Allergen labelling is not optional in the UK. Whether you run a city-centre restaurant, a neighbourhood café, or a pub serving food, the law requires you to provide accurate allergen information to guests. Getting it wrong isn't just a compliance issue — it's a safety issue. This guide explains what you're required to show, how the law has evolved, and the practical steps to keep your menu compliant.
The 14 major allergens
UK food law requires businesses to declare the presence of 14 specified allergens in any food they serve. These are:
- Celery (including celeriac)
- Cereals containing gluten (wheat, rye, barley, oats, spelt, kamut)
- Crustaceans (prawns, crabs, lobster, crayfish)
- Eggs
- Fish
- Lupin (a legume sometimes used in flour)
- Milk
- Molluscs (clams, mussels, whelks, oysters, snails, squid)
- Mustard
- Tree nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pecans, Brazil nuts, pistachios, macadamia/Queensland nuts)
- Peanuts
- Sesame
- Soybeans
- Sulphur dioxide and sulphites (at concentrations above 10mg/kg or 10mg/litre)
If any of these are present in a dish, you are legally required to declare them to guests who ask — and best practice (increasingly expected) is to make this information readily accessible without needing to ask.
What the law requires: Natasha's Law and the Food Information Regulations
The UK Food Information Regulations 2014 (derived from EU Regulation 1169/2011) require that allergen information is available for all food sold non-prepacked (i.e., served in restaurants). Businesses must provide this information either in writing on the menu or verbally when guests ask — though a written notice must indicate that verbal information is available.
Natasha's Law, which came into force in October 2021, went further for prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) foods — items made and packaged on the same premises before sale (like a sandwich in a café fridge). These now require a full ingredient list with allergens emphasised (bolded or highlighted) on the label. If you sell any such items, this applies to you.
The law's name comes from Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who died in 2016 after an allergic reaction to a baguette that didn't declare sesame. The subsequent inquest and legislation changed how food businesses must communicate allergen information in the UK.
The compliance problem with paper menus
A printed menu creates a compliance challenge that most restaurant owners underestimate. Every time a recipe changes — a different supplier, a substituted ingredient, a tweak to a sauce — the allergen information may change. On a printed menu, that change requires a reprint. Until the reprint happens, your printed menu may be technically inaccurate.
Staff are frequently the fallback — guests ask about allergens and servers have to go to the kitchen to check. During a busy service, this is slow and inconsistent. A server who isn't certain may provide incomplete information, which creates both a compliance risk and a safety risk.
Digital menus: the easy solution
Octopus Menu has built-in allergen toggles for all 14 major allergens on every menu item. When you build or update a dish, you toggle which allergens are present. These appear clearly on the guest-facing menu — colour-coded badges that guests can see when browsing any item.
When a recipe changes, you update the allergen tags in the dashboard. The change is live immediately for every guest, on every table. There's no reprint, no outdated information sitting on tables, and no reliance on staff knowledge as a primary compliance mechanism.
This approach doesn't replace staff training — your team should still know the menu and be able to answer follow-up questions — but it removes the most common compliance failure point.
What happens if you get it wrong
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) enforces allergen labelling regulations and can issue improvement notices, fines, and in serious cases pursue prosecution. Beyond regulatory consequences, the reputational damage from an allergen incident is severe and often irreversible for an independent restaurant.
Compliance is not a box-ticking exercise. It protects your guests and your business. A digital menu that keeps allergen information accurate and accessible is one of the simplest practical steps you can take.
