Farro Fresh Mt Wellington customer finds 'best before' date labels pasted over old ones

Customer found best before date labels had been pasted over twice on garlic rolls bought at Farro Fresh Mt Wellington. Photo / Supplied

An Auckland woman is shocked to find the best before date label pasted over twice on a bag of garlic dinner rolls from Farro Fresh in Lunn Ave.

Crystal Wang, who bought the bread on Tuesday, said her boyfriend spotted mould on the rolls yesterday just before he put them in the oven.

When they realised the April 19 label had been pasted over, they peeled it back and found two earlier best before dates. One was April 13, and an earlier one April 7.

"It's pretty gross, but what upsets me the most is that this is outright cheating," Wang said.

A spokeswoman for Farro Fresh has apologised, but said the product was produced and packaged for them by its supplier Loaf who also did the date stamping.

Farro has apologised and says it is waiting to hear back from its supplier on what happened. Photo / File

Wang said she has tried to limit the number of times she went out during the Covid-19 lockdown and chose Farro because she thought it was "safer".

"It is a bit more expensive but I felt safer because there are usually less customers there and also higher-quality products," she said.

"I am just so shocked that they will do such a thing and of course I am extremely disappointed."

Farro has apologised and offered the customer a $50 voucher after she complained, but Wang said she did not want to go back to the Mt Wellington store in the lockdown.

"We've been told to 'stay home, save lives', so going back to the supermarket is not something I am too keen on doing at this time," Wang said.

Farro's marketing manager, Petra Mihaljevich, said the supplier was undertaking an investigation.

"We are taking this incredibly seriously and have addressed it with the supplier who is undertaking a full investigation to find out what happened," she said.

"We have a very robust food safety programme in place and when we get a complaint like this we undertake a thorough investigation."

Mihaljevich said Farro will act accordingly once it has received more information.

"They have tracked the batch back to who was responsible for dating and packing the orders on the day of dispatch, once they've questioned the team member we hope to have a clearer picture of what happened," she said.

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In the meantime, Mihaljevich had gotten in touch with Wang with an offer to deliver her a replacement bread hamper "so she doesn't have to be concerned about coming back to store during lockdown".

Mihaljevich said the bread rolls should have been picked up and removed from the shelf.

"Our team try to be as vigilant as possible with checking but sometimes it's hard to pick up and in this case it was missed by a staff member in store," she said.

"With fresh products and bread especially, we do have instances where it can go mouldy, sometimes this happens if a bit of air gets into the pack.

"Our policy is to always give the customer a full refund and voucher to compensate them for this happening and the inconvenience which we've offered to the customer."

• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website