Background: Grill'd is an Australian premium burger chain founded in 2004. It's now grown to more than 179 stores and has heavily marketed itself around sustainability and community values - really leaning into the whole "good for you, good for the planet" positioning.

What happened: Now, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is suing Grill'd for allegedly misleading customers and greenwashing its advertising. It's over a promotion called "Tree Day Tuesday" which ran for more than three years until mid-2024. The offer was simple: buy a burger on a Tuesday and Grill'd would donate $1 to plant trees per burger.

What else: More than 5 million burgers were sold on Tuesdays during the campaign - which should've meant $5 million in donations. Except... the actual donation was just $250,000. The ACCC says only about 4% of purchases qualified for a donation under the fine print. It also claims 26 separate ads across social, online, and in-store channels overstated how much would be donated. So, ACCC is seeking penalties, declarations and other orders from the court against Grill’d.

What's the key learning?

💡 Consumer law doesn't just care about what you headline... it cares about the overall impression a reasonable person walks away with.

💡 According to the ACCC, misleading conduct can happen when the fine print materially changes the headline offer. If your ad says "$1 from every burger goes to trees" but your tiny-font-terms say it must be a  "main item, dine-in, order not made with a QR code, must be a Grill'd Relish member who scans their loyalty card" most people aren't reading that. And the ACCC says that's exactly the problem.

💡 Grill'd isn't the first company to get caught out by misleading promotions. The Good Guys faced a similar issue and was ordered to pay $13.5 million in penalties after running more than 100 store-credit promotions that buried key expiry conditions. So in Grill'd's case, this Tree Day campaign may have ended up planting more questions than trees.