Burger Head: Penrith eatery in a pickle with McDonald’s
A popular western Sydney burger joint has found themselves in a legal bun fight with one of the largest fast food companies in the world. And while the Penrith eatery is ‘planning to comply’, they’ve already served up a cheeky response.
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Popular Penrith eatery Burger Head has found themselves in a bun fight with large fast-food giant McDonald’s.
The owners of Burger Head, Tim Rosenstrauss and Josh Deluca, received a cease and desist letter from McDonald’s on January 15 over a special burger formerly called the ‘Better Mac’.
“It hit my inbox at about 12.30pm, and when one of the world’s biggest brands sends you a legal letter you get worried,” Mr Rosenstrauss said.
“You pretty quickly realise it’s a scare tactic but we’re planning to comply.
“In the legal sense, we’ve maybe not done the most treacherous thing, but we realise why they have a trademark, and we did put our foot in it.
“We didn’t believe it would get to the legal team’s desk.”
A McDonald’s spokeswoman said the company took issue with Burger Head attempting to “leverage our well-established and iconic brand”.
“We hold no issue with the burgers themselves, however the name and promotion are infringing on our trademark by clearly mirroring our famous Big Mac,” she said.
Rosenstrauss said the company would delete a Facebook post advertising the burger, and will change the name to ‘Cease and Desist’.
The Penrith Press tried both the ‘Cease and Desist’ and the ‘Big Mac’ on January 16.
The ‘Cease and Desist’ is a larger burger that tastes like a gourmet reimagining of McDonald’s famous burger without being an exact replica.
Despite the hectic 24 hours, the owners said the exposure from the letter was positive.
“We’ve been getting a lot of media attention, the posts on social media are going crazy, and people are supporting us left, right and centre,” Mr Deluca said.
“One of our favourite things from the whole debacle was KFC’s official page commenting on our post.”
“I feel like we’ve achieved a good amount from this, and any publicity is good publicity,” Mr Rosenstrauss said.
“The brand awareness from the past 18 hours or so has been pretty good – we really can’t ask for much more.”
The owners said the cease and desist letter wouldn’t stop them from having fun in the future.
“We have a saying where if we can’t have a laugh at the end of the day, we’ll sell the shop,” Mr Rosenstrauss said.
“As hard as running a business is, we still try to have a good time.”