Maxwell House Coffee Servings Mislead Consumers, Says Class Action

A California consumer has filed a class action lawsuit against Kraft Heinz Co. over claims that Maxwell House coffee is falsely advertised.

Plaintiff Randall Sulzer says that after purchasing Maxwell House coffee, he was unpleasantly surprised to find that he could not make as many cups of coffee with the product as the packaged advertised. He says that a range of Maxwell House products mislead customers into thinking that the products contain more coffee than they do.

Sulzer recounts that he purchased a canister of Maxwell House Master Blend Light near his home in San Diego. He says he paid around $8.50 for the canister.

To make his purchasing decision, he explains that he viewed the packaging and took note that the label stated the product contained enough coffee grounds to make 210 cups of coffee. He explains that the label touted the package “makes up to 210 6 fl oz cups” of coffee.

However, he was allegedly surprised to discover the product did not make the advertised 210 cups, and instead made far less.

He stresses that he followed the brewing instructions, using one tablespoon of ground coffee to make one serving/cup of coffee. He asserts that when a customer uses the recommended brewing instructions, there is not enough ground coffee in the container to make the advertised number of servings.

To illustrate the problem, the Maxwell House coffee servings advertising class action lawsuit uses the 100% Columbian coffee product as an example.

The plaintiff states the product is advertised as containing 10.5 ounces of coffee. The label also supposedly advertises that it can make up to 90 six-fluid-ounce cups.

Sulzer says 90 tablespoons of ground coffee are required to make 90 servings, or cups, of coffee. 

However, the coffee canister allegedly does not contain enough coffee to make 90 cups of coffee, because one tablespoon of ground coffee weighs around five grams. To make 90 cups of coffee, the product would need to contain 450 grams of coffee.

Sulzer says the 10.5-ounce tin only weighs 297 grams, meaning it can only make around 59 cups of coffee using Maxwell House’s own brewing suggestion. 

This means the coffee tin only contains 66% of the coffee needed to make the advertised number of coffee cups, the Maxwell House coffee class action lawsuit alleges.

Sulzer says this is misleading because many customers make their purchasing decisions based on how many servings they can get from a product. He says Kraft Heinz’s deception is like selling a customer a six pack of soda that had two sodas missing.

According to Sulzer, Kraft Heinz is able to profit from this deception because most consumers would not take the time to do the math to understand how many servings are really in a given container, or would not remember exactly how many servings they had used.

Sulzer says the label bearing this information was an important part of his purchasing decision.

According to Sulzer, he would not have purchased the product, or would not have paid as much for it, if he had known the canister did not contain enough coffee grounds to make the advertised 210 cups.

Sulzer says he and other customers were financially injured by Kraft Heinz because they lost money on their purchase of the allegedly misleading product.

He also explains he was additionally damaged by the company’s misrepresentation.

In his eyes, the false advertisement of how much coffee could be made from the canister “artificially inflated the price … as a result of increased consumer demand generated by the false advertisement, which naturally led to an increase in the price charged.”

The Maxwell House class action lawsuit then says Sulzer and other customers will continue to be injured in the future.

Sulzer explains he regularly shops at stores in which Maxwell House products are sold, and would like to purchase the products again. However, he allegedly cannot trust that the products will be correctly labeled without the court’s intervention.

The class action lawsuit states Sulzer and many other customers will likely purchase another Maxwell House product again without realizing they are purchasing a possibly mislabeled product because Maxwell House’s product offering is so broad.

This Maxwell House legal news mirrors similar complaints filed earlier this year against Folgers and Kroger.

How do you choose your coffee? Share your experience in the comments below.

Sulzer is represented by Gary F. Lynch and Todd D. Carpenter of Carlson Lynch LLP. 

The Maxwell House Coffee Serving Class Action Lawsuit is Randall Sulzer v. The Kraft Heinz Company, et al., Case No. 2:20-cv-01154-WSS, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

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