The Impact of New Jersey Menu Engineering Cases

New Jersey restaurant customers brought two different class action lawsuits against OSI Restaurant Group (parent of Carrabba’s Italian Grill) and TGI Fridays alleging that the chain restaurants overcharged customers and did not properly identify drink prices on their menus.  On October 4, 2017, the New Jersey Supreme Court issued a ruling allowing the class action case against Carrabba’s to go forward, but effectively killed the case against TGIF.

Customers at both restaurants claimed that they were charged two different prices for the same beverage in 2008.  The TGIF customer stated that she was charged $2 for a beer at the bar and later charged $3.59 for the same beer when she moved to the table.  The Carrabba’s customer claimed that he ordered two beers during his meal and discovered when he received his check that the first beer cost $3.25, and the second cost $4.25.  When he asked about the price difference, he was told by the server that the computer changed prices at…