Allergen compliance sounds like a problem for chains with compliance departments. In reality, it is small independent restaurants — where recipes change, staff multitask, and the owner is also the head chef — that face the hardest version of it. Here is a practical walkthrough of what UK food law actually requires, and how to meet it without turning your kitchen into a filing cabinet.
The 14 allergens you must declare
UK food law requires you to tell customers if a dish contains any of these 14 allergens:
- Cereals containing gluten — wheat, rye, barley, oats (including spelt and Khorasan)
- Crustaceans — prawns, crab, lobster, shrimp
- Eggs
- Fish
- Peanuts
- Soybeans
- Milk — including butter, cheese, cream, whey
- Nuts — almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pecans, brazil nuts, pistachios, macadamia
- Celery — including celeriac and celery salt
- Mustard
- Sesame seeds
- Sulphur dioxide and sulphites — often in wine, dried fruit, pickles
- Lupin — increasingly present in imported baked goods and flours
- Molluscs — mussels, oysters, squid, snails
What the law requires of you
For non-prepacked food (your menu items), the requirement is to provide allergen information in a clearly visible, understandable way — spoken by a trained member of staff, or written on the menu, a chalkboard, or a chart. For prepacked-for-direct-sale items (sandwiches you wrap and put on a counter shelf), Natasha's Law requires a full ingredients label on the packaging.
The three systems that keep you compliant
Compliance is not a certificate; it is a habit. Three documents keep you on the right side of the law:
- A recipe matrix — one page per dish listing which of the 14 allergens it contains. Update it whenever a recipe or a supplier changes.
- Supplier awareness — know which of your ingredients contain hidden allergens (soy in sauces, sulphites in wine, mustard in mayonnaise).
- A staff script — every member of front-of-house should know the two sentences: which menu items contain which allergens, and "I will check with the kitchen for you."
Where digital menus help
The classic failure mode of written allergen charts is that they go stale: the recipe changes, the laminated chart does not. A digital menu makes per-item allergen data editable in minutes and shows it exactly where the customer is looking — next to the dish, not on a poster by the toilets. For dishes with many "may contain" edge cases, a digital menu can also hold more nuance than a printed page ever could.
What inspectors and customers actually notice
Environmental Health Officers care whether your information is accurate and your staff are trained — not whether the format is printed or digital. Customers with allergies, meanwhile, are used to being an afterthought. A restaurant that can instantly answer "what can I eat here?" earns a customer for life, and their friends.
Revly's digital menus include UK 14-allergen structure per item as standard — see a live example or get in touch about a compliance-ready menu.