“Does this have nuts in it?” is one of the most important questions your team will ever answer, and it usually arrives at the busiest moment of the day. An allergen chart (often called an allergen matrix) means the answer comes from a document, not from someone’s memory.
What the law asks for
In the UK, food businesses must be able to tell customers if a dish contains any of the 14 allergens set out in law, and that information has to be accurate and easy to get. For food made and served on the spot, you can give it in writing or verbally, but if it’s verbal you need to tell customers where they can find it in writing, such as a sign by the till. The FSA’s best-practice advice is to do both: written information plus a conversation.
The 14 allergens are:
- celery
- cereals containing gluten (such as wheat, rye, barley and oats)
- crustaceans (such as prawns and crab)
- eggs
- fish
- lupin
- milk
- molluscs (such as mussels and squid)
- mustard
- tree nuts (such as almonds, hazelnuts and walnuts)
- peanuts
- sesame
- soya
- sulphur dioxide and sulphites (above 10mg per kg or litre)
Food you make, wrap and sell from the same premises before the customer orders it, like a sandwich in the grab-and-go fridge, has stricter rules: it needs a full ingredients label with the allergens emphasised. A chart on the wall doesn’t cover that.
How to lay out the chart
Put every dish and drink down the side and the 14 allergens across the top. Mark a cross where the dish contains the allergen. Keep it to one page per menu section if you can, so staff can find a row quickly.
- Work from the labels, not from memory. Check every ingredient’s packaging, including sauces, syrups, bread and anything bought in ready-made.
- Include drinks. Milks, syrups and toppings are where cafés most often get caught out.
- Date it. A chart with no date gives no one confidence that it’s current.
Keep it right when things change
The chart goes wrong the day a supplier swaps a product or the chef tweaks a recipe. Two habits stop that:
- When a delivery brings a substitute (a different brand of bread, a new syrup), check its label before it’s used, and update the chart if anything differs.
- Make reviewing the chart a fixed job, say once a month, so it gets looked at even when nothing seems to have changed.
Train the team on what to say
The chart is only useful if staff know to use it every time. Agree a simple script: check the chart, tell the customer what’s in the dish, and if anyone is unsure, ask the manager rather than guess. Make sure new starters read it before their first shift.
How Unpickle helps
In Unpickle, the allergen chart and your recipes live in the house knowledge base, where every member of staff can search them on their phone or the shop tablet. A monthly “review allergen chart” job appears on schedule, and deliveries are checked line by line, which gives staff the chance to spot a substituted product when it arrives.
Try it free for 30 days, no card required.