So I go to Marble Slab last night and see they have something called Fudge Brownie Delight. They have a big poster on the wall advertising it. “Chocolate to the sky,” it says.
“Fresh brownie still warm from the oven,” it continues to tell us about the dessert.
“Wow,” I thought. “They must be baking brownies all day, to be able to offer me brownie that is still warm from the oven.” So I asked the guy who works there how often they bake brownies. He looks confused, so I point to the sign. “It says they are fresh brownies, still warm from the oven. Are they baking right now?”
“No, they were baked two days ago.”
“And they’re still warm from the oven,” I ask, confused as to how the poster can be accurate.
“No.” When he makes mine, he puts the brownies in the microwave oven and heats them up before putting ice cream on them.
So I ask you - is it false advertising to say that your fresh brownies are still warm from the oven, when they were made two days ago and someone is going to re-heat them in a microwave?
Microwave oven, brownie warm when removed from oven= warm from the oven. Not false.
Fresh brownie, you would be arguing about the definition of fresh.
Possibly false.
Lawyers could find a definition of fresh that would include frozen mammoth so you would have a fight there.
The words “still” and “the oven” clearly invoke the idea that the oven in question is the one where the brownie was baked. So if false advertising includes intentionally creating a false impression, this would qualify.
The name refers to the refrigerated marble counter on which they mix up your ice cream.
They scoop up the requested amount of ice cream in the flavour of your choice, plop it onto this slab, scoop up the mixings of your choice (strawberries, nuts, chocolate, whatever) and mix it right there in front of you, then put it in your dish or cone for you to enjoy.
Gee…I dunno ‘bout the “warm oven” claim…but I’m pretty sure that there’s a little false advertizing goin’ on when the say “chocolate to the sky”. How high is that, huh?
But my main gripe with Marble Slab is the whole damn concept : Why do they think that I want to stand there and watch somebody mangling my food into a gooey mess on the counter top?
It’s just a weird idea–and not particularly pleasant aesthetically.
So the fact that they use a microwave oven to re-heat it is their way of saying it’s still warm from the oven, and it’s fresh because it wasn’t frozen. It does evoke an image of the baking process finishing moments before ice cream is plopped on top of it.
Also, the fudge that he pulled out … was not in the normal creamy format. It was hanging off the thing in chunks, and he was able to get most of the chunks to fall off before he drizzled fudge over the ice cream.
I do like Coldstone better. Their ingredients seem fresher and tastier. And they do sing for tips!
Sorry,buddy-- a countertop is a countertop, whether it’s made of formica or marble.
I don’t eat off the countertop at home *, and I ain’t gonna do it when I’m at a restaurant, either.
Besides, the ice cream doesn’t taste any better just because somebody mashed it into an ugly mess, instead of placing some nice neat scoops in a dish.
*and in my kitchen the counter is made of marble—how appropriate is that?
I would suggest that your counter top at home is probably not as clean as the one at the average Marble Slab. And aesthetics aren’t the reason for the mixing. It’s adding the extras and having them evenly distributed through the icecream. If you want a heath bar and dark chocolate chunks *in *your banana icecream instead of sitting on top of it, they need to mix it.
Sadly I just had icecream a few hours ago, so I can’t take this thread as a sign.
The FDA definition of fresh is misleading. The FTC and the states generally have the same law, which is that a claim must be misleading about a material fact, and that the claim has the potential to cause harm to the consumers. (It’s a little more complicated that this, but we don’t need that much detail here.)
The brownies are reasonably fresh, they were just heated up, and you are not really likely to be harmed as a consumer because they reheated your brownie instead of having made it from scratch and pulling it out of the oven as you order.
Oppose this to, say, a gasoline saving device that claims a 10% increase in fuel efficiency. Savings is the reason to buy the device, so that 10% must be reasonably supported by evidence.
The claim about fudge “to the sky” or whatever is so obviously false that we call that sort of thing “puffery”. No reasonable person is going to expect some 2000 foot tall sundae. It’s like “Red Bull gives you wings” – it doesn’t, and everyone knows that.
Basically, the amount of harm you will suffer from eating a brownie that is 2 days old and rewarmed vs just came out of the oven is so small, and such a small part of the transaction, and is so easy to verify, that the FTC and the states will probably not waste their time on it.
Yeah, the law is less friendly to claims that rely on an entirely emotional appeal.
And yeah, Coldstone, Marble Slab and its ilk are thoroughly unappealing. I am perfectly capable of spooning up a little ice cream and a bit of topping without some counter monkey half-melting it.
