No, Tesco is not giving away ‘free food boxes’ to celebrate its birthday

Posts on Facebook have falsely claimed that the supermarket Tesco is giving away a “free food box worth £50” to people who click ‘like’.

One post, which has been liked over 9,500 times, says: “A proud message from Tesco CEO. I am very much delighted to announce 100 years of Tesco this week so we’re giving every like a free food box worth £50. We’ve also placed a £100 voucher in 100 boxes.”

It’s accompanied by a collage of images that includes the Tesco logo, fresh food—which appears to have branded packaging from a different supermarket—in front of Tesco-branded cardboard, the logo Tesco used to celebrate its 100th anniversary—which was in 2019, not May 2025—and a photo of a man wearing a suit and tie.

Full Fact has traced this photo back to 2013, when a Tesco branch in Flitwick, Bedfordshire, shared it in a blog post titled “Meet the team…Sean your Store Manager”. This man is not Ken Murphy, the current Group CEO of Tesco.

A real photo of Mr Murphy is used in another Facebook post that makes a similar claim, however. This post again claims to be a “message from Tesco CEO”, and says: “This May Tesco will be celebrating their Birthday with a free food box worth £50 for every like”. This post claims that the company has placed “£200 coupons in 50 boxes”.

A spokesperson for Tesco confirmed to Full Fact that these were not genuine offers from the supermarket.

This is not the first time we’ve seen Facebook posts falsely claiming supermarkets are giving away parcels of free food.

It is always worth checking posts sharing offers that seem too good to be true. One way to verify this is to see whether the offer has been shared by the company’s official page—this will often have more followers, a verified blue tick on platforms like Facebook or Instagram and a longer post history.