Michel’s Patisserie owner withdraws products with extended used-by dates

Patrick Hatch
May 6, 2019
The Age

The owner of bakery chain Michel’s Patisserie is withdrawing products after it was revealed the company was knowingly selling cakes and other goods past their used-by dates.

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald revealed on Saturday that Retail Food Group was telling Michel’s franchisees to ignore expiry dates and adopt new shelf-life dates that were between two and six months later.

Store owners are forced to buy their products from RFG under the terms of their franchisee agreement, with most baked goods delivered frozen and then thawed out and sold to customers.

Products such as spinach and feta scrolls had their best-before date extended by two months, and chocolate cakes were extended by three months, internal memos showed.

The date extensions prompted the NSW Food Authority to refer RFG for investigation to its food safety counterpart in Queensland, where RFG is headquartered.

On Monday morning RFG, which also owns the Gloria Jean’s, Pizza Capers, Brumby’s and Donut King brands, said that it was pulling any products that had extended shelf-life from sales.

“RFG follows strict standards with regard to food quality and any product date extension was granted
following written approval from the supplier and with consumer safety top of mind,” the company said in a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange.

“Regardless, RFG has taken voluntary action and is in the process of withdrawing any products which had received approved date extensions from our suppliers.”

RFG said that it had requested shelf-life extensions from fewer than 10 of its more than 1000 suppliers, “where appropriate and safe to do so”.

“RFG audits its suppliers and distributors regularly and will remove any supplier from its network if they are deemed to have contravened relevant food safety regulations,” the company said.

The company said it had not been contacted by food safety regulators.

A recent parliamentary report into Australia’s $170 billion franchising industry singled RFG out for special criticism, saying the company’s “particularly unjust” business model relied on extracting profit from store owners through “exploitative” fees to the benefit of head office.