Aimen Halim of Chicago has filed a class action lawsuit on Friday against Buffalo Wild Wings, accusing the restaurant of advertising chicken breasts as “boneless wings.”
In January 2023, Halim visited a Buffalo Wild Wings and ordered the boneless wings, expecting chicken wings that had been deboned. Instead he claims he received something “more akin, in composition, to a chicken nugget,” according to the lawsuit, Fox4 reported.
Despite the name, the restaurant’s boneless wings are not made of wing meat, but are fried pieces of chicken breast, the lawsuit alleges. If Halim had been aware, he “would have paid less for them, or would not have purchased them at all.”
In response, Halim filed a complaint with the U.S. District Court of Northern Illinois against Buffalo Wild Wings and its parent company Inspire Brands Inc. for what he describes as “a clear-cut case of false advertising,” according to the lawsuit.
“Consumers should be able to rely on the plain meaning of a product’s name and receive what they are promised,” the lawsuit states.
In his complaint, Halim describes the long history of passing off fried chicken breasts as ‘boneless chicken wings.’ In 2009, the New York Times reported:
” … [I]n restaurants from Sarasota to Seattle, an improbable poultry part is showing up on menus: a little chunk of chicken breast that is fried and sauced and sold, with marketer’s brio, as a “boneless wing.” All this is happening because wholesale chicken prices have turned upside down. The once-lowly wing is selling at a premium over what has long been the gold standard of poultry parts, the skinless boneless chicken breast.”
-WILLIAM NEUMAN, NEW YORK TIMES
Halim believes Buffalo Wild Wings should instead model its advertising after Papa Johns or Domino’s, which call fried and sauced chicken breasts “Chicken Poppers” and “boneless chicken” respectively, reported Blavity.
Halim is suing for violation of the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act, Breach of Express Warranty, Common Law Fraud, and Quasi Contract/Unjust Enrichment/Restitution according to Fox 4.