Buffalo Wild Wings Is Getting Sued Over ‘Boneless Wings’

buffalo wild wings exterior

It’s like déjà vu, except it really is happening all over again. Chicago news outlet WGN reports that a man has recently filed a class action lawsuit against Buffalo Wild Wings over its use of the term “boneless wings.” This, you might be surprised to learn, is not the first time this matter has been amplified in the public square. The argument over boneless wings is a subject that we’ve reported on previously—just a few short years ago, in fact.

What is the Buffalo Wild Wings lawsuit about?

The plaintiff, Aimen Halim, purchased boneless wings this past January at a Buffalo Wild Wings location just outside of Chicago. He claims that the name “boneless wings” leads customers to believe that the product is simply the meat of a deboned chicken wing rather than what they actually are, which is “slices of chicken breast meat deep-fried like wings.” According to the lawsuit, this makes the so-called wings more like chicken nuggets.

Halim’s claim is that he suffered financial injury because if he’d known this fact about the “wings” prior to purchase, he wouldn’t have bothered buying them, at least not at the price he paid for them.

The plaintiff cites the fact that Papa Johns calls its version Chicken Poppers instead of boneless wings (Domino’s, meanwhile, calls its version Specialty Chicken). Because other chains don’t call the product boneless wings, Halim has no beef (no pun intended) with how such chicken is sold elsewhere.

Past Buffalo Wild Wings controversy

In a prior debacle back in 2020, a chemical engineer from Lincoln, Nebraska, Ander Christensen, demanded that the Lincoln city council intervene in the nomenclature of boneless wings. He apparently felt so strongly about this that he presented his argument in person, and the moment went viral on Twitter.

Christensen’s rant stopped short of becoming a lawsuit, however, and in a cheeky response, Buffalo Wild Wings eventually offered Christensen a full year of boneless wings for his valiant effort to rename them.

Though people have gripes over the term “boneless wings,” nobody’s gone as far as to sue Buffalo Wild Wings over it yet. But the plaintiff’s main point—that the name “boneless wings” doesn’t accurately describe the product—is one we can certainly understand. And there actually are strict regulations on other terms related to chicken: The USDA classifies chicken nuggets and chicken tenders differently, and their labels must reflect that. Will the presence of lawyers foster an industry-wide name change for boneless wings, too? We’ll just have see how this plays out. There’s always time for a revolution.