Trade Secrets

Buffets v. Klinke: Why a Recipe for Macaroni and Cheese Is Not a Trade Secret

The Ninth Circuit held that a buffet chain's everyday recipes and loosely guarded training manuals failed both elements of the secrecy analysis, marking the outer boundary of what 'qualifies' under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act.

March 17, 2025
A restaurant buffet steam table lined with trays of prepared food
The recipes at issue were for BBQ chicken and macaroni and cheese — dishes the court found 'undeniably obvious.' Shutterstock
Educational content, not legal advice. This article explains general legal concepts. It does not create an attorney–client relationship. For your specific situation, consult a licensed attorney.

Buffets, Inc. v. Klinke, 73 F.3d 965 (9th Cir. 1996), No. 94-36222, decided January 16, 1996, is the case practitioners cite when a client insists that its recipes — or its operations manuals — are crown-jewel trade secrets. The opinion, by Judge Dorothy W. Nelson for a panel that included Judge John T. Noonan and District Judge Jack Tanner sitting by designation, affirmed summary judgment against Buffets, Inc., the operator of Old Country Buffet (OCB), on appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. The court applied the Washington Uniform Trade Secrets Act and concluded that neither OCB’s recipes nor its job-training manuals cleared the statutory bar. It is a short opinion with an outsized teaching function: it shows precisely how a claim collapses when the information is too ordinary to have value and too loosely held to be secret.

The dispute had a familiar shape. Mark Miller, a former OCB employee who had been discharged, joined Paul and Carol Klinke and their company, Granny’s Buffet, a Washington competitor. OCB alleged that Miller helped the Klinkes copy OCB’s recipes and manuals to launch the rival chain. The factual claim of copying was plausible; the legal problem was that the material copied did not qualify for protection in the first place.

At a glance

  • Case: Buffets, Inc. v. Klinke, 73 F.3d 965 (9th Cir.), No. 94-36222
  • Decision: Affirmed, January 16, 1996 (Nelson, D.W., J.; Noonan, J.; Tanner, D.J., by designation)
  • Court below: W.D. Wash., summary judgment for the Klinkes and Granny’s Buffet
  • Law applied: Washington Uniform Trade Secrets Act, RCW 19.108 et seq.
  • Recipes: Not trade secrets — “basic American dishes,” readily ascertainable, and no proven independent economic value
  • Manuals: Not trade secrets — OCB’s secrecy efforts were not reasonable; employees took manuals home and were never told they were confidential
  • Takeaway: A recipe or manual can qualify, but only if it is genuinely not generally known and genuinely guarded; OCB’s failed on both elements

The recipes: value comes from secrecy, not from documentation

OCB’s first theory was that its recipes were protectable trade secrets. The Ninth Circuit’s rejection rested on the statutory definition, which requires information that “derives independent economic value … from not being generally known to, and not being readily ascertainable by proper means by, other persons.” The recipes did not satisfy that test for a simple reason: they were for ordinary fare. The court described them as “basic American dishes” — barbecue chicken, macaroni and cheese — prepared by procedures it called “fairly basic” and, in places, “undeniably obvious.”

The point that practitioners sometimes miss is that the length and detail of a recipe document do not make the underlying information secret. OCB had reduced its preparations to written, standardized form, and a written process can look proprietary. But the inquiry is not whether the company wrote something down; it is whether the information itself is generally known or readily ascertainable. A competent cook can reconstruct a macaroni-and-cheese procedure without acquiring OCB’s binder. Reducing common knowledge to a formal document does not convert it into a secret.

Equally important was the independent-economic-value element. OCB had to show that the recipes derived value precisely because they were not generally known — for instance, that rivals struggled because they could not obtain the recipes, or that the recipes lowered OCB’s food costs in a way competitors could not match. The court found no such evidence. Without proof that secrecy itself produced a competitive advantage, the recipes were merely well-organized versions of public-domain cooking.

