What was claimed
The President of Toby Carvery has announced an offer for a free meal-for-two at the restaurant chain for those who ‘like’ a Facebook post.
Our verdict
False. A spokesperson for Mitchells & Butlers, the company that owns Toby Carvery, confirmed this is not a real offer associated with the chain.
Thousands of people have ‘liked’ a Facebook post claiming to be from the “President of Toby Carvery” offering a free carvery for two. But this is not a real offer from the restaurant chain, or a post written by its president.
The post, which has over 4,000 likes, says: “Big news, as the President of Toby Carvery I'm very excited to announce we're going to be treating everyone who likes [this post] to a Carvery for two of us to celebrate our 40th Anniversary [sic]”. It also shares two photos of roast dinners, and one of a man standing in front of a Toby Carvery restaurant.
But this is not a genuine deal. We couldn’t find a giveaway matching this description being promoted on Toby Carvery’s official social media channels or on its website.
A spokesperson for Mitchells & Butlers, Toby Carvery’s parent company, confirmed that promotions are only offered through the chain’s official channels, and that therefore this is not a genuine deal.
Moreover, the included photo is not of the “President of Toby Carvery”—it does not show Phil Urban, the chief executive of Mitchells & Butlers. The photo was taken in December 2016, and actually shows the then general manager of the Thorpe Bay branch of the chain.
We’ve written about many other fake Toby Carvery offers circulating on social media, as well as those for other restaurants, retailers and brands. Genuine deals will most likely be shared by a company’s official page, which will typically have lots of followers, a verified blue tick on platforms like Facebook or Instagram and a significant 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 a spokesperson for Mitchells & Butlers, the company that owns Toby Carvery, confirmed this is not a real offer associated with the chain.
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