Spoons Out

When Mark Overbay started making his own nut butters in 2011, he named the company Big Spoon Roasters in honor of his dad, Gary, whose penchant for eating spoonfuls of peanut butter from the jar landed him the sobriquet “Big Spoon.”

Two thousand miles west and a decade on, after Lani Chan and her partner, Nathan Bender, caught Bender’s mom digging into a jar of the couple’s homemade chili crisp with—you guessed it—a big spoon, they decided they had a perfect name for their pandemic-born business: Big Spoon Sauce Co.

Now, the two companies are colliding in a federal lawsuit that pits Hillsborough’s Big Spoon Roasters—a local specialty foods success story that grew from a farmers’ market stall to a national brand, attracting praise from the likes of Bon Appetit—against the California-based company Big Spoon Sauce Co. In an industry where both companies are dwarfed by corporate bigwigs, the clash raises questions around cultural ownership, trademark boundaries, and who really wins when small producers go to war.

On March 28, Big Spoon Roasters, which Mark Overbay owns with his wife, Megan, filed a lawsuit in the Middle District of North Carolina claiming that Big Spoon Sauce Co.’s use of the “Big Spoon” name infringes on their trademark and causes consumer confusion.

The suit seeks to stop Chan and Bender from using the name and demands they “deliver up for destruction all signs, prints, products, labels, advertisements, promotional materials, catalogues, brochures, information sheets, website materials, or other printed or graphic materials” bearing the Big Spoon moniker. 

“It would destroy everything we have,” says Chan, who co-founded Big Spoon Sauce Co. with Bender in 2021. “We would be starting from scratch.”

The suit, which names both the company and Chan and Bender as individuals, includes some stinging allegations, declaring the defendants’ conduct “immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous, or substantially injurious to consumers.”

“I was not expecting a full attack on my character,” Chan says. “I am personally named in this lawsuit, as is my partner. It contains very damaging allegations of misleading our customers and capitalizing off the goodwill of a company that’s been around before us, which is extremely hurtful, on top of being flagrantly untrue.”

In response to a request for comment, Mark Overbay cited the ongoing legal case as a reason he couldn’t answer most of the INDY’s questions, including a question about the basis of naming Chan and Bender individually in the suit.

“Our hope as small business owners has been that we would be able to find an amicable solution for both businesses that respects our company’s rights in the Big Spoon trademark and the integrity and hard work that has gone into establishing our identity within our category while allowing both of our small businesses to continue to grow and find success,” Mark Overbay wrote. 

The Big Chili

Both companies occupy niches in the artisanal food space. Big Spoon Roasters—founded by the Overbays after Mark Overbay’s time in the Peace Corps in Zimbabwe, where he first experimented with adding flavorings to stone-ground peanuts—sells nut butters and bars.

Historically, the company has primarily offered sweeter flavors like chai spice and carrot cake, though recently they’ve been expanding their savory selection: Per a January blog post, the company, which Megan Overbay says is comprised of a team of 15, is “on a mission to convert y’all to savory PB appreciators” with products like their award-winning Lum Lum Thai Curry Peanut & Cashew Butter, for which they donate a portion of proceeds from every jar sold to Carolina Tiger Rescue.

Big Spoon Sauce Co. produces chili crisp, a Chinese condiment made by infusing oil with chili peppers, aromatics, and spices. Chan and Bender, who both previously worked in journalism and restaurants before being laid off during the pandemic, started the company as a fundraiser to support Asian American community organizations at a time when anti-Asian harassment was on the rise. At present, the pair are the company’s sole employees. 

According to correspondence reviewed by the INDY, the two companies first came in contact in November 2024, when Big Spoon Roasters’ attorneys sent a letter to Chan and Bender after noticing their trademark applications for “Big Spoon Sauce Co.” had been filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. After a failed months-long negotiation between the two companies, Big Spoon Roasters filed a lawsuit.

The suit asserts that the two companies’ products are similar and distributed through similar channels, creating a likelihood of brand confusion. It names one retailer, Lunchette in Petaluma, California, that carries both companies’ products, and includes a screenshot from the store’s Instagram showing both products on the shelves. 

“They found the one retailer that carries both of our products,” Chan says. 

