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EU-wideChecked 6 August 2026

Allergen information: what you must declare, and how

Fourteen allergens, declared for every unpackaged dish you serve. The rule is EU-wide; the way you are allowed to present it is set by your own country.

In short

Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 requires you to tell customers which of fourteen named allergens are in food you sell unpackaged, which is nearly everything a restaurant serves. Written on the menu is the most common method, but Article 44 lets each member state decide whether verbal declaration is acceptable, so check your national rule before deciding to do it by asking staff.

The fourteen

Annex II of Regulation 1169/2011 lists them: cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soybeans, milk, nuts, celery, mustard, sesame, sulphur dioxide and sulphites above 10 mg/kg or 10 mg/litre, lupin, and molluscs. Each entry includes products made from them, which is why soy sauce carries both soy and usually gluten.

The obligation covers presence as an ingredient or processing aid that remains in the finished product. It does not cover cross-contamination, which is a food-safety matter handled through your HACCP procedures rather than through the ingredient declaration.

How it must be presented

For prepacked food the allergen must be emphasised in the ingredient list, typically in bold. For non-prepacked food, which is what a restaurant sells, Article 44 says the information must be provided but leaves the means to national law.

Most countries require it in writing, on the menu or on a clearly signposted document available before the customer orders. Some permit a verbal declaration provided a written record exists and a notice tells customers to ask. These are genuinely different regimes, so the answer depends on where your venue is.

Whatever the method, it has to be available before the purchase is concluded, not with the bill.

Keeping it true when the dish changes

The practical risk is not the initial declaration, it is the drift afterwards. A supplier substitution, a chef using a different stock, a special that was never added to the allergen matrix. The declaration is a statement about what you are serving today.

This is the argument for a menu you can change in a minute rather than a printed card or a PDF someone has to re-export. The compliance failure is almost never "we did not know the rule", it is "the menu was three weeks out of date".

Where Served fits

Served’s menu carries allergen and dietary flags per item, and the public menu page updates when you change it, so the version a guest reads is the version you last edited.

Sources

Sources last read 6 August 2026.

This is not legal, tax or accounting advice. Served is a software company, and this page describes rules we have read in the sources listed above on the date shown. Rules change, they apply differently depending on your venue’s circumstances, and only a qualified adviser in your country can tell you what yours mean for you. Check anything here before you act on it.