If your premises serves any food at all — full menus, bar snacks, even garnishes — allergen law applies to you, and since Natasha’s Law it has real teeth. Customers have died from mislabelled and miscommunicated food in licensed premises, prosecutions follow, and “the chef knew” is not a defence. Here’s what the law requires.
The 14 regulated allergens
UK food law requires you to know and declare the presence of: celery, cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, lupin, milk, molluscs, mustard, peanuts, sesame, soybeans, sulphur dioxide/sulphites, and tree nuts. Every dish and drink you serve needs an accurate allergen record — including the tonic in a G&T (sulphites) and the Worcestershire sauce in a bloody mary (fish).
Natasha’s Law: prepacked for direct sale
Since October 2021, any food packed on your premises before the customer orders it — wrapped sandwiches in a chiller, boxed salads, pre-bagged cookies — must carry a full ingredient label with the 14 allergens emphasised. This is “prepacked for direct sale” (PPDS). If you pack it after they order (a sandwich made to order), it isn’t PPDS — but you still owe the customer allergen information.
Menu food: information on demand, reliably
For non-prepacked food you must provide allergen information, and you must signpost how customers get it (“please ask about allergens”). What trips venues up is reliability:
- An allergen matrix for every menu item, kept current with every recipe or supplier change
- A defined process when a customer declares an allergy — who they speak to, how the kitchen confirms, how cross-contamination is controlled
- Staff who never guess. The fatal cases almost all involve a confident wrong answer.
Train the whole team, not just the kitchen
Front-of-house staff are the ones customers actually ask. Put every server, bartender and supervisor through an Allergen Awareness course — it covers the 14 allergens, cross-contamination, PPDS labelling and how to handle allergy conversations safely, with a certificate for your due-diligence file. Kitchen and food-handling staff should hold Level 2 Food Hygiene as their baseline, with kitchen managers taking Level 3 Supervising Food Safety to own the systems.
What enforcement looks like
Environmental health officers check allergen systems on routine inspections, and failures affect your food hygiene rating. Serious breaches bring prosecution under food safety law — unlimited fines and, where someone is harmed, gross-negligence exposure for individuals. Your protection is the same as everywhere in licensing: written systems, trained staff, records.
Frequently asked questions
Do drinks really count?
Yes — allergen law covers all food and drink. Sulphites in wine, beer and mixers, milk in liqueurs and cocktails, egg in some fining agents: your matrix needs the bar, not just the kitchen.
Can we just say “everything may contain allergens”?
No. Blanket disclaimers don’t satisfy the law — you must provide specific, accurate information for each item.
How often should allergen training be refreshed?
Annually is the accepted standard, plus immediately for new starters — before their first solo shift, since one wrong answer is all it takes.
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