What was claimed
Toby Carvery is offering a free meal-for-two to people who share and comment on a Facebook post.
Our verdict
The owners of Toby Carvery, Mitchells & Butlers, say the post and the page it is published on have nothing to do with them.
Toby Carvery is not giving away free meals for two on Facebook
22 March 2023
A Facebook post falsely claims that Toby Carvery is offering free meals to people who share or comment on it.
Toby Carvery is owned by the company Mitchells & Butlers, which has confirmed to Full Fact that it is not running any such giveaway.
The post, which has 20,000 shares at the time of writing, says: “Here at Toby Carvery we want to show you we care as we know times haven't been easy this year so we have decided that everybody who $hares&¢omments in the 21 day time frame from now will be rewarded with a 𝐹𝑅𝐸𝐸 meal for two which can be used at Breakfast, lunch or dinner at any location. [sic]”
The post appears on a page called ‘Toby Carvery UK’.
A spokesperson for Mitchells & Butlers told us it had no connection with the supposed offer or the page in question, and said: “Where possible, we take steps to report such pages—however sometimes they stay active for longer than they should so please be cautious.
“If you encounter these pages, please do not engage and report the page as soon as you can.”
There are some clues that the ‘Toby Carvery UK’ page is not the restaurant chain’s official account. For example, it has 19,000 followers on Facebook at the time of writing, while the official Toby Carvery page has almost 477,000.
The official page is also verified with a blue tick next to its name, to show it is genuine, which the ‘Toby Carvery UK’ page does not have.
We’ve written previously about Facebook pages making false claims about giveaways from Toby Carvery, as well as other companies such as Wetherspoons and Greggs, as part of our work fact checking online misinformation.
Image courtesy of Roy Hughes
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the owners of Toby Carvery, Mitchells & Butlers, say the post and the page it is published on have nothing to do with them.