Fake Toby Carvery coupons shared thousands of times on Facebook

A post on Facebook, shared more than 2,200 times, claims that social media users can get vouchers for eight free meals at Toby Carvery in return for comments and shares. 

The post says: “Here at Toby Carvery we wanted to show you how much we care as we know times haven't been the easiest this year so we have decided that everybody who has $hared&¢ommented in the 7 day time frame from now will be given a complimentary coupon sheet with 8 (free) Carvery's. [sic]” 

The post also includes a picture of what appears to be eight vouchers for the restaurant. 

The post is shared by a page called “Toby Carvery UK Fans”, which was set up in June 2022 and has around 3,000 followers. There is no indication it has any formal affiliation with the official Toby Carvery page, which has more than half a million followers. 

This is not a genuine offer. A spokesperson for Mitchells & Butlers, the parent company of Toby Carvery,  told Full Fact: “We are aware of a fake offer being shared on Facebook and we’re currently working to have it taken down. We encourage guests to always refer back to our official social media and web pages to be sure that deals and offers are genuine. 

“We also encourage guests to sign up to our email newsletter or download the app to receive all of our official offers first hand.”

There are several other clues that all is not as it seems with this alleged offer. Firstly the picture of the coupons appears to have been edited as the small print refers to “experience” vouchers at a “park” rather than the advertised meal. For example, part of the small print says: “Buy any attraction experience (i.e. Go Karts, Sky Coaster, Sling Shot, etc.) and receive a consecutive experience on the same attraction for free”. 

We could not trace exactly where this coupon may have originated, but found it being used by another “fan page”—this time for the American theme park chain Six Flags. 

A second indication that the post has not come from a legitimate source is the poor spelling and grammar, which you might not expect from an official brand’s account. 

Thirdly, the comments on the post make it clear that obtaining the deal is not as simple as sharing and commenting—if it’s even possible at all. In reply to people who comment, the page responds by instructing them to ‘like’ the Facebook page and then click on a “get tickets” button.  This then directs social media users to a third-party site, though the link appeared to be broken at the time of writing. 

This is a common indication that the giveaway isn’t real, and we have written about posts making similar requests from social media users a number of times in the past. 

We have written before about similarly false offers for Toby Carvery, some of which have been shared tens of thousands of times on social media. 

Posts like these advertising fake giveaways, often in the form of free meals at popular chain restaurants such as Harvester or Greggs or cheap deals for items such as air fryers or electric scooters from retailers like Argos, are extremely common and we have fact checked them many times before. 

Misleading images are some of the most common kinds of misinformation we see online, but they can sometimes be hard to spot. It’s always worth checking if a picture shows what the post says it does before you share it—we have written a guide on how to do so here.