The opinion is frequently read alongside the famous counterexamples — the Coca-Cola formula, the KFC blend of herbs and spices — that are protected. Buffets does not hold that recipes can never be trade secrets; it holds that these recipes were not. The difference is the gap between a closely held, genuinely unusual formulation and a competent transcription of dishes any cook already knows.

The manuals: secrecy you do not enforce is secrecy you do not have

OCB’s second theory concerned its job-training manuals. Here the claim failed on the other statutory element — the requirement of “efforts that are reasonable under the circumstances to maintain … secrecy.” The record showed that OCB’s handling of the manuals was casual. Although the documents were “supposed to be kept in the manager’s office,” employees were permitted to take them home, and OCB never told employees the manuals were confidential or subject to any security protocol.

That combination is fatal under every state’s version of the UTSA. Reasonable secrecy measures need not be airtight, but they must be real: confidentiality legends, access restrictions, instructions to employees, and some control over copying and removal. A company that lets training materials circulate to employees’ homes, without a word about confidentiality, has not treated the information as a secret — and the law will not treat it as one either. The manuals may well have been useful and even distinctive; usefulness is not the test. The owner’s own conduct defined the information as non-secret before any competitor touched it.

The manuals holding is the more transferable half of the opinion. Recipe disputes are relatively rare; lax handling of internal documents is endemic. Buffets stands for the proposition that the secrecy element is not satisfied by intent or by the sensitivity of the content, but by demonstrable, contemporaneous protective measures.

A note on “novelty”

Buffets is sometimes cited for the idea that trade secrets must be “novel.” The opinion’s language about the recipes being basic and obvious can read that way. The better reading — and the one consistent with the UTSA’s text — is that the recipes failed because they were readily ascertainable and lacked independent economic value, not because trade-secret law imposes a patent-style novelty requirement. The two ideas overlap in practice: information that is obvious and generally known is, by definition, readily ascertainable and usually carries no secrecy-derived value. Counsel should frame the analysis around the statutory elements rather than importing a freestanding novelty test that the UTSA does not contain.

Open questions

The opinion leaves the recurring line-drawing problems unresolved. How unusual must a recipe be before it crosses from “basic American dish” into protectable formulation — is it the ingredients, the proportions, the process, or the combination? The court did not say where on that spectrum protection begins. On the manuals, the opinion identifies measures that were plainly inadequate but does not define the floor of “reasonable” effort; how much access control, and how explicit a confidentiality instruction, is enough remains a fact-bound question. Finally, Buffets does not address how the independent-economic-value element should be proved when a company cannot run a controlled experiment showing that secrecy, specifically, drove its margins.

Implications

  • Documentation is not secrecy. Reducing common knowledge to a detailed written process does not make the underlying information a trade secret.
  • Prove value from secrecy. Be ready to show that the information derives value because it is not generally known — competitor difficulty, cost advantage, or the like — not merely that it is useful.
  • Enforce the secret you claim. Confidentiality legends, access limits, and explicit instructions to employees are the difference between a protected manual and an unprotected one.
  • Removal undermines the claim. Letting employees take materials home, without confidentiality warnings, can independently defeat the secrecy element.
  • Recipes can qualify — but rarely the ordinary ones. Coca-Cola and KFC remain the archetype; everyday dishes prepared by obvious methods do not.

Frequently asked questions

Did the court hold that recipes can never be trade secrets? No. It held that these recipes — for basic American dishes prepared by obvious methods — were readily ascertainable and lacked proven independent economic value. A genuinely unusual, closely guarded formulation can still qualify.

Why did the training manuals fail even though they were internal documents? Because OCB did not take reasonable steps to keep them secret. Employees could take the manuals home and were never told the contents were confidential, so the secrecy element of the Washington UTSA was not met.

What is the single most useful lesson for businesses? Secrecy is proved by conduct, not intent. If you want internal materials protected, mark them confidential, control access and copying, and tell employees the materials are secret — and do so before, not after, a dispute arises.

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