No Bananas Gave Away Jam with Best-Before Date Obscured
Estonian fruit retail chain No Bananas distributed free strawberry jam with its best-before date covered by a promotional sticker, violating food labeling laws. The company said it was unintentional.
The Estonian fresh fruit retail chain No Bananas has been offloading products past their best-before date without adequately notifying the public. The company said it did not do so intentionally.
No Bananas did not charge money for the out-of-date produce – strawberry jam – offering it as a free gift instead. However, the best-before date on the lid had been obscured, in contravention of Estonian consumer law.
The issue arose over these complimentary jars having no visible best-before date, a fact verified by ERR, which obtained a free jar from a No Bananas outlet. A large sticker affixed to the lid bearing the English slogan "No Bananas. No bulls**t" obscured the best-before information. Peeling the sticker off revealed a date of January 31, 2026, even as the jar had been given away in late June, several months later.
Kairi Sisask, a senior food specialist at the Agriculture and Food Board (PTA), said the free status of the jam did not change the fact that customers must be able to view the expiry information. "Deliberately hiding, removing or covering up the date is misleading and prohibited," Sisask said.
Giving away food past its best-before (Estonian: "Parim enne") date was not itself prohibited, she noted, unlike food which had passed its expiry or "use by" ("Kõlblik kuni") date. The issue was that the best-before date had been obscured, in violation of the Food Act. Such items must be kept separate from other products and clearly labeled, Sisask noted, to allow consumers to make informed decisions.
Penalties, Sisask went on, could include a fine, or a warning of a fine and a call for the product to be recalled, depending on the degree of intent and how far the product endangered public health. Misdemeanor proceedings from the PTA can follow in the worst cases, she said.
In a written response to ERR, No Bananas marketing manager Jekaterina Shendrik said the company is aware of isolated cases in which customers received jars whose best-before date had already passed and asked anyone affected to contact the company. The promotional lid sticker was not intended to hide the best-before date but to highlight that this was a promotional product, Shendrik went on, noting that "unfortunately" the sticker had unintentionally obscured the date in some cases. "We will review our labeling process to prevent similar situations in the future," Shendrik added.
Shendrik said she could not put a figure on how many free No Bananas promotional jam jars had been distributed to customers so far. The company still has promotional jars in storage with best-before dates valid until the end of this year, and these will continue to be distributed as gifts.
No Bananas operates stalls in many shopping malls in Estonia, selling strawberries and other fresh fruit, though not, as its name implies, bananas. Andero Keronen, CEO of No Bananas' parent company Get Fresh Estonia, last summer openly admitted that a plan to produce and sell strawberry jam had not met with success. The product launched in spring 2024 in conjunction with the Fitlap nutrition platform, and the strawberry jam was marketed as containing no added sugar or preservatives. Sales of an initial run of 40,000 jars were weak, with just 200 sold in the first couple of weeks. At that rate, it would have taken eight years to sell all the inventory, despite the jam having a shelf life of only a year and a half. The apparent solution was to retail it at a steeply discounted price, or even to give it away free as a promotional item.
