The 14 Allergens: What UK Restaurants Must Tell Customers

The 14 allergens UK law names, what you must tell customers about dishes made to order, the FSA's 2025 push for written allergen information, and what inspectors expect to see.

UK food law names 14 allergens that food businesses must tell customers about: celery, cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, lupin, milk, molluscs, mustard, tree nuts, peanuts, sesame, soya and sulphites.

For dishes made to order, the legal minimum hasn't changed since 2014. You must be able to tell customers which of the 14 are in each dish. If you give that information by word of mouth, a sign or menu note must tell customers to ask staff.

The FSA now asks for more. Its 2025 best-practice guidance says restaurants should provide allergen information in writing, with staff ready to back it up in conversation. That isn't law yet, but it's the direction of travel, and it's what most inspectors would like to see.

The 14 allergens in full

The list comes from Annex II of retained Regulation 1169/2011. Each entry also covers "products thereof", so wheat flour, butter and tahini all count.

Cereals containing gluten: wheat (including spelt and khorasan), rye, barley and oats.
Crustaceans: prawns, crab, lobster, langoustine.
Eggs.
Fish.
Peanuts.
Soya.
Milk, including lactose.
Tree nuts: almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pecans, Brazil nuts, pistachios and macadamias.
Celery, including celeriac.
Mustard.
Sesame.
Sulphur dioxide and sulphites above 10 mg per kg or 10 mg per litre. Watch for these in wine, dried fruit and some pickles.
Lupin, a flour that turns up in some breads and pastries.
Molluscs: mussels, oysters, squid, snails.

A few details trip kitchens up. Peanuts are a separate entry from tree nuts. Oats are on the gluten list even though they're often sold as gluten-free. Some highly processed derivatives are exempt, such as wheat-based glucose syrups, fully refined soya oil, and fish gelatine or isinglass used to clarify beer and wine. In March 2026 the government said it had no plans to change the list.

What the law requires for dishes made to order

For food that isn't pre-packed, regulation 5 of the Food Information Regulations 2014 says allergen information must be available and can be given "by any means the operator chooses, including … orally".

If you rely on staff telling customers, you must show that details "can be obtained by asking a member of staff". That notice has to be "readily discernible" where customers choose their food, on a notice, menu, ticket or label. The FSA's example wording: "Please speak to our staff about the ingredients in your meal, when making your order."

That's the floor. A restaurant that meets it is legal. But a server who has to go and ask the kitchen, and comes back with "I think it's fine", is exactly how allergy incidents happen.

The 2025 best-practice guidance

In 2025 the FSA published best-practice guidance on allergen information for non-prepacked food, following an FSA Board decision in December 2023. Its main recommendation is to "make allergen information easily available in writing for consumers and ensure staff are able to support this with a conversation."

It also recommends that you:

cover all 14 allergens in the written information, not just the common ones,
keep allergen information online "no more than 'one click away'" from the menu,
ask every customer about allergies, rather than waiting for them to say.

The guidance is clear about its status: "You are not required by law to follow best practice guidance." The FSA is now evaluating how businesses have taken it up. In September 2026 it told its Board that the findings will "inform the development and design of future legislation". There has also been a public campaign, known as Owen's Law, for written allergen information to be compulsory. As of October 2026 there's no bill.

If you're updating menus anyway, adding written allergen information now saves you doing it twice.

Delivery apps and online orders

For food sold at a distance, allergen information must be available "before the purchase is concluded" and "at the moment of delivery" (Article 14). On a delivery app, that means the information, or a clear pointer to it, has to be there before the customer pays. A sticker or leaflet in the bag covers the delivery end.

Each listing on each app is a separate place where your information can go out of date. When a recipe changes, update the apps in the same sitting as the menu.

What inspectors look for

The FSA's allergen checklist for food businesses is a good guide to what an officer will ask about:

A responsible person on every shift who knows the allergen information and handles questions.
A way to "approve, record and report" ingredient substitutions, so a swapped product doesn't quietly change a dish.
An allergen matrix showing which of the 14 are in each dish.
Staff training "on an annual basis". The FSA's free online allergen training has been completed by more than a million people.
Allergen information kept on spec sheets and recipes, and a check on "the impact when recipes change". See the FSA's allergen guidance for food businesses.

How this affects your food hygiene rating is narrower than people think. Allergen information on its own doesn't form part of the rating. How you control allergen cross-contamination does. Officers weigh it under confidence in management, and for groups the Brand Standard notes that "the company-wide management system and procedures are key."

When it goes wrong

The consequences are serious, and London has had one of the worst recent cases. In January 2025, Southwark Council prosecuted the operator of a café after a 12-year-old girl with a tree nut allergy died in 2023. CCTV showed the blender hadn't been cleaned before her milkshake was made, and it's believed hazelnuts and almonds from a previous drink were left in it. The charges included not making allergen advice available or visible to customers. The operator was fined £18,000 and given a 100-hour community order.

Smaller cases are more common. In September 2025, a Hartlepool takeaway company was fined £5,000 on each of two counts after officers ordered a meal suitable for someone with a peanut allergy and lab tests found enough peanut protein in it to cause a reaction. Across the UK, the FSA handled 264 allergen incidents in 2024/25, making allergens the second most common hazard after pathogens.

Setting it up across several sites

One allergen matrix per menu, built from supplier spec sheets, not from memory. If two sites run different menus, they need different matrices.
Changes go through one person. A new supplier, a recipe tweak or a special updates the matrix, the written menu information and the delivery listings before it's served.
Name an allergen lead on every shift, and put the name on the board where the team can see it.
Separate allergen-free preparation where you claim it: equipment, utensils and cleaning between uses. Blenders, fryers and shared tongs are where cross-contact happens.
Pre-packed items have their own rules. Anything you wrap before it's ordered falls under Natasha's Law.

This guide explains the UK allergen information rules for food businesses. It isn't legal advice. Your council's food team can advise on your menu.