A January Forbes article states that Big Spoon Roasters’ products are sold in more than 4,000 stores nationwide. The company has recently announced plans to scale down and pull out of grocery chains, and in an email to the INDY, Megan Overbay wrote that “We currently sell into just over 600 retailers across the country.” (A Big Spoon Roasters store locator was taken down from the company website after the INDY reached out for comment.) Big Spoon Sauce Co. products are carried in about 20 small businesses, mostly within 30 miles of Chan and Bender’s home in Sebastopol, California.

“Our products are sold nationwide, and to have two companies with the same name in the same category presented a problem of customer confusion both in-store and online, as well as in wholesale channels,” Mark Overbay wrote in his response for comment.

Mark Overbay wrote that he first learned of Big Spoon Sauce Co. when a customer contacted him asking if the company’s products were connected with Big Spoon Roasters. When the INDY asked for a copy of the communication or specifics about where the customer saw both brands, Megan Overbay responded in a follow-up email that “the customer was doing an online search for Big Spoon in California, and Big Spoon Sauce Co. came up.”

During the two companies’ initial email negotiations, the dispute took on a new dimension when Mark Overbay informed Chan and Bender of plans to expand into the chili-crisp market with a chili-crisp-inspired nut butter.

“The joy of applying different culinary traditions to our beloved medium of nut butter is essential to our DNA,” Mark Overbay wrote in an email to Chan, adding that his company’s “core product line” has pulled “inspiration from the Caribbean, India, Africa, different parts of Asia, and Europe.”

Chan, who is Chinese American, says the revelation that Big Spoon Roasters plans to launch a chili-crisp-inspired nut butter makes the lawsuit feel less like brand protection and more like a ploy to clear competition from a food space before entering it. 

“That immediately, for me, was more clarifying of their intentions than any actual brand protection,” Chan says.

Chan says she found Mark Overbay’s “DNA” remark culturally insensitive, particularly in the context of Mark Overbay asking a Chinese American-owned business to rebrand while his company develops Asian-inspired products.

“It feels bad for me to set aside everything I’ve worked on so that you can make one off-shoot of a peanut butter that’s, like, an Asian-focused flavor that happens to be the one thing that I sell,” Chan says. “I am a Chinese person, and I make a Chinese chili crisp.”

In response to the INDY’s request for comment, Mark Overbay wrote that the company’s products include “Lum Lum Thai Curry Peanut & Cashew Butter, Linzer Cookie Cashew & Almond Butter, & Chai Spice Peanut & Almond Butter.”

“While we have been planning a nut butter collaboration with a chili crisp maker for almost two years as part of this series, we are not planning to launch a chili crisp or line of chili crisp products,” Mark Overbay wrote.

‘BIG and SPOON’

Emails obtained by the INDY show a series of tense back-and-forths between the two companies before the lawsuit was filed.

Following the initial letter from Big Spoon Roasters’ attorneys in November 2024, Chan and Bender engaged in direct discussions with Mark Overbay, initially seeking to find a way for the two brands to coexist. Chan offered to more clearly display “Sauce Co.” in their branding and optimize their SEO to distinguish their offerings from Big Spoon Roasters. Chan also suggested the companies explore a collaborative gift box that would celebrate both of their offerings, emphasizing that although they share similar wording in their names, the biggest similarity is their appreciation for creative flavors and whimsy.

(This wasn’t a far-fetched proposal for Big Spoon Roasters, which has a monthly “featured jam” series that packages their nut butters with jams from other specialty food companies. April’s collaboration is with the Michigan-based company American Spoon.)

But these offers weren’t satisfactory for Big Spoon Roasters. By January, talks had shifted to potential rebranding terms. During several rounds of negotiation over compensation for rebranding, the Overbays stuck to a final offer of $10,000—significantly less than Chan’s request for $95,000 to cover what she estimated as the full costs of business disruption and rebranding.

Chan eventually accepted the reduced amount, maintaining that it was insufficient to cover a rebranding overhaul. But negotiations began to deteriorate when Mark Overbay asked Chan to cancel her pending trademark applications in good faith—citing an upcoming deadline for filing oppositions—before Chan had yet seen the settlement contract. 

