A North Texas man has filed a class action lawsuit against Cinemark, claiming the movie theater chain is lying to customers about the size of its drinks.
Shane Waldrop claims that Cinemark’s 24 ounce cups can only hold 22 ounces of liquid, according to the lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
On Feb. 14, Waldrop went to the Cinemark in Grapevine and purchased the 20 ounce and 24 ounce draft beer.
He noticed the 24 ounce cup did not appear to be big enough to hold 4 more ounces of liquid.
Waldrop took the empty container home and measured how much it could hold, discovering it only held 22 ounces.
Waldrop and his legal team says the movie theater chain is taking part in “deceptive” and “otherwise improper” business practices that violate state and federal laws about misbranding.
“This is especially misleading because the 24 oz drink should provide a deal for consumers over the 20 oz drink’s price: $0.37 per ounce vs. $0.39 per ounce. But due to the actual volume of 22 oz available in the ‘24 oz’ drink, the price is $0.40 per ounce making the larger drink more expensive per ounce, which is not a deal at all,” reads the lawsuit.
What if 22oz of beer (volume) WEIGHED 24oz (mass)?
According to the website below, searching for “beer”, 22 oz weighs 23.281 oz. So it’s close!
https://www.aqua-calc.com/calculate/food-volume-to-weight
Wouldn’t this mean that beer would need to be 8% more dense than water for this to work out? Quickly searching online, it seems like beer is more like 1% more dense than water, depending on the type of beer, so not sure this is possible.
Wait, I thought ounces were weight but liquid ounces were volume, making this irrelevant?
1 fl oz (volume) of water weighs about 1 oz (weight). It varies depending on a bunch of stuff, ya know, cause imperial sucks, but I believe the standard rate is 1 fl oz weighs about 1.043 oz. So assuming beer has similar density as water, 22 fl oz would weigh somewhere around 23 oz.
(Some Google searches show that some definitions of fl oz has it as 1 fl oz = 30 ml exactly, but I’m starting to confuse myself and you know how infuriating imperial is.)
The US customary units are officially defined on top of metric, and 1 fl oz is 29.5735295625 mL, but an oz is 28.349523125 g. I imagine this decision was just to fuck with people (since 1ml of water weighs 1g at sea level, at 4°)
As a Brit, I find a lot of American units confusing but that makes my head hurt more than usual.