Have you ever been watching TV or surfing the internet and you see an ad for a fast food restaurant that makes you suddenly start craving whatever is being advertised? The food looks so appealing that you can almost taste it, and you change your lunch or dinner plans to whatever was being advertised in the ad. Just us?

If this has happened to you, you probably know that what the food looks like in the advertisement isn’t always want it looks like when you pick it up at the drive thru. Sometimes the burgers, for example, look smaller and less appealing than we were expecting. Sometimes we have buyers remorse and realize that we fell for their advertising gimmick.

Have you ever thought about suing a fast food restaurant because you were disappointed in their food compared to the food you saw in an ad? No, neither have we, but apparently, sometimes people do sue fast food companies for false advertising.

In 2020, there was a class-action lawsuit against Chipotle for false advertising regarding non-GMO claims that were misleading to consumers. The company ended up settling for $6.5 million.

Now, there’s a lawsuit against Burger King that was filed by a lawyer in Florida. The lawsuit claims that starting in 2017, Burger King’s ads for their Whooper sandwiches depict the Whooper as being much bigger than it really is. They claim the ads show a burger with twice as much meat as the real burger and a sandwich that is overall 35% bigger than it is in reality.

The pictures speak for themselves. On the right is a picture of a customer’s burger. On the left is a picture of a the Whooper as advertised in a Burger King ad.

The lawsuit references YouTubers who conduct food reviews and Twitter users who have complained about the Whooper’s size. The lawsuit wants the court to order Burger King to stop falsifying their ads and to pay damages.

According to Jonathan Maze, the editor in chief of Restaurant Business magazine, lawsuits against fast food restaurants for false advertising are anything but silly. He explained, “If I’m advertising a vehicle, you don’t Photoshop it to enhance it. Sure, maybe you shoot it in its best light, but certainly you don’t make it misleading. That’s really the basis for these kinds of lawsuits.”

Do you think it’s silly to sue a fast food company for false advertising? Have you ever been disappointed in the way your fast food order looked compared to the advertised picture of the same food?