Eleven years ago, a farmer friend asked Montpelier folk artist Bo Muller-Moore to make a T-shirt for him that read “Eat More Kale.” So, Muller-Moore went home, traced his fingers to make cutouts of the letters and printed the T-shirt, which he sold for $10. The logo took off, and a business was born.

Six years later, the legal department of Atlanta-based fast food giant Chick fil-A sent Muller-Moore a cease-and-desist order requesting “that I shut down my website and send them my inventory,” says Muller-Moore. “They said I was confusing their customers and affecting their profits.” Specifically, Chick fil-A was concerned with how eatmorekale.com conflicted with their marketing slogan and website, eatmorchikin.com.

Through a lawyer, Muller-Moore informed the company that he intended to continue, and took their ensuing silence to mean they were backing down. He kept making T-shirts and bumper stickers, his website stayed up, and business grew. This August, he decided to seek a federal trademark for “Eat More Kale.” And in September, he experienced some déjà vu: Chick fil-A sent Muller-Moore another cease and desist letter, and also demanded that he withdraw his application for a federal trademark.

Chick fil-A has more than 1,560 locations nationwide and 2010 sales of $3.58 billion. As its website notes, the company sells 537 Chick fil-A sandwiches per minute, and its longstanding policy of closing every restaurant on Sunday is a testament to founder Truett Cathy’s “faith in God.”

By contrast, EatMoreKale.com sells markedly fewer t-shirts per year, though Muller-Moore shies from discussing numbers. He has given away 40,000 to 60,000 “Eat More Kale” stickers, and now sells them for donations via his website. 

Muller-Moore is no stranger to copyright infringement. Over the years, he has encountered nine people trying to co-opt his folksy logo. So, seeking a federal trademark seemed an important step to take. “I needed a sharper sword than common law trademark,” he says.

Understandably, Muller-Moore is puzzled that Chick fil-A sees his T-shirt business as a threat to their corporation. “This is legitimate David-versus-Goliath corporate bullying,” says Muller-Moore. “I’m not a restaurant. I’m not a kale farmer. I’m a T-shirt artist.” Muller-Moore says he has never made enough money on the emblem to support himself, though he is hopeful he might do so one day.

Muller-Moore’s lawyer, Dan Richardson of Montpelier, notes that Chick fil-A has consistently tried to shut down businesses using a similar moniker. “What they’re trying to do is own the marketplace. They’ve aggressively gone after anyone who has used the phrase ‘eat more anything,'” says Richardson. He notes the case has whiffs of Monster Energy Drink’s efforts to block Rock Art Brewery’s Vermonster beer in 2009.

On Saturday, an acquaintance of Muller-Moore’s set up a petition online to support Eat More Kale. By Monday, it had registered more than 600 signatures. 

Calls to Chick fil-A’s legal and corporate departments were not answered by press time. 

This article has been corrected to reflect the correct nature of Chick fil-A’s letter to Muller-Moore.

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This article appears in Nov 16-22, 2011.

Corin Hirsch was a Seven Days food writer 2011 through 2016. She was also a dining critic and drinks columnist at Newsday from 2017 to 2022, and contributes to The Guardian, Wine Enthusiast and other publications. She’s spoken often on colonial era drinking and is the author of Forgotten Drinks of Colonial New England, published by History Press in 2014.

24 replies on “Chick fil-A Files to Block ‘Eat More Kale’ From Becoming Federal Trademark”

  2. I know this isn't an Occupy Wall Street thread but I'd love to know how much of the country's collective corporate profits those small businesses control. Guessing it's a lot less than 96%.
    And, Chick fil-A is hardly the only corporation that's tried something this stupid. You might remember Monster Energy filing a cease-and-desist over Rock Art Brewery's Vermonster beer? Or the utterly insane patent wars that all the big tech firms are a part of now? Nope, the mom and pop businesses aren't greedy bullies. But the problems here are big corporations and their overzealous lawyers who have tons of legal and financial clout to throw around. The corporations want to stifle competition, the lawyers want to chase down a quick, easy, sizable check. This case is probably mostly the latter.

  4. One could ask the same question in reverse. Given that the vast majority of american corporations are law abiding, small, mom-and-pop businesses, one could just as easily say, I'm perplexed by the hatred that so many natural-born humans express for corporations.
    Question your beliefs.
    Yeah, this is an example of one company badly overreaching. We get that. But to extrapolate from that that "all corporations are greedy bullies" is totally and completely irrational.
    But that's the Vermont way, of course.

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