Buffalo Wild Wings may not use actual wing meat for its boneless chicken wings, but it apparently likes to work with a dash of sarcasm.
The popular fast food chain seemed to turn to Twitter to respond to a class-action lawsuit filed by a Chicago man on Friday, alleging that their boneless chicken wings constitute “false and deceptive marketing” because they are not actually a deboned chicken wing.
“It’s true. Our boneless wings are all white meat chicken. Our hamburgers contain no ham. Our buffalo wings are 0% buffalo,” Buffalo Wild Wings tweeted on Monday.
The plaintiff, Aimen Halim, alleges that Buffalo Wild Wings knowingly misleads its customers by marketing their boneless wings as wings, rather than as glorified chicken nuggets, and says that had he known the products were not actual chicken wings, he either might not have purchased them, or would have paid less.
“Unbeknownst to Plaintiff and other consumers, the Products are not wings at all, but instead, slices of chicken breast meat deep-fried like wings,” reads the suit. “Indeed, the Products are more akin, in composition, to a chicken nugget rather than a chicken wing.”
The suit also includes a photo of a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant menu, where the “boneless” wing subcategory is found on a larger “wings” menu that also includes other non-wing options such as “cauliflower.” “Traditional” wings and “tenders” can also be found on the menu.
Halim’s suit references a Nebraska man who made a speech to his city council in 2020 about boneless wings, saying, “Nothing about boneless chicken wings actually come from the wing of a chicken. We would be disgusted if a butcher was mislabeling their cuts of meats but then we go around pretending as though the breast of the chicken is its wing.”
The suit alleges that following the speech, Buffalo Wild Wings “refused to change its practices,” and notes that Papa Johns and Domino’s Pizza sell “actual chicken wings.”
In the “About The Wings” section of the Buffalo Wild Wings online menu, the product is described as “juicy all-white chicken.”