Chan declined on the grounds that she wasn’t willing to abandon her applications without the contract in hand. Shortly after, the settlement fell apart altogether when Big Spoon Roasters’ attorney sent over a draft agreement containing provisions that Chan says took her and Bender by surprise. 

One clause that the couple found particularly troubling was a confidentiality agreement that would have prevented them from explaining why they were rebranding. Chan says this would have required Big Spoon Sauce Co. to present the rebrand as a voluntary choice rather than the result of legal pressure, something she wasn’t comfortable misrepresenting to customers. 

The draft agreement also restricted Chan and Bender in future branding, stating that any future business name must not have “any mark that includes the terms BIG and SPOON,” and proposed a payment schedule that the couple found unworkable.

Condiment Confusion

High-profile trademark disputes have made headlines over the past year. Last April, chili crisp itself was at the center of a controversy when celebrity chef David Chang and his restaurant group, Momofuku, came under fire after trademarking the term “chili crunch” and sending cease-and-desist letters to smaller Asian-owned businesses using similar branding for their products. Chang ultimately apologized and announced he would no longer enforce the trademark.

In February, the New York Times reported a case between a vegetarian Michelin-starred New York City restaurant and a Texas farm, both named Dirt Candy. The dispute ended with the farm rebranding as Wild Candy Farm after spending $10,000 in legal fees.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is filled with “Big Spoon” businesses: Big Spoon Yogurt, Big Spoon Energy, Big Spoon Marketing. There are pending applications from a Miami-based coffee business, a restaurant operated by the Osage Nation, a company making non-alcoholic mocktails, and a body pillow brand, all seeking approval on variations of the same name.

Deborah Gerhardt, a UNC law professor who teaches trademark law, says when two companies use the same trademark in the same or very similar products, there’s a high likelihood that consumers will be confused.

While Big Spoon Roasters and Big Spoon Sauce Co. have registered trademarks for different goods and services (for Big Spoon Roasters, peanut butter based snack foods, peanut butter based energy bars, peanut butter, and nut butters; for Big Spoon Sauce Co., chili sauce and hot chili pepper sauce), the legal standard is not whether the companies are using the trademarks for the same products, but whether they’re similar enough that consumers could be confused, Gerhardt says.

“If you’re talking like, Delta faucets and Delta airplanes, it’s the same mark but the context is so different, people are not likely to be confused,” Gerhardt says. In the case of Big Spoon Roasters and Big Spoon Sauce Co., “the two names are virtually identical, and they’re both for food condiments. It’s similar enough that consumers seeing one could think it comes from the other company.”

“The reason why it’s problematic,” Gerhardt continues, “is because, let’s say the California company’s product is not very good, and the North Carolina company’s product is very high quality. If the California company is selling a product that has different qualities or different ingredients, or isn’t that good, it could damage the reputation of the North Carolina company.”

Gerhardt says from reading the case, Big Spoon Roasters looks to have a strong case.

For the lawsuit to be filed in North Carolina, as this one was, Big Spoon Sauce Co.’s products had to have been sold in the state. Chan tells the INDY that she has filled a dozen orders in North Carolina, so there was grounds for a suit. 

But in an Instagram post that Big Sauce Co. shared with customers on April 2, Chan shared one more detail: days before the lawsuit was filed, one more North Carolina order came in “from a customer who appears to be a legal assistant at the massive corporate law firm representing Big Spoon Roasters: Fox Rothschild, LLP in North Carolina.”

“We believe this was done to justify filing the lawsuit in North Carolina instead of California, where we are located, to make it more difficult and costly to defend,” Chan wrote in the post. The Overbays did not respond to an emailed question about what Big Spoon Sauce Co. posted regarding the legal assistant.

Big Spoon Roasters also posted about the lawsuit on Instagram this week. 

Chan tells the INDY she doesn’t have the resources—financial or emotional—to fight a protracted legal battle with Big Spoon Roasters.

“We did some research when they first reached out to us, and they seemed like reasonable people who champion the same things that we value,” Chan says. “To receive a lawsuit from somebody like that is absolutely crushing and disheartening. 

“I would expect this from a bigger company—not that that would be pleasant either,” she continues. “But these guys know what it’s like to be small.”

Lena Geller is a staff writer at INDYWeek.