Grill’d sends legal letter warning butchery to change ‘grill’ sign

Burger chain Grill’d has sent a letter of complaint to a Sydney butchery over a sign advertising its grill saying it’s confusing shoppers.

The butchery in Warringah Mall recently underwent a facelift and got two new signs reading ‘carvery’ and ‘grill’. Picture: 9 News

The owner of a Sydney butchery has received a legal letter from burger chain Grill’d over a sign at his business announcing he has a “grill”.

Grill’d complained the butchery’s sign was too similar to their own, and “the prominent use of the word ‘grill’ in the cursive script, and common shaped r character, and red font” was confusing shoppers.

Tender Gourmet Butchery in the Warringah Mall on Sydney’s northern beaches recently erected two signs advertising its carvery and grill sections, which sell cooked meats and burgers. The changes to the store front, including the signage, had to go through a lengthy approval process with Westfield, which owns the centre.

The butchery’s owner, Adam Stratton, said the burger chain gave him a tight deadline to change the signage.

“We’re just trying to explain to people you can get carvery, or grill, or burgers there and they’ve taken offence to using the word ‘grill’,” Mr Stratton told 2GB yesterday. He said the largest sign at the store featured his business name, Tender Gourmet Butchery.

“(Grill is) a pretty common word, and I didn’t realise you could trademark a common word like that,” Mr Stratton said.

The owner of the butchery in the Northern Beaches says his sign bears little resemblance to the burger chain’s logo. Picture: Mike Keating.

Tender Gourmet Butchery owner Adam Stratton with some of his meat.

“It makes me feel like they’re just trying to bully me a little bit about it.

“We have a smaller G, they have a capital G. Running writing Ls we’ve got in ours. We don’t have an apostrophe and a D at the end. So it’s completely different,” he told 9 News.

The burger chain has asked the butcher to change the sign within two weeks. The large, “healthy” burger chain, which has 136 locations across Australia, has also offered to pay for the sign to be changed. It has suggested changing the colour or removing the grill sign altogether.

“I’ve got to go through designers, through a design department in Westfield. It’s not as clear-cut for me to be able to change something so easy like that,” Mr Stratton told 2GB.

Mr Stratton said he didn’t know it was “so easy” to trademark a common word.

Grill’d told 9 News the letter was sent to bring about a “productive resolution”. It said its goal was to protect its brand and trademarks and stop the company from being confused with other brands in the marketplace.