week, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission declared that it has initiated legal action against Grill’d, claiming the burger chain misrepresented its “Tree Day Tuesday” campaign from January 2021 to April 2024. The proposal was fairly simple: every Tuesday burger sold would contribute $1 to the planting of trees. During that time, over five million burgers were sold. Only roughly 4% of those purchases actually resulted in a donation, according to the regulator’s count.
It’s not a rounding error. It makes all the difference between a campaign that seems generous and one that actually barely made an impact. It seems that the fine print was more important than the marketing suggested. Only dine-in orders placed at the front counter were eligible for donations; takeout, online orders, and, strangely, table orders placed using a QR code within the restaurant itself were not. Additionally, customers had to register for Grill’d’s Relish loyalty program. The ACCC claims that the customers who were actually purchasing the burgers were not given enough information about that nuance.
Here, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the numbers because they speak for themselves. Just about 17% of Tuesday purchases resulted in a donation, even among loyalty members, the group most likely to qualify. Grill’d has acknowledged contributing about $250,000 to the restoration of over 40 hectares of forest and the planting of 100,000 trees. In isolation, those numbers seem significant. They appear significantly thinner when compared to five million burgers and three years of advertising.
Gina Cass-Gottlieb, the chair of the ACCC, called the behavior “greenwashing,” and it appears that the regulator is using this case to send a wider message. Businesses that rely on environmental messaging to stand out in a crowded fast-food market are obviously being warned. Since Grill’d has built its entire brand around sustainability—”grass-fed,” “plant-based,” “good food done sustainably”—a case like this would be more difficult for a rival with no green credentials to defend.
For its part, Grill’d claims that the campaign was started with good intentions and that it has collaborated with the ACCC to dispel any misunderstandings. That might be the case. However, intent and outcome are not always synonymous, and regulators are more interested in what consumers were misled into believing than what a business intended to say.
Additionally, the chain isn’t dealing with this problem alone. In addition, Grill’d is being sued in a different class action for allegedly failing to provide its employees with the paid rest breaks they were entitled to. Whether this dispute is justified or not, it contributes to the perception of a company whose internal policies have not always aligned with its public image. It doesn’t really matter if the two cases are related in any way; perception rarely distinguishes them so clearly.
It’s difficult to ignore how frequently “greenwashing” cases depend on terms and conditions that no one reads. A similar pattern was seen in the Clorox ocean-plastic case last year, where a claim that seemed obvious at first glance was undermined by information that was buried deep beneath it. It will tell us a lot about how seriously environmental marketing is regulated going forward if courts continue to view that gap as intentional dishonesty or just negligence. Grill’d’s Tuesday pledge is currently being scrutinized far more than its burgers.
