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Michel’s Patisserie, the country-wide bakery chain store, is in trouble after it has been exposed for selling their baked goods and edible decorations after the recommended use-by date.

As reported in The Sydney Morning Herald, a collection of memos from the store’s parent company, Retail Food Group (RFG), revealed that staff at the patisserie had been instructed to disregard expiry dates and manually extend the shelf-life of their products for as long as six months.

Staff were informed, in one specific memo, that edible plaques with an expiry date of 15 January 2019 should still remain on the shelves until 15 July 2019.

“If you receive coloured plaques from this batch number that still denotes the original January expiry date, please disregard this and ensure staff are aware of the new expiry date,” the memo says.

Stale Choocolate Cakes

Chocolate cakes and birthday cakes were also the topic of other memo’s, where the teams were requested to extend the use-by date on these items by three months.

Staff were told to extend the expiry date of various scrolls by two months. Wow, this would make some extremely stale scrolls.

RFG has been referred to the food authorities for investigation.

According to the food authorities, it is illegal for a shop to sell a product after the use-by date has been reached. Retailers are permitted to sell foods beyond their best-before date but consumers need to be aware that food may be of an inferior quality.

Challenges

RFG said in a statement:

“RFG takes its food standard obligations extremely seriously and any potential breach of such standards would be investigated thoroughly alongside our suppliers.”

“RFG acknowledges that there have been challenges in the Michel’s network and is actively working to improve these,” it said.

Poor Quality Products

It has been reported that former Michel’s franchisee, Wayne Hong, had closed his store last year had lodged many complaints to RFG about the poor quality of products.

He said cakes often arrived at stores damaged, chocolate ganache cakes were cracked and the taste of some cakes was bad. “It was really dodgy,” he said.

Another franchisee said:
“RFG could try to do right by their franchisees and reduce the cost of goods to entice us to purchase stock nearing its expiration date, but instead they don’t discount the product and force us to sell out-of-date stock. We cannot return the products, as the distributor refuses to issue a credit given the shelf-life extension,” the franchisee said.

The franchisee who leaked the memos said: “Ultimately we just want to be able to operate our business with pride in our product and our brand, and be able to make a comfortable living for the hard work we do week in and week out. But we have no faith or loyalty to RFG, it has been burnt out of us, so we are happy to help in any way to have more of their immoral conduct come to light.”

What has been your experiences with Michel’s Patisserie? Tell us in the comments below.

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  • Well that explains why all the ones near me have closed down.

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  • I’ve returned a purchase because it was so very stale…..they offered to ‘zap it for me’. I feel for the people in the franchise if they are being basically ripped off by the parent company.

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  • Wow. I don’t shop there and not sure I ever will now, especially being food items that are expensive?

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  • This so shouldn’t happen but unfortunately nothing’s perfect. I can hear the anti vaccinaters salivating already

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  • I’m shocked by this. For such a big chain, you’d expect their reputation on quality to be paramount.

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  • Seems they were told by the franchisee owners that it was OK to do this – how wrong.

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  • Yuck. I’m glad I never go to them!

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  • I’ve not had a lot to do with them as they’re not near us but this definitely changes my opinion of them.

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  • So not ok. These type of decision will turn against themselves.

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  • I am put off going there now with their dodgy business.

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  • I’ve never been to a Michel’s store but it’s wrong that franchisee owners have to sell stock that is out of date. Hope something is done about this soon.

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  • Gross! I haven’t had any bad experiences with Michel’s, though it’s been a while since I bought from there. This kind of puts me off going back.

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  • Wow, back in the day these guys used to be really good – we even had our wedding cake made by them. Looks like they’ve gone down a long way.

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  • That’s disgusting. Thank goodness I don’t shop here.

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  • they need to be fined and shop closed as it is illegal to sell out of date food this way. someone could have been seriously sick from this.

    Reply

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