Facebook post’s ‘Toby Carvery offer’ is not genuine

A Facebook post claiming that Toby Carvery is offering free roast dinners if you like the post and follow a link to claim a voucher has been liked by 54,000 people at the time of writing.

The author of the post claims to be the “new CEO” of the restaurant chain and offers a “complimentary carvery for two” to celebrate his new role and Toby Carvery’s 40th birthday.

But the post is not genuine, and Mitchells & Butlers, the company that owns the chain, has told Full Fact that Toby Carvery is not offering any such deal. 

One clue to the post’s inauthenticity is the fact that the post has not been shared by the official Toby Carvery Facebook account, which is verified with a blue tick.

And the link that readers are encouraged to click directs users to a website apparently unaffiliated with the Toby Carvery restaurant chain.

Posts offering fake deals are very common on Facebook and we’ve fact checked many similar posts. Recent examples include false offers for various laptops, airfryers, mattresses and PlayStations, and other chain restaurants such as Wetherspoons.

It is always worth checking posts sharing offers that seem too good to be true. One way to verify this is to see whether the offer has been shared by the company’s official page—this will often have more followers, a verified blue tick on platforms like Facebook or Instagram and a longer post history.