A customer found new date lables being pasted over old ones on a garlic roll pack she bought at Farro Fresh Mt Wellington. Photo / Supplied
A customer found new date lables being pasted over old ones on a garlic roll pack she bought at Farro Fresh Mt Wellington. Photo / Supplied
Farro Fresh's bread supplier says "staff mistake" is to be blamed for best before date labels pasted over twice on a packet of garlic rolls sold at the supermarket's Lunn Ave store.
A customer, Crystal Wang, found the best before date label - April 19 - was pasted over an April 13 and an earlier April 7 one when she bought the bread on Monday in Mt Wellington.
The garlic rolls were also mouldy, which she initially thought were pieces of green garlic.
Farro apologised to Wang and asked its supplier, Loaf, for an explanation.
Loaf chief executive Sean Armstrong said the mistake happened after wrong best before dates were originally put on the bread.
"We have identified that this was a staff mistake that happened with the dinner rolls when stickering the best before and batch numbers. Incorrect dates were put on the product and when this was corrected the sticker was stickered over rather than being removed, which is protocol," Armstrong said.
He said the staff member was new and had not completed this process before.
"This affected only a small number of products. They have been talked to and Loaf have conducted a full team training on the procedure of dating and the completion of the traceability forms that need to be completed daily before any packaged products have been put for dispatch," Armstrong said.
"This will help to ensure this never happens again."
Armstrong said because this was a fresh bread product, mould could get on to the product caused by a number of reasons.
"We apologise for any distress this has caused the customer at this time. We have sent a full replacement batch of bread to the customer to help make up for it," he added.
Wang said it was distressing because it happened during the Covid-19 lockdown and she has tried to limit the number of times she went out to keep safe.
She chose Farro Fresh over other supermarkets 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.
Wang was offered a $50 voucher by the supermarket after she complained.
Farro's marketing manager, Petra Mihaljevich, said the chain took the complaint "incredibly seriously" and had addressed it with the supplier.
"We have a very robust food safety programme in place and when we get a complaint like this we undertake a thorough investigation."
Farro has also offered to deliver her a replacement bread hamper "so she doesn't have to be concerned about coming back to store during lockdown", Mihaljevich said.
She 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," Mihaljevich 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."
