Subway has responded to a lawsuit involving the quality of its tuna using a discount code and advertising that its tuna is “100% real wild-caught tuna, 100% delicious.”
The 15% discount for a footlong tuna sub can be redeemed using the code: ITSREAL.
The food chain called this legal battle “meritless” after the lawsuit was filed in the District Court for the Northern District of California in January.
“The taste and quality of our tuna make it one of Subway's most popular products and these baseless accusations threaten to damage our franchisees, small business owners who work tirelessly to uphold the high standards that Subway sets for all of its products, including its tuna," Subway spokesperson Maggie Truax said.
Truax also stated that the lawsuit has “no basis in law or fact.”
The plaintiffs in the case are Karen Dhanowa and Nilima Amin – both have accused Subway of deceiving their customers, serving them food with questionable quality and ingredients. They allege that through sampling the tuna from various stores in California, they found “a mixture of various concoctions that do not constitute tuna, yet have been blended together by defendants to imitate the appearance of tuna.”
Dhanowa and Amin also claim that they and other customers “were tricked into buying food items that wholly lacked the ingredients they reasonably thought they were purchasing.”
The plaintiffs hope to certify the claim as a class-action lawsuit.
“Subway will vigorously defend itself against these and any other baseless efforts to mischaracterize and tarnish the high-quality products that Subway and its franchisees provide to their customers, in California and around the world, and intends to fight these claims through all available avenues if they are not immediately dismissed," Truax said.