When patrons become plaintiffs.
There is a peculiar irony in modern American consumer culture: we celebrate abundance, low prices, and convenience—until we decide to sue the businesses that make those things possible.
Somewhere along the way, buyer beware—a principle as old as markets themselves—has been replaced with the belief that disappointment equates with legal injury. Disputes over marketing messages and lawsuits about the labeling of menu items shows that some patrons are eager to become plaintiffs. Recent skirmishes over chicken are a case in point.
Issues Over Additives
Costco is facing litigation over its famously affordable $4.99 rotisserie chicken. Plaintiffs argue that the marketing language, describing the product as “preservative free,” is misleading because the ingredient list includes sodium phosphate and carrageenan. Both of these ingredients are common food additives, and, when used together, they enhance texture and aid in moisture retention. Sodium phosphate and carrageenan are FDA-approved and widely used in products ranging from deli meats to donuts, but it seems for some that these additives are clearly a cause for concern.
Costco’s rotisserie chickens are noticeably larger and juicier compared to what is available at other grocery stores, and the additives are likely part of the reason. It is also worth noting that at $4.99, Costco’s chicken is cheaper per pound than other rotisserie offerings, which also likely have sodium phosphate and carrageenan included as ingredients.
Due to its affordability and quality, Costco’s chicken has achieved a cult following, and just last year, Costco sold 157 million rotisserie chickens. That is a massive number, but these chickens aren’t a money maker—they are a loss leader, much like Costco’s $1.50 hot dog combo deal. The chicken is priced low to get people in the door, and clearly it works. If customers felt misled, they would stop buying. Yet sales remain strong, demonstrating that revealed preferences should matter more than retrospective offense. Most Costco shoppers understand that the rotisserie chicken’s pricing is part of a broader strategy to deliver value at scale.
Lawsuits Over Semantics
In Costco’s case, the plaintiffs feel as though they have been duped, but in reality, they are just being dumb. And the same can be said of the plaintiff in the recently dismissed case against Buffalo Wild Wings.
A lawsuit was issued against Buffalo Wild Wings (BWW) back in March 2023. The charge: misrepresentation in calling a popular menu item “boneless wings,” when in fact the product is made from chicken breast rather than literal wing cuts. BWW responded to the lawsuit by tweeting: “It’s true. Our boneless wings are all white meat chicken. Our hamburgers contain no ham. Our buffalo wings are 0% buffalo.”
Everyone knows that boneless wings are glorified chicken nuggets and that the sauce they are typically tossed with has no connection to buffalos. The sauce’s name is derived from the location it was created, in a bar in Buffalo, New York, and boneless wings were a more modern invention to respond to the rising costs of the bone-in variety. In fact, traditional wings have a humble history and weren’t even considered worthy of being on a menu until the 1960s. But as more bars and restaurants realized customers were fans of the previously neglected cut of meat, flavors and sales took off.
Fast-forward to present day, and the case has finally been dismissed. For the plaintiff, the semantics were lawsuit-worthy, but for the court judge, the case was about common sense. “Boneless wings” can remain on the menu labeled as such, and BWW is not required to pay the plaintiff what was sought after—up to $10 million in damages.
Market Signals and Environmental Shifts
Economically, wings illustrate consumer-driven value creation. Tastes shifted, and branding amplified demand, leading to wing nights, wing eating contests, and March Madness wing orders. Wings are now an inseparable part of American sports culture. Last month, the National Chicken Council’s annual Chicken Wing Report projected Americans would consume 1.48 billion chicken wings during Superbowl LX.
Demand levels and price signals reshaped production for the chicken industry, and chains like Buffalo Wild Wings built entire business models around it. The social and affordable aspect of chicken, however, shifted during the pandemic, and the aftereffects of the COVID lockdowns led to a spike in pricing.
Processing slowed, supply chains stalled, labor shortages occurred, and inventory was depleted. So, when demand rebounded as restaurants, sports bars, and event gatherings began to reemerge, wings were in high demand but short supply. In some markets, wholesale pricing exceeded $3.00 per pound, and bars and restaurants couldn’t shoulder the costs, nor were customers willing to pay such a high price.
Wings are biologically limited—only two per chicken—and since you cannot produce more wings without producing more chickens, many restaurants responded rationally by promoting “boneless wings” instead. Boneless wings offered predictable portioning, lower waste, and stronger margin control given that breast meat is more abundant, scalable, and price stable. When input prices rise, smart firms will reallocate their marketing efforts toward higher-margin alternatives that hopefully satisfy the needs and price points of consumers. Boneless wings are a textbook example of this, and it’s a shame the plaintiff couldn’t appreciate it.
Sales That Serve Communities
In neither of the above cases were the companies acting in a manner to harm customers; actually, quite the opposite. BWW has updated its wings over time to ensure customer satisfaction, and due to the strong connection wings have with sports, the Buffalo Wild Wings Foundation was established to support youth sport culture. Since 2013, the foundation has donated over $28 million to improve access to youth sports, and, in partnership with Boys & Girls Clubs of America, BWW has “provided more than 2 million children the chance to participate in organized sports.”
As for Costco, many families value the rotisserie chicken’s convenience and benefit from its low price. And Costco has also played a proud part in supporting America’s youth by raising $54 million in 2025 for Children’s Miracle Network. Costco has also awarded over 2,700 scholarships and donated 186 million meals to families in need. Even its chickens get donated, and this past year Costco contributed over 140 million pounds of food and other products to Feeding America.
The Consequences of Courtroom Consumerism
What is truly troubling about these cases is not the ingredient list or the menu terminology—it is the transformation of post-purchase dissatisfaction into legal injury. That shift carries consequences given that it redirects company resources toward litigations rather than value creation.
Consumer-facing class actions are costly regardless of outcome. Even weak claims impose real financial and opportunity costs simply by proceeding through the courts. Litigation consumes executive attention, diverts operational focus, and reallocates marketing budgets toward reputational defense rather than innovation and customer service. Companies cannot fully invest in better products and services when they are forced to defend existing ones against speculative or semantic claims.
Affordable food, abundant choice, and everyday convenience do not materialize by accident. They emerge from experimentation, logistical coordination, and by responding to competitive pressures—that is when firms are able to focus on business matters instead of depositions.
The Price Tag of Paternalism: Litigation vs. Learning
When lawsuits hinge on wordplay or personal disappointment, firms respond rationally: they hedge risk, simplify offerings, and avoid creative branding. Consumers ultimately absorb those costs, and the market process becomes one that is determined by lawyers rather than entrepreneurs. To be sure, there is a broader cultural lesson at stake. A society that defaults to litigation signals that responsibility should be assumed as external and outcomes should always be guaranteed. But this is not the way that markets work. Markets do not function on guarantees—they function on feedback, as rightly portrayed by Ludwig von Mises:
In the capitalist system of society’s economic organization the entrepreneurs determine the course of production. In the performance of this function they are unconditionally and totally subject to the sovereignty of the buying public, the consumers. If they fail to produce in the cheapest and best possible way those commodities which the consumers are asking for most urgently, they suffer losses and are finally eliminated from their entrepreneurial position. Other men who know better how to serve the consumers replace them.
No court hearings needed. The market process is made up of fallible individuals—producers and buyers alike—who learn through exchange and determine that which is of value to them. And given that value is subjective, formed in the minds of individuals engaging in interactions, then disappointment is also subjective and cannot alone constitute evidence of wrongdoing.
Markets work because they assume capable participants pursuing their own interests, not perpetual victims leveraging lawsuits.
