Settlement Takes $20,000 Bite Out of Granola Bar Maker

Fanciers of granola bars may not have been getting all they bargained for if they went looking for the popular product on grocers’ shelves.

That’s the conclusion of a $20,000 out-of-court settlement reached by the county district attorney’s office and the M & M/Mars Co., the New Jersey-based maker of the Kudos granola bar.

The district attorney’s office alleged in a civil suit against the candy maker that M & M/Mars misled consumers and got an unfair edge over competitors by making the Kudos boxes bigger than necessary to fit the individually wrapped bars inside.

The company said it has already stopped the practice.

In a recent settlement, the manufacturer agreed to pay $20,000 in penalties and expenses to the county. It also agreed to an injunction that bars future violations of what are known as state “slack fill” laws, which regulate packaging to guard against consumer fraud.

M & M/Mars spokesman Hans Fiucvynski said Tuesday that the company never meant to deceive consumers and had already fixed its packaging by the time the civil suit was filed.

He said when Kudos were first introduced to the West Coast several years ago, the company’s packaging equipment was unable to produce boxes that were the right size for the irregularly shaped granola bars.

“Our packaging people were all upset,” Fiucvynski said. “They said that with the equipment we had, this was best we could do unless we stuffed (bars into the boxes) by hand.” He said that the inflated packaging was stopped about 9 months ago when new equipment became available and that the bars are now enclosed in slimmed-down boxes and should fit snugly in their packages.

The district attorney’s office agreed that the current packaging meets state standards.

The disputed packaging, in use throughout California, was discovered in an investigation by a division of the state’s Department of Food and Agriculture.

Because the state investigators in the case were based in Orange County, civil action against the candy maker was pursued by the county district attorney’s office.