Grill'd promised $1 from every Tuesday burger would be donated to tree projects, regulator says most never qualified

A Tuesday burger promotion is now under scrutiny after regulators said the vast majority of sales did not trigger the tree-planting donation many customers may have assumed would be made, The New Daily reported.

What happened?

In the Federal Court, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission alleges Grill'd gave customers a misleading impression about how much its Tree Day Tuesday campaign would contribute to environmental projects, as revealed in a media release.

According to the ACCC, about 5 million burgers were sold on Tuesdays during the promotion between 2021 and 2024. 

Despite advertising that it would donate "$1 from every burger purchased" on those days to tree-planting projects, only a "small percentage" of sales were eligible, the regulator said.

All told, the ACCC alleges that only about 4% of purchases met the full set of conditions, The New Daily noted.

To qualify, an order had to meet several requirements at once, as the regulator laid out. 

It needed to be made on a Tuesday for a main item such as a burger or salad, by a Relish loyalty member dining in, at the counter rather than through a table QR code, with the loyalty barcode scanned and no other offer applied.

The ACCC says 26 ads shown in stores, online, and across social media overstated the circumstances in which donations or environmental contributions would be made.

Why does it matter?

The ACCC has characterized the matter as greenwashing, a term for environmental claims that do not reflect what actually occurs.

It also says those representations may have given Grill'd an unfair advantage over competitors that were not promoting themselves in the same way.

Instead of planting all the trees as promised, the regulator suggests the company was pocketing extra business while providing mostly an illusion of helping out the planet.

What are people saying?

ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb was blunt in her assessment of Grill'd.

"We allege that Grill'd deprived consumers of the ability to make an informed decision by overstating the circumstances in which it would make a donation to an environmental cause," Cass-Gottlieb said in the release.

A Grill'd spokesperson told The New Daily that the campaign was carried out with "positive intent" and that the company donated more than $250,000 toward planting over 100,000 trees and restoring 40 hectares of forest.

The company added to the paper that it "takes Australian Consumer Law very seriously."

The ACCC was clearly not convinced. Cass-Gottlieb also laid out a warning for any company that might try a similar ploy.

"When we see a business seeking to exploit a consumer's environmental concerns through misleading or deceptive conduct, we will not hesitate to take appropriate enforcement action," she declared in the release.

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