BURGER chain Grill’d has abandoned its low-methane beef option in most of its stores across Australia, after only limited interest from customers in paying an extra dollar for a burger pattie carrying a low methane claim.

Instead, the company is now trying as different approach, stocking its ‘Gamechanger’ beef pattie option in just seven stores, where it will be sold exclusively. The $1 surcharge will be dropped.

Grill’d’s Gamechanger low methane burger

Far from living up to its ‘Gamechanger’ tag, the reduced carbon pattie option clearly failed to gain traction with Australian customers.

At the project’s launch in January last year, 61 Grill’d stores across Australia were offering the low-methane option. It is not known if more sites were added later, but clearly supply of raw material was an issue.

Beef Central last year asked staff in a number of Grill’d stores in southeast Queensland how the low-methane menu option was going. Even at a surcharge of just $1 per meal, the consistent response was that sales were ‘very, very slow,’ despite promotion efforts.

Grilld’s Gamechanger was launched in January last year (see earlier report), using beef “from cattle that produce up to two-thirds fewer methane emissions than regular cattle.”

“The Gamechanger burger is the world’s first all-natural sustainable beef burger,” the company boldly proclaimed.

As of this month, the low methane option has been removed from most stores. In its place, just seven Grill’d restaurants in strategic ‘environmentally-aware’ locations – Byron Bay, Canberra Centre in ACT, Southbank in Brisbane, Hawthorn in Melbourne; Claremont Quarter in Western Australia; Marion Shopping Centre in South Australia; and World Square in Sydney – will stock the low methane product exclusively. The $1 surcharge will disappear, pricing the Gamechanger the same as a standard pattie burger.

Customers in these seven remaining stores could now “make sustainable choices with every burger they order,” Grill’d said in a statement.

Grill’d’s managing director Simon Crowe said the move was “the result of the company’s efforts to grow Gamechanger beef supply, meet our customer’s specific market needs for more sustainability and lead the way in the industry to combat climate change.”

He said the low methane beef supply would grow by up to 50 percent.

The original $1 surcharge applied in the first phase of the project was done “to encourage customers to make more sustainable choices due to the extra costs associated with cattle farming and the production of GameChanger beef.”

“We will now cover the extra cost of the pattie, so there is no price expectation on the consumer. This achievement marks a significant milestone in the project’s progress and has been received positively,” Mr Crowe said.

The low methane patties are produced from grassfed Angus cattle produced in collaboration with asparagopsis feed additive producer Sea Forest.

“Sea Forest feeds its novel seaweed pellets to cattle and sheep to virtually eliminate methane emissions from livestock production,” Grill’d’s statement said.

Sam Elsom from Sea Forest said collaboration with Grill’d had enabled the cultivation of asparagopsis-enriched feed pellets, leading to substantial reductions in methane emissions during cattle farming.

The Grill’d chain has used a number of questionable strategies over the years to position itself as “champion of change in the industry”, including ditching its entire menu of meat-based burgers for a day each week in 2019 and only serving plant-based options instead, attracting flack for removing choice and alienating its core, loyal customers.

Last year it also backed down on its venture into offering only plant-based burgers in some outlets.