The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2015
Ghirardelli's 'classic white' had no white chocolate — and 'all natural' wasn't either
Feb 2015: Ghirardelli paid $5.25M to settle two label claims — 'classic white' chips without white chocolate, and 'all natural' products that were not.
Ghirardelli Chocolate Company · 2015-02
What happened
Ghirardelli sold 'Premium Baking Chips — Classic White', the kind of bag a recipe reaches for when it asks for white chocolate, and carried 'all natural' across a line of its chocolate products. A class action in the Northern District of California read the labels back: the white chips contained no cocoa butter and no chocolate at all, and the 'all natural' products contained processed ingredients that were anything but.
Ghirardelli contested the suit — arguing the lead plaintiff lacked standing on products he had not bought, and that the labels moved neither prices nor sales — but agreed in August 2014 to a $5.25 million common fund. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler gave preliminary approval on 6 October 2014 and final approval in February 2015.
Refunds ran $1.50 per purchase of the white chips and $0.75 per 'all natural' purchase, for buys from August 2008 to October 2014. For the premium baking aisle the settlement drew a line under two words: 'white chocolate' is a recipe's expectation, not a mood, and 'all natural' is a claim that the ingredient list has to prove.
Why it happened
- 'Classic white' sat where 'white chocolate' would have gone — a name that lets shoppers fill in the missing word.
- 'All natural' was applied to products with processed ingredients: the label was a feeling, the ingredient list was the fact.
- Ghirardelli denied wrongdoing and still paid $5.25 million — the economics of a label word it could not prove.
The lesson
Shoppers fill in the words a label leaves out. 'Classic white' beside chocolate means white chocolate, and 'all natural' means what the ingredients can prove.
Aftermath
Final approval came in February 2015; buyers claimed $1.50 per bag of white chips and $0.75 per 'all natural' purchase back to 2008. The case joined the wave of 'all natural' suits that swept US food labels in the 2010s — and the white-chocolate question got an answer a recipe could use.
Sources
- Courthouse News — Fake Chocolate Class Settlement Approved
- Truth in Advertising — Ghirardelli Classic White Chips and Other Ghirardelli Products (Miller v. Ghirardelli, 12-cv-04936)
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