Why BreadTalk bread had two expiry dates

Breadtalk is investigating a case in which a customer said that the bread he bought had its best-by date extended, with a new expiry sticker pasted over the old one.

The customer, Mr Louis Peh, said he had bought a packet of Hokkaido Dome bread from the chain's Tampines Mall outlet on Tuesday.

When he was about to eat it the next morning, he noticed the sticker that said "best before Nov 19" was pasted over another "best before" sticker.

In a letter to The Straits Times Forum Page published yesterday, he said: "When I used a torchlight to shine through the sticker, I could see that the first sticker stated an earlier expiry date of Nov 18."

Speaking to the media on the sidelines of the launch of a new concept store yesterday, BreadTalk bakery division chief executive Tan Aik Peng said investigations so far found that the product, which had a shelf life of two days, expired on Thursday.

"The likelihood is that the staff had tagged the wrong date, and then corrected it to the right date, which was the 19th," said Mr Tan.

"But this is not the correct standard operating procedure, and we are going to enhance our staff training to prevent this kind of confusion," he added.

When contacted yesterday, Mr Peh, who works in the commodities business, said he was not convinced by BreadTalk's explanation. He said: "This isn't the first such incident. Once there is a credibility issue, it is hard to win back the trust of customers."

This article was first published on November 21, 2015.
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