Everyone who shares or comments on a Facebook post from a Wetherspoons account is entitled to a free meal for two to celebrate the retirement of the chain’s boss, Tim Martin, who is now handing the business to his son Ryan.
Wetherspoons has confirmed that no such offer from them exists.
A Facebook account has shared a post claiming that the pub chain is offering free meals to people who share and comment to celebrate the retirement of Wetherspoons boss, Tim Martin.
The post has been shared more than 1,100 times at the time of writing, but the offer it mentions is not a genuine one from the pub company. It copies similar posts from other Facebook accounts appearing to impersonate the brand which we’ve fact checked previously.
The post says: “Hello everyone! I’m Tim Martin, founder of Wetherspoons. I'm very pleased to introduce you to my son Ryan Martin. Next week I will be retiring and handing over all control to my eldest Son. Before I depart I’d like to do one last good deed to say thanks because without all of you we wouldn’t be here today. So everyone who shares&comments within the next 7 days will receive a meal for two on us!”
The man in the image alongside Mr Martin—presumably meant to be his son—is actually a journalist from the Daily Mirror.
A spokesperson for Wetherspoons confirmed that the post “is fake” and that the firm doesn’t “do that kind of thing”.
The account making the claim, which was set up in March 2022, is managed from Indonesia. As Wetherspoons says on its official website, it doesn’t run any social media pages, adding: “Any profiles promoted on sites such as Facebook, TikTok, X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram and Snapchat are not endorsed or maintained by the company."
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 and a longer post history.
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 Wetherspoons has confirmed that no such offer from them exists.
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