Allergens on a digital menu
In the European Union, the 14 major allergens must reach your guest before they order. Here is what the rules ask, and how a digital menu keeps that information honest.
Which rules this page covers
This page describes the framework that applies in the European Union: Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on food information to consumers, in force across the Union since December 2014. It requires food businesses — restaurants and cafés included — to tell the guest whether a dish contains any of 14 listed allergens.
Two things it deliberately does not cover. Each Member State sets its own detail rules on how that information is given, so your national authority has the last word on format. And outside the Union — the United Kingdom in particular, where labelling for prepacked food for direct sale follows its own rules — the requirements differ and nothing on this page should be read across.
This is a practical guide, written for information. It is not legal advice. For anything specific to your premises, ask a lawyer or your local food authority.
The 14 allergens
The Regulation lists 14 substances and products known to cause allergies and intolerances. As soon as one of them goes into a dish, the guest has to be told:
- Cereals containing gluten (wheat, rye, barley, oats, spelt, kamut and derived products)
- Crustaceans and products thereof
- Eggs and products thereof
- Fish and products thereof
- Peanuts and products thereof
- Soybeans and products thereof
- Milk and products thereof, including lactose
- Nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pecans, Brazil nuts, pistachios, macadamias)
- Celery and products thereof
- Mustard and products thereof
- Sesame seeds and products thereof
- Sulphur dioxide and sulphites above 10 mg/kg or 10 mg/litre
- Lupin and products thereof
- Molluscs and products thereof
The information has to arrive before the order
The point of the rule is timing. The guest must be able to know what is in a dish before they choose it — not once the plate is down. On the menu, on a separate sheet, on a notice: the Regulation cares that the information is there and reachable, not that it takes one particular shape.
Where houses come unstuck is drift. You change bread supplier. You swap cream for a soy base on the Tuesday. The printed menu goes on announcing the old recipe for months, and nobody notices until somebody reacts. A menu you can correct the moment the recipe changes removes that gap entirely — which is the strongest argument for showing allergens digitally.
One more thing, easy to forget: if your menu exists in several languages, the allergen information has to remain understandable in each of them. A guest who reads Spanish should not have to decipher French to find out about the mustard.
How it works with NUSA
You fill in allergens once, dish by dish. They then appear on your public menu under the dish itself, where the guest is already reading, and a guest can flag what they avoid to see it stand out across the whole menu.
You are not left to do it from a blank page: the AI reads your dishes and proposes the allergens it recognises. It proposes — you decide. Nothing is published on an allergen until you have validated it yourself, and that is deliberate: this is one field where a machine does not get the final word.
Translations follow. Allergens are carried into every language active on your menu, with no extra work on your side.
Frequently asked questions
Is telling guests verbally enough, in the EU?
Member States set the detail, and several allow information to be given by staff provided the guest is clearly told they can ask. In practice a written listing on the menu is steadier: it does not depend on which waiter is on, and it is far easier to keep current.
Do allergens have to be translated?
If your menu exists in several languages, the information has to be understandable in each of them. With NUSA, allergens are translated at the same time as the rest of the content.
Does the AI decide the allergens on my dishes?
No. It suggests, based on the dish and its description, and you validate. Your correction is what gets published. On a subject like this, the last word stays with the kitchen.
