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Taco Bell Faces Court For Food Not Being As Supreme As The Menu Pictures Suggest

What's next? You're gonna tell me the waitress doesn't actually like me?

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Overworked and stressed!

I SAID EXTRA CHEESE

Taco Bell, long loved by broke college students and vegetarians driving cross country, recently won good favor by democratizing Taco Tuesday. Unfortunately, this isn’t the only reason that they’re making headlines. You ever notice the food you order from Taco Bell doesn’t look as marvelous as the pictures on the menu suggest? Well, enough consumers have beef with the bean and cheese seller to go to court about it. From ABA Journal:

A proposed class action lawsuit alleges that Taco Bell violated a state law preventing deceptive trade practices by selling food that doesn’t live up to the ingredient-filled menu items portrayed in its advertising.

The July 31 federal suit is filed on behalf of Ridgewood, New York, resident Frank Siragusa and other customers like him who purchased a Crunchwrap Supreme, Grande Crunchwrap, Vegan Crunchwrap, Mexican Pizza or Veggie Mexican Pizza.

Taco Bell’s advertising overstates the amount of beef and ingredients in those menu items by “at least double the amount,” according to the suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York…The suit seeks damages to compensate customers who bought the menu items and an injunction requiring Taco Bell to correct its advertising or stop selling the items.

On the one hand, I feel for Siragusa and similarly situated plaintiffs. I, too, have fallen victim to a Crunchwrap Supreme that, in addition to being not that supreme, was kind of soggy. It isn’t that unrealistic for customers to expect that the things they order look like the things they receive. On the other hand, I think that it’s unrealistic to expect “look like” to be the same as “identical with.” Imagine that there was a burger chain that advertised a turkey burger with turkey bacon. You look at the menu and see a picture of a dry grey burger with hopeless looking strands of “bacon” — looks like turkey to me! You buy the thing and instead bite into a succulent beef patty with delicious, smoky pork bacon. Ground to sue? Hell yeah! I’d even understand sprinkling some fraud in the complaint. That’s clearly not what I ordered, and materially so! I’d be the first one to say that folks who have restricted diets should file a class action, but if your gripe is that the lettuce doesn’t look as fresh as it does in the pretty picture? Grow up.

I’d be a little more understanding if this was a practice exclusive to Taco Bell, but restaurants have been working movie magic with food advertisements for a very long time:

Assuming that most reasonable people look at restaurant pictures and know that the things they order won’t actually look like the thing depicted (a recent Edelman Trust Barometer survey shows that only 8% of consumers are rubes), this suit feels like being mad at a Mall Santa for not being the actual Saint Nick. If this suit flies, there are two real outcomes. Either Taco Bell and other restaurants are going to start magically producing carbon copies of their menu items for their customers, or the reworked menus are going to be flushed with images of sad lettuce, cheese, and far more grease than a person should be comfortable looking at.

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The issue at hand is a simple one — are consumers afflicted with fraud or gullibility? If it were up to me, I’d let the restaurants lie to me whenever I go scratch the itch for greasiness. In the meantime, here’s some advice for those of you who are this hung up on the products not looking like the pictures. Make it yourself at home:

Taco Bell’s Mexican Pizza And Crunchwraps Don’t Look Like Advertising Photos, Suit Claims [ABA Journal]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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