Grill'd Workers Killed the 'Buns' Ad. The Apology Never Came.
Australia's biggest healthy burger chain put a burger on a woman's lower back and called it a campaign. Female staff called it degrading, the ad came down... and the company called them a minority.
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Grill'd launched its "Super Buns to Brag About" campaign in June 2026 and immediately had a problem ... the problem was not the backlash. It was the thing the company said after the backlash moved the ad. Per B&T, Grill'd pulled the female version of the poster and called the critics a small percentage. The female version came down. The campaign continued. No apology was issued.
The ad itself had a straightforward structure. The female version placed a burger on the lower back of a woman in activewear, midriff exposed, with the tagline "Super Buns to Brag About" below. The male version balanced the same burger on a man's bicep, same tagline. Both ran on A-frame placards in stores and internal posters across Australia.
Grill'd Workers United, organised through the United Workers Union, did not treat this as a preference complaint. Their statement went directly to the structure of the ad. "The 'Super Buns To Brag About' poster board is not edgy, clever or harmless," Mediaweek reported the group wrote. "It is a degrading corporate choice that sexualises women, embarrasses staff and tells female workers that Grill'd is prepared to use women's bodies as a punchline to sell burgers."
Grill'd sent an internal memo to all stores directing removal of the female version of the ad. The male bicep version was not pulled. The company then told B&T: "We take the feedback of our team seriously, and with a very small percentage of our team raising concern regarding one specific image used in the campaign marketing material, we've made the decision to remove it. We will continue the campaign."
That phrase "very small percentage" is doing a specific job. It removes the pull. A company that pulled an ad because it was wrong says: we pulled it because it was wrong. A company that pulled an ad because it had no other option says: we took feedback from a minority into account. The word "concern" also quietly narrows the workers' critique from a moral argument to a preference complaint.
The double standard the company never explained
Grill'd never accounted for why the female version was a problem while the male bicep version was not. Workers raised this at the time: if the male version works without sexualising the man's body, then the female version was never about the bun. The campaign used a woman's body as the advertising vehicle and a burger as the passenger, not the other way around. The asymmetry was the argument, and the company did not answer it.
Grill'd has been here before. In 2021, the Australian Ad Standards code found a Grill'd campaign in breach for violence and sexual content. The current controversy landed in a different media environment, one where worker-organised pushback has institutional weight that a single complaint does not, and that weight is what moved the ad.
Our read: the math, not the moment
The campaign came down. The apology did not come. Those two facts are not in tension for the brand: they reflect two different risk calculations. The reputational cost of keeping an ad that female staff publicly called degrading was higher than the cost of pulling it quietly. The reputational cost of a formal apology was apparently higher than both. Grill'd ran the math and landed on "we removed it, we continue the campaign." That is a position, not an acknowledgment.
Workers United called the removal "a win for every worker who called this campaign out." On its own terms, it was. The company's own framing told them exactly how much the win weighed.
This story ran ahead of the Novig controversy by three months, and the comparison is instructive. The Novig case had a credited co-author: Sydney Sweeney held equity and Novig's CEO named her as a creative driver. The Grill'd campaign had no such framing. A woman's body was used as the ad unit. The workers were the ones who named it.
At a glance
- The campaign
- "Super Buns to Brag About" campaign launched mid-June 2026. Female version: burger on woman's lower back, midriff exposed. Male version: burger on man's bicep. Both ran as A-frame in-store placards and internal posters across Australia.
- Worker statement
- Grill'd Workers United (United Workers Union): "It is a degrading corporate choice that sexualises women, embarrasses staff and tells female workers that Grill'd is prepared to use women's bodies as a punchline to sell burgers." (Mediaweek)
- What Grill'd did
- Sent internal memo directing removal of the female version. Male bicep version not pulled. Did not issue a formal apology. (B&T)
- Company statement
- "We take the feedback of our team seriously, and with a very small percentage of our team raising concern regarding one specific image used in the campaign marketing material, we've made the decision to remove it. We will continue the campaign." (B&T)
- Worker response to removal
- Grill'd Workers United: "This is a win for every worker who called this campaign out."
- Prior history
- In 2021, Australian Ad Standards code found a Grill'd campaign in breach for violence and sexual content.
Ad Watch News is an independent commentary site with no affiliation with Grill'd, Grill'd Workers United, or the United Workers Union. This piece draws on published sources listed below.
