American Grocery Chain Rips Off the Sausage Roll and Brits Are Outraged

The sausage roll is a staple of British life. You might have eaten your first morsel of sausage meat wrapped in flaky, puff pastry at a Year 5 party while sky-high on 7UP and Party Rings. Or maybe your coming-of-age parcel of carbs and meat was at the local Greggs. Even in adult life, no picnic nor long car journey would be complete without a plastic tub of M&S mini sausage rolls.

Bottom line: sausage rolls have been around in Britain for ages. They’re definitely “a thing.” Which is why US grocery chain Trader Joe’s has found itself at the centre of a social media storm after unveiling its new summer product range last week.

The grocery chain foolishly laid claim to the invention of the “Puff Dog”—an item it described as a “pretty genius” combination of a hot dog “swaddled in a perfectly flaky-when-cooked puff pastry.” Sounds familiar, huh?

Many on Twitter were quick to take down the grocery chain along the lines of @mattyfwhite’s succinct post: “Hahahahha [sic]. The Americans think they have invented something called a Puff Dog. A. It’s a SAUSAGE ROLL and B. That’s a shit name.”

It’s not the first time a supermarket has come under fire for ripping off a regional dish. Earlier this year, an advert by Australian supermarket Coles for an “Aussie taco” received serious Twitter backlash for the fact that it was in no way a taco, but rather a sausage folded into a piece of bread. And a disgrace.

Trader Joe’s has yet to respond to the alleged sausage roll plagiarism but if you want the real deal, probably best to get yourself down to Greggs.